After a full week of Olympic competition, I have made some breathtakingly penetrating observations:
Volleyball (the real kind, in a gym with six players on a side) has a referee who stands on a ladder at the net and runs the game by blowing a whistle and making extremely stiff, formal arm gestures. I am glad they take their work seriously, but I have never seen a more cheerless bunch of people. Even the referees in soccer matches smile once in a while.
I wish somebody would invent something a little more high-tech and sophisticated for attaching those numbers the athletes wear on their backs. Safety pins look so primitive somehow.
The color of choice for running shoes this year seems to be yellow, and no sallow shade either, but a bright, lemony Day-Glo. Those runners wearing shoes of another color must feel distinctly out of it.
It's bad enough that sports-speak has turned "medal" into a verb ("He hopes to medal in this event"), but now reaching the finals of an event turns that into a verb, as in "He failed to final in that race." Cripes.
Day 7 Quote of the Day (Anastasia Zueva, Russian swimmer who won the silver in the 200-m backstroke, having observed Americans Missy Franklin and Elizabeth Beisel, the eventual gold and bronze winners, laughing and joking with each other in the ready-room before the race): "We didn't have such great fun on the Russian team."
No, I imagine not.
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