Olympic cheerleaders are entertaining crowds at the basketball, beach volleyball, and indoor volleyball venues. The London organizing committee hired the English 'Crimson Heat ' cheer squad as the official cheerleaders of the 2012 Games. Hearkening back to the days of an amateur Games, the squad is not being paid for their services.
LONDON—The brilliant, yet fading swimming icon can finally now be considered among the greatest Olympians ever — winner of more medals than anyone in history — and for that the American giant Michael Phelps will be forever remembered.
He has dominated his sport more than any other man or woman, now the owner of 19 Olympics medals after an individual silver in the 200-metre butterfly and a gold in the 4x200 freestyle relay, won at the London Games on Tuesday night.
It is a jaw-dropping accomplishment, incomprehensible on some levels, and a testament to otherworldly abilities. On the same night, in the same pool, for someone who isn’t as naturally gifted or, possibly, as mentally driven, another achievement was smaller, but no less important.
Calgary’s Brent Hayden, who has been to three Olympics without knowing the feeling of even swimming in an individual final is not in Phelps’s league, but earning a chance to swim for an individual medal in Wednesday’s 100-metre freestyle final had him choking back tears.
“Sorry,” he said, while taking a few seconds to get composed, “third Olympics, first individual final. It’s what I’ve dreamed of since I was a little kid, you know.
“It means everything.”
Hayden finished fourth in his semifinal in 48.21 on Tuesday and will be seeded sixth in Wednesday’s final, the first time a Canadian has contested an Olympic men’s 100-metre freestyle final in more than half a century.
Contesting finals — and winning medals in them — comes almost as naturally as breathing to Phelps, the American wunderkind, who passed legendary Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina’s career total of 18.
“It has been a pretty amazing career but we still have a couple of races left,” said Phelps, who will also swim the 200-metre individual medley and the 100-metre butterfly here.
But it is a perhaps a sign of Phelps’s fast-fading dominance that he tied the record by being edged by France’s Chad le Clos in a dramatic duel.
Phelps had won three straight Olympic 200-metre butterfly golds, is the world and Games record holder in the event but he misjudged the wall slightly at the finish, coming second in 1:53.01 to le Clos’s winning time of 1:52.96.
“Phelps is my hero and I love the guy,” said le Clos. “To beat him, I can’t believe it. You don’t understand what this means to me, this is the greatest moment of my life.
Phelps’s 19th medal was ridiculously easy as he anchored the American relay team that swam in 6:59.70 to France’s silver medal time of 7:02.77. China was third in 7:06.30.
“What we talked about in the (pre-race) huddle is I thanked those guy for helping me get to this moment,” he said.
“I was like ‘you better give me a big lead going into the last leg’ and they gave it to me. I thank them for being able to allow me to have this moment.”
Hayden will never have as many moments as Phelps but it doesn’t matter. The Olympics are about pushing oneself to the limit under excruciating attention and a large dose of pressure.
And considering he got hit with a wave, couldn’t see particularly well and kind of made an error at the finish of the race, shaving a few tenths of a second off might not be that hard.
“I was a little too shallow coming off the wall so I sort of nailed an incoming wave and had to build up my speed a little bit more than I wanted to,” he said.
“And my goggle strap wasn’t really on tight enough so my goggles sort of fell down a little bit; I train all the time without goggles so it didn’t make me panic,” he added.
“And then I misjudged the wall coming in, I probably could have touched with the other arm,” he said, rattling off a trifecta of “don’t-dos” for swimmers.
“So all those things aside, I’ve got a little bit of room on the technical aspects.”
The more forgotten story of the night at the pool was the Olympic record set by China’s Shiwen Ye, who won the women’s 200-metre individual medley in 2:07.57, beating second place Alicia Coutts of Australia by almost a full second.
Ye had been excoriated in some areas for her amazing swims, all but branded a drug cheat when American coach John Leonard called her performances “disturbing” and “unbelievable.”
But the 16-year-old was unfazed.
“It’s OK, it didn’t affect me,” she said of the media coverage.
American bronze medallist Caitlin Leverenz wouldn’t be drawn into the controversy.
“She’s an amazing swimmer and she had another great race tonight and the first one to take home two Olympic golds is pretty incredible,” she said. MORE on the Web Teenage girl puts sword in Michael Phelps and the U.S. dream team Ryan Lochte wins gold in 400 IM, Michael Phelps fourth: DiManno FULL LONDON 2012 COVERAGE
WINDSOR, ENGLAND—In the end, the German juggernaut could not be toppled.
Canada’s men’s rowing eight won Olympic silver Wednesday, finishing a 1.23 seconds behind a dominating German boat that won gold by extending an undefeated streak that goes back to 2009.
Competing in front of an estimated crowd of about 30,000 that included princes William and Harry, Canada sat in third place for most of the race behind the front-running Germans and second-place British. By the 1,500-metre mark of the 2,000-metre Eton Dorney course, the British had closed the gap to 0.6 seconds while Canada trailed the leaders by 1.6 seconds.
But Canada made a late charge to pass the Brits and earn a silver medal with a relatively inexperienced crew that included just two oar-pulling members of the country’s 2008 gold medalists at the Beijing Olympics.
Canada began these Games with an alarmingly poor performance, finishing fourth in their four-boat heat. Brian Price, the coxswain who hails from Belleville but lives near the eight’s training base on Victoria’s Elk Lake, said that effort conjured memories of 2004, when the Canadian eight came into the Olympics as two-time defending world champions and finished fifth.
Still, that Canadian collapse was hardly unprecedented in the history of eights rowing. The sport is littered with stories of heavy favourites that came undone under the pressure of a gold-medal race.
“One thing you know (about the Olympic final) — crews are going to underperform,” Oliver Siegelaar, a member of the Dutch eight, had said in the lead-up to the race.
The Germans turned that theory on its head by staying unbeatable in the wake of Beijing. Along with winning three consecutive world championships, the German crew has all nine of the World Cup events they have entered.
In Canada’s most recent meeting with the Germans before Wednesday, the Maple Leaf boat has finished third at the Lucerne World Cup, nearly a second behind second-place Britain and more than two seconds behind Germany.
Canada’s octet, coxed by Price and coached by Mike Spracklen, included 2008 gold medalists Andrew Byrnes from Toronto and Malcolm Howard of Victoria. Also aboard were relative newcomers Will Crothers and Rob Gibson of Kingston, Cobourg’s Jeremiah Brown, Oakville’s Doug Csima, Brockville’s Conlin McCabe and Gabe Bergen of 100 Mile House, B.C.
Earlier in the day Canada’s men’s pair of Dave Calder and Scott Frandsen advanced to Friday’s gold-medal final by finishing third in their semifinal.
“It wasn’t necessarily our best performance, but we certainly couldn’t be racing for a medal if we didn’t come top-three today,” Calder said. “Now we need to focus on what it’s going to take to get in the medals.”
LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 31: Christine Girard of Canada celebrates on the podium with her Bronze medal after the Women's 63kg Weightlifting final on Day 4 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at ExCeL on July 31, 2012 in London, England
LONDON—Brent Hayden of Mission, B.C., qualified for the semifinals of the men’s 100-metre freestyle at the Olympics with the fifth-fastest time in heats.
The top 16 advanced to the evening semifinals. The top eight from there swim in Wednesday’s final. Scott Dickens of Burlington, Ont., made it into the 200-metre breaststroke semifinals by finishing 13th. Audrey Lacroix of Pont-Rouge, Que., was 15th in the women’s 200-metre butterfly to advance.
Hayden, a silver medallist at the world championships last year, posted a time of 48.53 seconds. He was .34 seconds behind fastest qualifier Nathan Adrian of the U.S.
The Canadian is competing in his third Olympics. He won the world championship in the 100 freestyle in 2007.
Katerine Savard of Cap-Rouge, Que., was 19th in women’s butterfly and did not advance.
President & CEO, Caminchi Bridge Corporation. Worked with Multimedia Nova as Editor-in-Chief, Publisher and GM. TV, Film & Music Producer. Academic Director for worldwide Cyberclassroomtv.com Global Online/Distance Education, and Open Learning project
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