No, no, I'm not going to suggest that we eat anybody. But over the past couple of weeks, while looking up articles about the Olympic equestrian events, I have seen the same argument over and over that equestrian sports are not true sports and do not belong in the Olympics because "the horse does all the work." (I will leave alone the truly weird suggestion that since equestrian sports are "expensive" they are inappropriate Olympic sports. Apparently the people posting that on the CBC Web page have never paid for top-level coaching in any sport whatsoever.)

And I choose not to go on a big rant about it, because it's not the sort of argument anyone can ever win. I did point out on the CBC Web site that even if riders are not as fit as decathletes, there are a lot of sports that are more about skill than raw physical prowess. One could argue that baseball is one of them, considering the shape some first-basemen I've seen are in. And I am a baseball fan.

The other day I posted a link to video of some radio guy taking a riding lesson to show him it's not as simple as he thought. Nice start, but it's occurred to me that someone should really research what Ian Millar does every day for a week and put the loudmouth through that. "What do you mean, you're sore? You haven't ridden your sixth horse yet today! And remember, you're just riding a school horse, not schooling. Me? Oh, I am not riding any six horses every day. I am not the one suggesting this isn't a sport, sport." Fitness activities and all. "Now you go jogging! I'll follow you in this golf cart--I am not the one who thinks riding isn't a sport, sport."

Or whatever. It'd be fabulous. How does a sixty-one-year-old man stay at the top of his sport? I would suspect it is by working really fucking hard.

I would take the whole riding-is-easy thing a lot more seriously if virtually every other Olympic sport didn't have at least a few detractors urging its removal on some silly grounds or another. My favourite, and one that made its own kind of sense, was one I ran into this morning (possibly on my friends-list, in fact) where someone suggested (jokingly, I assume) that all Olympic sports should be useful for escaping from either wolves or Nazis. Yes, I know, a "sport" by its very nature doesn't need to be "useful," but it was a funny suggestion.

Which also caused me to think that if Steve McQueen had been riding Hickstead instead of a motorcycle, that movie might have ended very differently, but that's neither here nor there.

So Adam Van K pulled off a silver in his K1-500 final, and the Ethiopian distance runners managed double gold in both the men's and women's 10000 and 5000 metre races. (Honestly, when I look at a field of distance runners, I have the urge to tell everyone who is neither Ethiopian nor Kenyan to go sit down.) The guy who won the 5000 earlier today started his kick with something like a kilometre to go and even he looked like he thought maybe he had miscalculated, but then he turned it on over the final lap and just ran away from everyone. Awesome.

Also, the young Aussie guy who won the men's 10M platform diving was really something. I have decided that if I had decided to be a diver, I'd stick to the springboard. Not only am I a coward about heights, I think the "boing-boing-whee!" element would help get me into the spirit of things.

I expect to scale back my TV watching drastically over the next few weeks, to make up for all the viewing I have done over the last two!

No, not me. Adam van Koeverden, who won all his K-1000 heats but finished eighth in the final.

And here I was just thinking, because I am shallow, that one thing I'll miss when the Olympic coverage ends is his torso on my television.

( Observe: )

Damn.

I wasn't going to watch the jumping feed, since I am at work. Only my supervisor ran into my office and demanded, "Why don't you have the jumping on?"

I love my job. And my supervisor.

Profile of Eric Lamaze.

Of all the people Eric needs to thank, one of the first should be the sports official who refused to let him ruin his life. Twice.

I always enjoy a story about a troubled but basically decent person who does stupid things but eventually gets his act together. And Eric? Has done it in spades.

Wow.

A Canadian woman who just missed a medal was asked how she felt about competing against Chinese athletes.

"Well," she replied, "I've been told there are about thirty million female weightlifters in China. That's a big pool of athletes! So I feel pretty good about how I did."

And well she should. But that figure she gave? About thirty million?

Guess how many people live in Canada?

About thirty million!

So this morning at coffee we decided that someone should sponsor all those Chinese weightlifting women to come to Canada and each lift one Canadian over her head. Obviously the first weightlifters to sign up would get the best pick of Canadians.

We thought, at coffee break, that we were geniuses.

Mind you, we had not at that point drunk the coffee...

You know the type, the ones who bitch and moan if their country's athletes don't win all the medals in a given sport--as if there aren't a lot of athletes from other countries who are also very good. I hate idiots like that.

However.

I hope we do well in the canoeing.

I just feel like it would be embarrassing, if Canada didn't do well in the canoeing...

I don't have any opinion about gymnastics, but I do like to watch the diving. Yes, there is a reason I draw this connection. As the current kafuffle highlights, "women's" gymnastics is really a girls' sport and has been for some time now. I find it hard to watch a lot of the athletes because they're so tiny and baby-shaped and all I can think of is the damage to their bodies and exactly how far a little girl will go to win approval...

I just have qualms, shall we say. And I am very relieved that the girls no longer have the beaten-down look I remember from the early and mid-1990s.

Now, about a dozen years ago or so, China made a move into diving, and at the time all their really hot divers were little kids. Alexandre Despatie, of Canada, also hit the big time as a very young teenager. And I confess I assumed that diving was about to become a sport where very young athletes put up brilliant showings in one Games and then vanished.

And I was absolutely wrong. Guo Jingjing, who won the gold in women's 3M springboard, is a three-time gold medalist and obviously a grownup. Despatie is still around. I mean, they're both young adults but they're adults, and the average age of the divers is, I would guess, late teens anyway.

I like watching kids' sports, but not at this level. When the athletes are working as hard as this, I like to imagine they are at least old enough to decide whether they want to.

All class: American gold medalist Beezie Madden aboard Authentic:


(Like Ian Millar's horses, Beezie's always look like they have supreme confidence in themselves and their riders.)

Gold Medal presentation:



(As Tom T Hall sang, "I love winners when they cry." Beezie's the one wiping her eyes.)

Turns out Coach Girl, who rode in New York a few years ago, knows Beezie and says she is as nice and classy a person as she always seems to be on TV.

Also, a girl I used to know, a fairly serious rider, once told me a story about being at the Royal Winter Fair as a kid, where she and her parents were looking at a competition pony for her. She encountered Ian Millar, who was big stuff even then, and in her fannish blurting she told him all about the pony. And then was embarrassed for babbling. And then she encountered Ian the next day and he promptly told her he had taken a look at the pony and really liked him. Fangirl for life, right there.

Oh, and also, I am digging the new snazzy helmets. They're not ladybugs, but they're cool.

As I was cruising the Web yesterday looking for stories about the showjumping, I also ran into a couple of stories where the writers commented that, since Phelps is all through in the pool, there was really nothing worthwhile going on and everyone might as well just go home.

It was a writer from a small paper, so I will excuse him his ridiculously small outlook. However, I weep for anyone who can spend any time watching the Olympics and not find himself falling madly in love with some athlete he's never heard of before from a country not his own in a sport he's never paid any attention to.

I invite anyone out there to tell me about your unexpected Olympic crush. I'll go first.

Imagine my amazement, when I paused on the women's weightlifting a few days ago, to find myself utterly charmed by Chinese gold medalist Cao Lei. I hope she wouldn't be too offended if she knew I imagine her living in the castle next door to The Friendly Giant's and dropping over to visit.

Cao Lei in action:





Cao Lei and her flag



Anybody else care to share? Remember, the only requirement is, the athlete has to be either from some sport you've never noticed before, or a country whose athletes you don't follow (or, preferably, both!)

"This one's for Lynn."

"In the early 1970s, I had a disastrous Grand Prix and she said, 'Don't worry. You're a late bloomer,' " Mr. Millar recalled. "And sure enough, guess what happened? I bloomed."

And another nice one from the CBC.

I would apologize for my currently one-note journal, except that I have noticed the Olympics tends to do that to all of us: about half the journals on my friends-list have spent the past ten days persevering on their particular favourite Olympic sport or athlete. I'm not complaining, merely noticing.

It's kind of fun seeing the different events that appeal to people.

Oh, and Michael Phelps. I've been seeing a lot of him, too.

(Snaffled from Getty Images.)

(Title quoted from a London Free Press article.)

Does this page mean what I devoutly hope it means?

Edited to add: Yes, it does. It's hard to type when your hands are shaking with excitement and you want to cry.

( Explanation for the non-horsey. )

He seems like a nice young man, and obviously he's a great swimmer. I have no especial attachment to him (pornstache or no) but I was pleased to hear that he had in fact set the new Olympic record for gold medals. I was pleased mostly because this sort of hype has happened before, when the American media fixes on some really strong athlete and declares he (it's usually a he) is going to win some ridiculous number of gold medals. The problem is, I have experienced the US media as being pretty blinkered with regard to, you know, everyone else and so the media coverage tends to ignore the fact the Anointed One is going to be in competition with a whole lot of other really good athletes.

And what all-too-often happens is, instead of winning five gold medals or whatever, the Anointed One wins a gold and three silvers, and then the media wants to know why the Anointed One was such a bust at the Olympics.

I mean, you trot right out and win four Olympic medals, hotshot!

(Mind you, there are instances of Anointed Ones crashing and burning so spectacularly that you kind of wonder whether they are doing it on purpose, see: Miller, Bode.) (Who, if he did that on purpose, I kind of have to respect him for it.)

Anyway, it's easier for me to be indulgent when I don't have cable and am not immersed in the hype about one athlete, but I congratulate Phelps for being a great athlete, a decent guy, and fortunate enough to not have to discuss, say, four gold, two silvers, and a pair of bronzes in terms of "failure" to a bunch of noodleheads who would probably drown in the bathtub.

Ahem.