With the United States winning the men’s 4×100m medley relay in world record fashion, Michael Phelps has achieved his goal of winning 8 gold medals in these Beijing Olympics, topping Mark Spitz and his 7 golds in Munich in 1972. Unbelievable. 8 gold medals. 7 world records, and an 8th Olympic record. Wins by the slimmest of margins, and wins by wide margins. When it looked like his dream of 8 gold medals would be shattered, at the last instant Phelps or his teammates turned it on and got the gold. To recap, this is what happened:

400 m Individual Medley: WR 4:03.84
4 x 100 m freestyle relay: WR 3:08.24, the anchor leg swimmer Jason Lezak was one body length behind the French team when he dove in, Phelps also set the American record for the 100 m freestyle, with a lead-off time of 47.51
200 m freestyle: WR 1:42.96
200 m Butterfly: WR 1:52.03
4 x 200 m freestyle relay: WR 6:58.56, first ever relay team to go under 7 minutes
200 m individual medley: WR 1:54.23
100 m butterfly: OR 50.58, was trailing until the end when he out-touched Milorad Čavić of Serbia
4 x 100 m medley relay: WR 3:29.24

What an unbelievable performance. The greatest Olympic performance ever, in my opinion. To go with his 6 gold medals, and 2 bronze medals from Athens, Phelps has more Olympic gold medals than anyone else, and with 3 more medals in London, he will have more Olympic medals than any other Olympian ever.

Last week, the entire Spanish men’s basketball team posed for an offensive photo in which they put their fingers over their eyes to give them a slant eyed look and look more Chinese. Team Spain says it wasn’t meant to be offensive, but I don’t think many people find it that way. I am appalled that in the year 2008, people are still doing this sort of shit. On the other hand, this should be the final nail in the coffin to Madrid’s hopes of hosting the 2016 Olympics, which were already seen as slim, as London will be hosting the summer games in 2012, and Russia will host the winter games in 2014, thus meaning that 3 consecutive Olympics would be in Europe if Spain got the games.

Today, a friend and I were talking and he showed me this article. I was shocked when I read this. A game that goes 11 innings or beyond, you can start anywhere in the batting order with the previous 2 batters in the order on base and no outs. So you can go up there with your #3 hitter, while your 1 and 2 hitters are one 1st and 2nd.

Apparently, the reason was to speed up games. Dumb. If you want to speed up games, you might as well start every inning with the bases loaded, no outs, and a 3-0 count on your best hitter. I like that more than this.