Nobody Can Shut Up About Michael Phelps
Ah, the Summer Olympics. An event transpiring once every four years that seeks to celebrate friendly competition and reward those who have trained themselves to perform incredible feats of athleticism. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Oh wait, hold up, I’m getting a fax. It’s telling me that now the Olympics are actually about dick wagging.
First up, from the LA Times, where journalist Philip Hersh has confused “winning several gold medals in swimming” with “winning every medal in being the number one uncontested athlete ever”:
Could everyone please stop hyperventilating about Michael Phelps? Yes, he now has won more gold medals than anyone in Olympic history. No, that does not make him the greatest Olympic athlete in history. In fact, he doesn’t even make my top five. Why is Phelps sixth [on my list]? It is easy to win multiple medals in swimming. The sport is far more forgiving on the body than track or gymnastics.
Maybe I don’t have my finger on the news pulse of the world, but I haven’t heard a lot of this supposed hyperventilation. Dude has what, fourteen medals and seven world records set over two competitions? That’s pretty impressive. A lot more impressive than an uncontrollable urge to hit the period key and having the mistaken notion that professional swimmers don’t spend the equivilency of a full time job training every week (some of that outside the supposedly impactless pool.) And that’s forgetting that female swimmers, despite being involved in an “easy” sport, have to quit in their early 20s or risk permanently injuring their shoulders. Next!
The NY Daily News wants to know if you think Phelps is a horrible sellout and bad influence for signing up to endorse Frosted Flakes:
Olympic legend Michael Phelps will appear on boxes of the Kellogg’s brand sugar cereal, drawing sharp criticism from health experts worried about the message he’ll be sending to children across America.
The announcement yesterday that Phelps, 23, winner of a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, would grace Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes boxes instead of the traditional athlete’s choice of Wheaties left many perplexed [as] Frosted Flakes has three times the amount of sugar as Wheaties and 1/3rd the fiber.
Crazy idea: maybe he’s endorsing it because Kellogs pays more than General Mills and/or because Frosted Flakes don’t taste like cardboard. And fibre? I didn’t know the secret to being a gold medalist was shitting a lot. Crazy idea number two: hey scared nutritionists, maybe instead of thinking kids will eat Frosted Flakes because Phelps is on the cover (again, they won’t, they’ll eat it because it doesn’t taste like cardboard and it might have a toy inside), just remind them that if you exercise enough to look like a muscular member of the British parliment you can eat whatever the hell you want, get girls, and piss people off by having your face on the wrong box of cereal.
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
John Layfield
Of course the Olympics are about dick wagging. It was when the Soviets boycotted, it was when the Americans boycotted. It is now where the focus is on “Who will get more medals and more gold? The Americans or the Commie Chinese?” and redrawing the tables to ranks nations based on overall medals even though previously it was ALWAYS ranked around the world by total number of gold medals won, with a tie determined by the total of silver and if tied again by the number of bronze (and still is, save for American stations. By a remarkable coincidence this puts America on the top of the table, whereas the old standard would place China on top).
Obviously, the Chinese feel its a dick wagging exercise. And obviously, the Americans do too, or at least those running the coverage and websites sure as hell do. The Russians did too back in the day.
Fair play to Phelps, though. I probably wouldn’t consider him the greatest Olympian of all time but what he did is damn impressive.
Aug 21st, 2008
A.W. Ross
I guess Canada would be dick-wagging too… but I think we’re still in the teens, and it took us a week to win any medal much less a gold, so our “national pride” is at about a half-pudge at best.
I’ll never understand why some people complain about Olympic athletes taking endorsements. Most countries do not pay much of a living wage to these people, so it seems like a pretty natural decision for most of ‘em.
Aug 21st, 2008
Michele Ebert
Canada doesn’t have an Olympic dick to wag. We always burn ourselves out so much during the Stanley Cup playoffs and the World Hockey Championships that we can’t get it up again.
But really, dick wagging at a national level I can get. Dick wagging about one guy? Eh. I hear China’s won something like 80 medals by this point. Have they even done 80 events by this point, or is China showing up for things like synchronized power trampolining to pad their count?
Aug 21st, 2008
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