CONGRATS to Erik for advancing to the high jump final on Tuesday!
Good luck ladies....Kick some ass!
2008 Olympic Champion LaShawn Merritt Returns To 400-Meter Podium, Earns Bronze.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- LaShawn Merritt won a bronze medal in the men’s 400-meter at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and set a season-best time in the process.
“It was a great race and I knew it was going to be a fast one,” Merritt said. “I didn’t think it was going to be 43 seconds fast, but we got our medals.”
Merritt ran 43.85 seconds and was in contention throughout the race. He had a strong start but couldn’t maintain the record-setting pace of South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk.
The South African’s time of 43.03 seconds broke the world record of 43.18 that was set by Michael Johnson in 1999.
“He has been running well and it just came down to who wanted it today,” Merritt said of van Niekerk. “He was the one today.”
Merritt reached the medal podium for the first time since winning gold at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. He qualified for the 2012 Olympics, but pulled his hamstring halfway through his 400-meter heat in London.
The injury stemmed from a previous hamstring strain suffered two weeks prior at the 2012 Diamond League event in Monaco.
His absence in the London final left the U.S. without a medal in the 400-meter event for the first time since 1980, the year the U.S. boycotted the Games in Moscow.
For Merritt, not qualifying for the final in London left him determined to regain a position on the podium in Rio.
“Every year is ‘work time’ from world championships to Olympic Games,” Merritt said. “I don’t take this in stride every four years. I take it race to race.”
With his bronze-medal performance on Sunday night, Merritt became the latest U.S. Olympian to reach the medal stand twice in the 400-meter. He is the first since Johnson won back-to-back gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
“I’ll take it,” Merritt said. “I am going home with my first medal and I have two more to get.”
The medal is the latest in a storied career of international success for the 30-year-old who has 11 world and now three Olympic medals to his credit. That includes the silver medal from the 2015 worlds.
“I was on the podium last year and this is the Olympic Games with the same people,” he said. “It is a bigger stage with the same people but it is nothing foreign.”
Merritt will have a quick turnaround. He has a chance to compete for more medals in the men’s 200-meter and 4x400-meter events.
“I got to get my day rest and get back to the first round of the 200,” he said.
Merritt also said that the bronze medal won’t change his motivation. He plans to be ready when he returns to the track again.
“I’m always motivated as I was motivated in the semifinals and the finals,” Merritt said. “I will be just as motivated in the first round of the 200. The motivation never drops and I train every day to come out and handle these championships. The motivation level is still on the highest.”
RIO DE JANEIRO -- LaShawn Merritt won a bronze medal in the men’s 400-meter at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and set a season-best time in the process.
“It was a great race and I knew it was going to be a fast one,” Merritt said. “I didn’t think it was going to be 43 seconds fast, but we got our medals.”
Merritt ran 43.85 seconds and was in contention throughout the race. He had a strong start but couldn’t maintain the record-setting pace of South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk.
The South African’s time of 43.03 seconds broke the world record of 43.18 that was set by Michael Johnson in 1999.
“He has been running well and it just came down to who wanted it today,” Merritt said of van Niekerk. “He was the one today.”
Merritt reached the medal podium for the first time since winning gold at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. He qualified for the 2012 Olympics, but pulled his hamstring halfway through his 400-meter heat in London.
The injury stemmed from a previous hamstring strain suffered two weeks prior at the 2012 Diamond League event in Monaco.
His absence in the London final left the U.S. without a medal in the 400-meter event for the first time since 1980, the year the U.S. boycotted the Games in Moscow.
For Merritt, not qualifying for the final in London left him determined to regain a position on the podium in Rio.
“Every year is ‘work time’ from world championships to Olympic Games,” Merritt said. “I don’t take this in stride every four years. I take it race to race.”
With his bronze-medal performance on Sunday night, Merritt became the latest U.S. Olympian to reach the medal stand twice in the 400-meter. He is the first since Johnson won back-to-back gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
“I’ll take it,” Merritt said. “I am going home with my first medal and I have two more to get.”
The medal is the latest in a storied career of international success for the 30-year-old who has 11 world and now three Olympic medals to his credit. That includes the silver medal from the 2015 worlds.
“I was on the podium last year and this is the Olympic Games with the same people,” he said. “It is a bigger stage with the same people but it is nothing foreign.”
Merritt will have a quick turnaround. He has a chance to compete for more medals in the men’s 200-meter and 4x400-meter events.
“I got to get my day rest and get back to the first round of the 200,” he said.
Merritt also said that the bronze medal won’t change his motivation. He plans to be ready when he returns to the track again.
“I’m always motivated as I was motivated in the semifinals and the finals,” Merritt said. “I will be just as motivated in the first round of the 200. The motivation never drops and I train every day to come out and handle these championships. The motivation level is still on the highest.”
U.S. Men's Water Polo Team Ends Olympic Competition With Win Over Italy.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- With their standing in group play already confirmed and no chance to advance to the quarterfinals the U.S. Olympic Men's Water Polo Team played Italy with nothing more than pride on the line. They turned in an inspired effort defeating Italy 10-7 in their final match at the 2016 Olympic Games. A balanced scoring attack paced Team USA as four different players scored two goals each with Merrill Moses (Palos Verdes, CA/Pepperdine/NYAC) and McQuin Baron (North Tustin, CA/USC/Regency) splitting time in net to post 10 saves. Veteran Team USA trio Tony Azevedo (Long Beach, CA/Stanford/NYAC), Jesse Smith (Coronado, CA/Pepperdine/NYAC) and Moses were subbed out with nine seconds left to a warm applause in their likely final appearance for the United States in their storied careers. Learn more about USA Water Polo at the 2016 Olympic Games by clicking here.
Italy started off strong in the first quarter going up 2-0 on goals from Francesco di Fulvio and Pietro Figlioli with 4:29 to play. Azevedo got the United States on the board on the next possession and Josh Samuels (Villa Park, CA/UCLA/NYAC) tied the match with 1:31 to play in the quarter. The Italians closed strong adding two more goals in the final 56 seconds to lead 4-2 after the opening period.
Team USA started to chip away at the deficit in the second quarter on a Bret Bonanni (Huntington Beach, CA/Stanford/NYAC) goal with 6:13 to play.
Luca Cupido (Newport Beach, CA/California/Newport) followed with a power play goal with 3:51 left in the first half to tie the game at 4-4. After Italy went ahead 5-4, Thomas Dunstan (Greenwich, CA/Mater Dei HS/Regency) connected to tie the game again, this time at 5-5, with 1:59 to play in the half. Italy again found last second magic, scoring with four seconds to play in the quarter on a tally from Michael Bodegas to lead 6-5. Alex Obert (Loomis, CA/Pacific/NYAC) came up big in the third quarter scoring with 6:47 to play to tie the game at 6-6. After Italy went back in front, Samuels scored his second goal for a 7-7 game with 4:14 to play. The period ended the way it started with the ball back in Obert's hand as he powered home a shot with just 15 seconds to play to give the United States their first lead at 8-7.
From there it was all Team USA. In the fourth they held Italy scoreless while the offense did the rest. Azevedo, the five-time Olympian and team captain, buried a shot to go up 9-7 with 5:57 to play. Then Bonanni put the game away with a goal with 2:41 to go in the match sending the United States out of Rio with a 10-7 win.
Team USA went 4/6 on the power player and 0/1 on penalty shots while Italy was was 2/6 and did not attempt a penalty shot.
Tony Azevedo (USA)
On USA finishing strongly in group play despite being eliminated from the tournament:
"It was good we finished strong. We had a couple of guys who hadn't scored a goal all tournament and they finally (did). We came out and we played together and we came out with a win. Unfortunately we aren't where we wanted to be, but when you are in the Olympic Games you are representing your country and you are representing a lot more than your individual self."
On whether he plans to play at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games:
"Right now I'm just pretty depressed. I'm going to spend all day at the beach tomorrow and then go home. I'll finish my professional career here in Brazil and then I'll decide what I want to do in the future."
Merrill Moses (USA)
On his best moment as an Olympian:
"That's pretty hard to answer, I've had so many great moments. Obviously winning that silver medal (2008 in Beijing) was a special moment for our country and for myself. At that moment we really didn't realize what we had done because all we thought was we lost the gold medal. Now looking back, after two Olympics without competing for a gold medal I realize just how special that was."
RIO DE JANEIRO -- With their standing in group play already confirmed and no chance to advance to the quarterfinals the U.S. Olympic Men's Water Polo Team played Italy with nothing more than pride on the line. They turned in an inspired effort defeating Italy 10-7 in their final match at the 2016 Olympic Games. A balanced scoring attack paced Team USA as four different players scored two goals each with Merrill Moses (Palos Verdes, CA/Pepperdine/NYAC) and McQuin Baron (North Tustin, CA/USC/Regency) splitting time in net to post 10 saves. Veteran Team USA trio Tony Azevedo (Long Beach, CA/Stanford/NYAC), Jesse Smith (Coronado, CA/Pepperdine/NYAC) and Moses were subbed out with nine seconds left to a warm applause in their likely final appearance for the United States in their storied careers. Learn more about USA Water Polo at the 2016 Olympic Games by clicking here.
Italy started off strong in the first quarter going up 2-0 on goals from Francesco di Fulvio and Pietro Figlioli with 4:29 to play. Azevedo got the United States on the board on the next possession and Josh Samuels (Villa Park, CA/UCLA/NYAC) tied the match with 1:31 to play in the quarter. The Italians closed strong adding two more goals in the final 56 seconds to lead 4-2 after the opening period.
Team USA started to chip away at the deficit in the second quarter on a Bret Bonanni (Huntington Beach, CA/Stanford/NYAC) goal with 6:13 to play.
Luca Cupido (Newport Beach, CA/California/Newport) followed with a power play goal with 3:51 left in the first half to tie the game at 4-4. After Italy went ahead 5-4, Thomas Dunstan (Greenwich, CA/Mater Dei HS/Regency) connected to tie the game again, this time at 5-5, with 1:59 to play in the half. Italy again found last second magic, scoring with four seconds to play in the quarter on a tally from Michael Bodegas to lead 6-5. Alex Obert (Loomis, CA/Pacific/NYAC) came up big in the third quarter scoring with 6:47 to play to tie the game at 6-6. After Italy went back in front, Samuels scored his second goal for a 7-7 game with 4:14 to play. The period ended the way it started with the ball back in Obert's hand as he powered home a shot with just 15 seconds to play to give the United States their first lead at 8-7.
From there it was all Team USA. In the fourth they held Italy scoreless while the offense did the rest. Azevedo, the five-time Olympian and team captain, buried a shot to go up 9-7 with 5:57 to play. Then Bonanni put the game away with a goal with 2:41 to go in the match sending the United States out of Rio with a 10-7 win.
Team USA went 4/6 on the power player and 0/1 on penalty shots while Italy was was 2/6 and did not attempt a penalty shot.
Tony Azevedo (USA)
On USA finishing strongly in group play despite being eliminated from the tournament:
"It was good we finished strong. We had a couple of guys who hadn't scored a goal all tournament and they finally (did). We came out and we played together and we came out with a win. Unfortunately we aren't where we wanted to be, but when you are in the Olympic Games you are representing your country and you are representing a lot more than your individual self."
On whether he plans to play at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games:
"Right now I'm just pretty depressed. I'm going to spend all day at the beach tomorrow and then go home. I'll finish my professional career here in Brazil and then I'll decide what I want to do in the future."
Merrill Moses (USA)
On his best moment as an Olympian:
"That's pretty hard to answer, I've had so many great moments. Obviously winning that silver medal (2008 in Beijing) was a special moment for our country and for myself. At that moment we really didn't realize what we had done because all we thought was we lost the gold medal. Now looking back, after two Olympics without competing for a gold medal I realize just how special that was."
For U.S. Swimmers, Team Effort Brought Stunning Success In An Individual Sport.
Maybe it came from the team’s group music video, “Carpool Karaoke,” which has drawn 4.6 million YouTube views in the first 12 days since going online.
Maybe it came from the cowbell ringing in the warm-up pool to salute each U.S. swimmer as he or she went to the ready room before a race.
Maybe it came from assistant coach Greg Meehan’s history-lesson-cum-motivational-ploy of having each of the women swimmers plant an American flag on grass near their building in the Olympic village, claiming the land for their own the way the 1862 Homestead Act had encouraged settlers to move West.
Maybe it came from the “ice-breaker games” Meehan, the Stanford women’s head coach, had the team play at their pre-Olympic training camps in the U.S. Those games were designed to last five minutes but sometimes turned into 45 minutes of belly-laugh bonding.
Maybe it came from the positive vibes created as swimmer after swimmer had stunning performances in practice at those camps in San Antonio and Atlanta.
Or maybe it was all those reasons, both intangible and real, that explain how 47 athletes in an individual sport created a team that utterly – and a bit surprisingly – dominated the eight days of Olympic swimming that ended Saturday.
“It’s going to go down as one of the greatest Olympic performances ever, and we weren’t forecast for that,” Bob Bowman, U.S. men’s head coach and Michael Phelps’ personal coach, told NBC.
How great?
*With 33 medals, the U.S. had 23 more than runner-up Australia and three more than the COMBINED total of countries two through five in the standings.
*Although the U.S. also won 33 medals in 2000, its share of available golds (50 percent) and total medals (56.9) percent was better (gold) or as good (total) than any in the eight straight non-boycotted Olympics since each country was cut from maximum three entrants to maximum two per individual event after 1976. The only better U.S. percentage since 1976 came with the Soviet Bloc countries, notably East Germany, absent from the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
In Rio, the U.S. saw the reconfirmation of one superstar, Michael Phelps (five golds, one silver), and the creation of another, Katie Ledecky (four golds, one silver, two individual world records and a match of compatriot and Mexico City 1968 heroine Debbie Meyer as the only women to win the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles at the same Olympics.)
It saw breakthroughs by sprint freestyler Simone Manuel (two golds, two silvers, first African-American woman to win individual Olympic gold) and backstroker Ryan Murphy (gold in both backstrokes, 100 world record on the backstroke leg of the medley relay after missing the team in 2012.)
Fittingly, what would be the 1,000th Olympic gold medal for Team USA in summer competition came from swimmers: the women’s medley relay anchored by Manuel in the meet’s penultimate event.
All that came after performances barely a month ago at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming that were decidedly underwhelming.
“We had less than ideal conditions at trials,” U.S. women’s coach David Marsh explained in a voice message Saturday.
Marsh cited crowded pools and environmental challenges (too much chlorine in the warm-up pools), plus pressure from trying to make the team in front of bigger, more boisterous Omaha crowds (every session sold out) than those who failed to fill all the seats in Rio.
“The word I had from the swimmers after trials was relief – joy, certainly, but a lot more relief,” Marsh said. “One day here, Katie Meili looked at me from the warmup pool and said, This is fun,’ while Olympic Trials was nerve-racking.”
Meili would win an unexpected bronze medal in the 100 breaststroke with a Rio time nearly one-half second faster than her time in Omaha. Others were similar overachievers.
Even as many athletes failed to swim their best at the trials, Marsh knew immediately the United States was sending people to Rio who would be the best catalysts for creating a team chemistry that fused 31 Olympic rookies with 16 veterans – one of whom, the 19-year-old Ledecky, was once again the youngest on the team.
“As people like Elizabeth Beisel (three Olympics) and David Plummer (rookie, but a 30-year-old father of two) made it, people who are giant adds to a team culture, we know they are always going to be as much about the team as themselves,” Marsh said.
Beisel, a silver medalist in 2012, said at the first team meeting, “I swim Day 1, and after that I’m going to give you guys everything I have.”
After her sixth in the 400-meter individual medley, the outgoing Beisel was always in the stands or behind the scenes leading cheers. Despite having finished competing and being what Marsh called basically retired from the sport, Beisel also kept eventual 4x200 freestyle gold medalist Allison Schmitt company in the warm-up pool several days.
On the surface, the concept of team in a sport where 26 of 32 Olympic events are for individuals does not seem obvious – or that important. Yet U.S. swimmer after U.S. swimmer brought up the idea in Rio.
Ledecky: “Team USA ha been doing great, and we feed off each other’s energy.”
Manuel: “We’re a family, and it’s a great support system.”
Josh Prenot (breaststroke silver): “It’s a huge thing. I’ve never seen this on the national team before.”
There is no doubt the feeling of collective purpose was a paramount reason for U.S. swimmers’ consistent and near totally inclusive success in Rio, marked by statistics like this:
*The U.S. had no finalist in just one of the 26 individual events, the women’s 200 breaststroke.
*Both U.S. entrants made the final in 12 of the 13 men’s individual events and in seven of the 13 women’s.
*The U.S. won medals in 29 of the 32 events, the highest success percentage since the Olympic swimming program reached 32 events in 1988. It was 27 of 32 in London.
*The U.S. also had five near misses in fourth place.
Such results began to seem much more likely during the post-trials training camps than they had at the trials.
“Everyone made good adjustments during the camps,” Marsh said. “Several people had phenomenal training sets, and I think that gave everybody confidence.”
Phelps was among those whose practice performances in front of teammates at those camps were a motivating harbinger of what he – and other U.S. swimmers – would do in Rio.
Yet his medals, increasing his mind-boggling Olympic record totals to 23 gold and 28 overall, were just one of his contributions to the U.S. numbers.
Phelps’ becoming just the second swimmer to carry the U.S. flag at the Opening Ceremony – after Gary Hall in 1976 – turned into a celebration for his swimming teammates. They already had elected him one of three men’s captains.
“Michael was one of the keys to why we are what we are here,” Marsh said, referring to the medal totals. “(It) wasn’t only his being elected captain for the first time ever on a national team but also (being) a darn good captain.
“A lot of his most effective moments were in the warm-down pool. Somebody jumps in the lane, and he just picks up casual conversation with them. To have Michael Phelps take his time to personally know how you did your race has a lot of power, especially for the younger swimmers. And he certainly did that a lot.”
Phelps is at the wheel a few times in the carpool karaoke video. Its playlist includes the them from Pokémon, a game that was part of these millennial swimmers’ childhoods before returning last month and becoming a national obsession.
The U.S. swim team did more than just sing along. It called the tune.
The music might as well have been the triumphal chorus from Verdi’s “Aida,” with its talk of laurel wreaths on the victors’ heads, like the prizes in the ancient Olympics. A chorus is by definition a group of individuals acting in concert, like U.S. swimmers becoming a team.
And, after all, the opening lines of the Pokémon song are “I wanna be the very best / Like no one ever was.”
Maybe it came from that.
Maybe it came from the team’s group music video, “Carpool Karaoke,” which has drawn 4.6 million YouTube views in the first 12 days since going online.
Maybe it came from the cowbell ringing in the warm-up pool to salute each U.S. swimmer as he or she went to the ready room before a race.
Maybe it came from assistant coach Greg Meehan’s history-lesson-cum-motivational-ploy of having each of the women swimmers plant an American flag on grass near their building in the Olympic village, claiming the land for their own the way the 1862 Homestead Act had encouraged settlers to move West.
Maybe it came from the “ice-breaker games” Meehan, the Stanford women’s head coach, had the team play at their pre-Olympic training camps in the U.S. Those games were designed to last five minutes but sometimes turned into 45 minutes of belly-laugh bonding.
Maybe it came from the positive vibes created as swimmer after swimmer had stunning performances in practice at those camps in San Antonio and Atlanta.
Or maybe it was all those reasons, both intangible and real, that explain how 47 athletes in an individual sport created a team that utterly – and a bit surprisingly – dominated the eight days of Olympic swimming that ended Saturday.
“It’s going to go down as one of the greatest Olympic performances ever, and we weren’t forecast for that,” Bob Bowman, U.S. men’s head coach and Michael Phelps’ personal coach, told NBC.
How great?
*With 33 medals, the U.S. had 23 more than runner-up Australia and three more than the COMBINED total of countries two through five in the standings.
*Although the U.S. also won 33 medals in 2000, its share of available golds (50 percent) and total medals (56.9) percent was better (gold) or as good (total) than any in the eight straight non-boycotted Olympics since each country was cut from maximum three entrants to maximum two per individual event after 1976. The only better U.S. percentage since 1976 came with the Soviet Bloc countries, notably East Germany, absent from the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
In Rio, the U.S. saw the reconfirmation of one superstar, Michael Phelps (five golds, one silver), and the creation of another, Katie Ledecky (four golds, one silver, two individual world records and a match of compatriot and Mexico City 1968 heroine Debbie Meyer as the only women to win the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles at the same Olympics.)
It saw breakthroughs by sprint freestyler Simone Manuel (two golds, two silvers, first African-American woman to win individual Olympic gold) and backstroker Ryan Murphy (gold in both backstrokes, 100 world record on the backstroke leg of the medley relay after missing the team in 2012.)
Fittingly, what would be the 1,000th Olympic gold medal for Team USA in summer competition came from swimmers: the women’s medley relay anchored by Manuel in the meet’s penultimate event.
All that came after performances barely a month ago at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming that were decidedly underwhelming.
“We had less than ideal conditions at trials,” U.S. women’s coach David Marsh explained in a voice message Saturday.
Marsh cited crowded pools and environmental challenges (too much chlorine in the warm-up pools), plus pressure from trying to make the team in front of bigger, more boisterous Omaha crowds (every session sold out) than those who failed to fill all the seats in Rio.
“The word I had from the swimmers after trials was relief – joy, certainly, but a lot more relief,” Marsh said. “One day here, Katie Meili looked at me from the warmup pool and said, This is fun,’ while Olympic Trials was nerve-racking.”
Meili would win an unexpected bronze medal in the 100 breaststroke with a Rio time nearly one-half second faster than her time in Omaha. Others were similar overachievers.
Even as many athletes failed to swim their best at the trials, Marsh knew immediately the United States was sending people to Rio who would be the best catalysts for creating a team chemistry that fused 31 Olympic rookies with 16 veterans – one of whom, the 19-year-old Ledecky, was once again the youngest on the team.
“As people like Elizabeth Beisel (three Olympics) and David Plummer (rookie, but a 30-year-old father of two) made it, people who are giant adds to a team culture, we know they are always going to be as much about the team as themselves,” Marsh said.
Beisel, a silver medalist in 2012, said at the first team meeting, “I swim Day 1, and after that I’m going to give you guys everything I have.”
After her sixth in the 400-meter individual medley, the outgoing Beisel was always in the stands or behind the scenes leading cheers. Despite having finished competing and being what Marsh called basically retired from the sport, Beisel also kept eventual 4x200 freestyle gold medalist Allison Schmitt company in the warm-up pool several days.
On the surface, the concept of team in a sport where 26 of 32 Olympic events are for individuals does not seem obvious – or that important. Yet U.S. swimmer after U.S. swimmer brought up the idea in Rio.
Ledecky: “Team USA ha been doing great, and we feed off each other’s energy.”
Manuel: “We’re a family, and it’s a great support system.”
Josh Prenot (breaststroke silver): “It’s a huge thing. I’ve never seen this on the national team before.”
There is no doubt the feeling of collective purpose was a paramount reason for U.S. swimmers’ consistent and near totally inclusive success in Rio, marked by statistics like this:
*The U.S. had no finalist in just one of the 26 individual events, the women’s 200 breaststroke.
*Both U.S. entrants made the final in 12 of the 13 men’s individual events and in seven of the 13 women’s.
*The U.S. won medals in 29 of the 32 events, the highest success percentage since the Olympic swimming program reached 32 events in 1988. It was 27 of 32 in London.
*The U.S. also had five near misses in fourth place.
Such results began to seem much more likely during the post-trials training camps than they had at the trials.
“Everyone made good adjustments during the camps,” Marsh said. “Several people had phenomenal training sets, and I think that gave everybody confidence.”
Phelps was among those whose practice performances in front of teammates at those camps were a motivating harbinger of what he – and other U.S. swimmers – would do in Rio.
Yet his medals, increasing his mind-boggling Olympic record totals to 23 gold and 28 overall, were just one of his contributions to the U.S. numbers.
Phelps’ becoming just the second swimmer to carry the U.S. flag at the Opening Ceremony – after Gary Hall in 1976 – turned into a celebration for his swimming teammates. They already had elected him one of three men’s captains.
“Michael was one of the keys to why we are what we are here,” Marsh said, referring to the medal totals. “(It) wasn’t only his being elected captain for the first time ever on a national team but also (being) a darn good captain.
“A lot of his most effective moments were in the warm-down pool. Somebody jumps in the lane, and he just picks up casual conversation with them. To have Michael Phelps take his time to personally know how you did your race has a lot of power, especially for the younger swimmers. And he certainly did that a lot.”
Phelps is at the wheel a few times in the carpool karaoke video. Its playlist includes the them from Pokémon, a game that was part of these millennial swimmers’ childhoods before returning last month and becoming a national obsession.
The U.S. swim team did more than just sing along. It called the tune.
The music might as well have been the triumphal chorus from Verdi’s “Aida,” with its talk of laurel wreaths on the victors’ heads, like the prizes in the ancient Olympics. A chorus is by definition a group of individuals acting in concert, like U.S. swimmers becoming a team.
And, after all, the opening lines of the Pokémon song are “I wanna be the very best / Like no one ever was.”
Maybe it came from that.
Another one gets it...
It can be started and be great, until greenbacks shows up to ruin it as stated above.
It`s my thread CHUMP!
He ask for a new one to be started by someone else, also known as not yours.
Throw out a few of the posts in this thread.....Like those clown pictures that Enfuego posted.
And this thread is great.
Go checkout blankets Olympic thread.....What a sorry thread.
Another forum is up to 200 pages.......He cant rival me.....His pictures are huge.
And this thread is great.
Go checkout blankets Olympic thread.....What a sorry thread.
Another forum is up to 200 pages.......He cant rival me.....His pictures are huge.
Then go start a Olympic thread.....It`s almost football season......Give your mouth a rest dude......Seriously,you`re non stop with the harassment jabs......You never stop.
