Now it has really started!

Usain Bolt officially got the Olympics started for me on Saturday night. Did you see it? This 6'5" Jamaican sprinter blasted through the field of world class competitors to a World Record time of 9.69 seconds. Almost as scary as the notion that he looked like he was a grown man running against elementary school kids, was the fact that had he not slowed down and put his arms out with 15 meters remaining in the race, he may have run something ridiculous like 9.59 or something. The next closest runner finished in what seemed like a very pedestrian 9.89 seconds. How ridiculous is it that one could win a 100m race in the Olympic games by two-tenths of a second? I thought that he would at least get some sort of a challenge from his countryman and former world record holder, Asafa Powell, but that yardman could only manage a 5th place finish.

Not to take anything away from the Phelpsian feats that have taken place over in the "Swimming Cube", but for me, the Olympics are really all about what happens on the track. From as far back as I can remember (1976 to be exact), I have been completely intrigued by the Track and Field action at the Olympic Games. All I really remember about those Montreal Games was Edwin Moses and Evelyn Ashford. Little did I know that both of them would win gold again in 1984 in Los Angeles, but Mr. Moses would also win some 100 races in a row in a span of 11 years.

It seemed like NBC was holding us hostage this time around. I can't remember it ever taking a whole week for any Track and Field events to start. It's a good thing that Michael Phelps was so phenomenal because I was hard pressed to even find any Olympic Basketball coverage to hold me over. It's too bad that these Games weren't in July because that's always the roughest month of the year for sports coverage. I would've watched just about anything to pass the time. Baseball seemed to be especially slow this time around. Usually, I could look at an A's game here and there, but Mr. Billy Beane traded everybody away in what has become his annual purge of anything that might remotely excite the fans of Oakland. The man is supposed to be a genius and said to really know how to find diamonds in the rough, but it's awfully tough as a fan to wait for those chunks of carbon to shine up and look pretty. It often seems like we are just grooming guys for the Yankees to steal away in a contract year. But I digress. We were talking about the Olympics.

This has been a truly amazing 10 days thus far. Although I'm a track guy, I too was glued to the tube like everyone else whenever Phelps hit the water. I have even made it a point to ratchet up my swimming workouts at the gym lately. I figure that my size 15 feet can be better than his size 14s when it comes to acting like flippers. He only has a 6'7" wingspan, while mine is about 6'10". My hair is cut shorter than his. I don't have that body suit though, so he'd probably have the slight edge if we raced. We'd hit the turn neck and neck and do that dolphin-kick maneuvre for about 10 or 15 meters before returning to the surface of the water. I'd really push him to the limit just as my alarm clock rang out, waking me from this deep slumber. He'd wipe the water off his brow as he touched the wall, thankful that he just managed to touch the wall before me and simultaneously relieved that my dream ended before I could let him see what the silver medal tasted like.

While the gymnastics did not exactly show me the 2nd coming of Mary Lou Retton, the competition was nonetheless pretty entertaining. I did tire, however, of the commentators going on and on about how unfairly the Americans were being judged and also taking issue with the Chinese gymnasts looking a little too young to be in the competition. One guy said something like , "Now, I know that many cultures are different, but you look at her and tell me she's 16...," sounding oddly the same as a statement one of my roommates once made after meeting one of the high school kids that I coached at a local night club.

Back to Bolt now. Could this lightning fast man-child possibly have a better name to go along with his world's fastest man title? I mean, even if his name were Flash or Quick, it wouldn't be quite this good. Bolt! To top it off, the yellow jersey of his native Jamaica drives home the point even further, as it screams, "I'm faster than you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Cover your eyes as this streak of yellow may blind you as it roars down the track with strides so smooth it seems as though he is running on a surface made of angel food cake. I can't wait to see what he's going to do in the 200 meters and really can't wait for the day that he makes the transition to the Q one day.