UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

By far, the worst one must be the one endured by Hungarian weightlifter Janos Baranyai, 24, who was competing in the 77 kilo divison on the 13th of August. It was his first Olympics.

He was attempting to snatch 148 kg (326lbs) during his third lift when his right elbow popped out of its socket (some reports said he “tore his right elbow joint”). That resulted in his right arm no longer able to support the weight of the barbell, causing it to be bent backwards. He then fell to the floor in shock, trembling and crying out in pain while people rushed to his aid.

All videos about the incident on youtube have been taken down, so only photo montages are available, but some people say the photos made it seem much worse.

So, watch at your own discretion.

Click here to see more

It’s a photograph of water polo player Christina Tsoukala of Greece in their first group match, which was against Australia, fighting for the ball with rival Gemma Beadsworth on 11th August.

Somehow she had a case of “wardrobe malfunction” which resulted in her left breast being unintentionally exposed.

At the end Australia defeated Greece 8-6. Greece went on to lose their other 2 group matches, hence finishing last in their group.

I first saw this at chilipaddy.blogspot.com posted on 14th August. Apparently he got it from yahoo.com. When I checked just now i.e. 4 days after the fact, amazingly the photo’s still there at yahoo’s website!

Finally, after 17 years it was done. The greatest 100m race in the world is no longer the century dash at the 1991 World Championships, previously the first and only time 6 men clocked below 10 seconds.

At the Beijing Olympics, the feat was repeated, of course with much quicker times.

At the 1991 World Championships, the result was:

1. Carl Lewis (USA) 9.86 s (World Record)
2. Leroy Burrell (USA) 9.88 s
3. Dennis Mitchell (USA) 9.91 s
4. Linford Christie (Great Britain) 9.92 s
5. Frank Fredericks (Namibia) 9.95 s
6. Ray Stewart (Jamaica) 9.96 s
7. Robson Da Silva (Brazil) 10.12 s
8. Bruny Surin (Canada) 10.14 s

Video:

Click here to see the rest of the post

Men’s 100m

Asafa Powell (Jamaica), 25. Dominated the 100m since 2004 with world records of 9.77 (June 2005) and 9.74 (September 2007). Has 39 sub-10 seconds, a record only bettered by Maurice Greene. Only 2 men have ever run legally under 9.80 seconds more than once, and one of them is Powell, having done so on 5 occasions. Powell is the only man to have run under 9.80 without any wind assistance, at 9.78s in September 2007, and that run remains the fastest ever 100m after correction for wind and altitude.

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Usain Bolt (Jamaica), 22, broke Powell’s world record with a time of 9.72 on 31st May 2008. Amazingly, this was only his 5th senior run over the 100m. He has 5 sub-10 seconds in 100m. Apart from Powell, he’s the only athlete to have run legal sub-9.80s more than once: twice in fact.

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Tyson Gay (USA), 24 is the reigning world champion at the 100 metres in which Powell finished 3rd. He set his personal best of 9.77s on 28th June during the US Olympics trials. It was an American record and 3rd fastest legal 100m ever. Then the next day he ran the fastest 100m sprint ever timed, at 9.68s but it’s not officially recognized due to a windspeed which exceeded the IAAF legal limit. That time bettered Obadele Thompson’s 9.69s which had stood for 12 years.

Final: 16th August, 10.30pm (local time)

Result:
Video of the race taken by a spectator at the stadium

It was at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the men’s 200m freestyle final.

It pitted four of the fastest swimmers ever over that distance, all imposing figures at that:

Ian “Thorpedo” Thorpe, 21, 1.96m, former world record holder of this event.

Pieter van den “The Flying Dutchman” Hoogenband, 26, 1.93m, 93kg, reigning Olympic champion and former world record holder.

Michael Phelps, 19, 1.93m, 88 kg, rising star who was on a quest for an unprecedented 8 golds in one Olympiad.

Grant Hackett, 24, 1.97m, 89kg, former world record holder of this event.

How did the race go:

Thorpe in lane 5, van den Hoogenband in lane 4, Phelps in lane 3 & Hackett in lane 2.

Click here to see the video

I blogged about him being the greatest swimmer in the world in April 2007 when he won 7 golds at the 2007 World Aquatics Championships held in Australia.

To show just how good a swimmer he is, back in August 2007 (a year ago), just for kicks, Phelps competed in an event he won’t be swimming at the Olympics, and nearly set a world record in it!!! He won the 200-meter backstroke at the U.S. National Championships, finishing more than 2 seconds ahead of a field that included world record holder Ryan Lochte. Phelps clocked 1:54.65 seconds - the third-fastest ever. Lochte’s mark of 1:54.32 set in March 2007 barely held up. And in that race, Lochte finished 4th at a disappointing 1:59.11.

For the Beijing Olympics, he’s gunning for 8 golds, and even if he got only 4, he’d already be the greatest Olympian of all time, since his 6 golds at the 2004 Olympics would make it a grand total of 10. So far, only 4 Olympians have had 9 golds total: Larissa Latynina (USSR - gymnast), Paavo Nurmi (Finland - athletics), Mark Spitz (USA - swimming) and Carl Lewis (USA - athletics).

And by the 13th of August 2008, he’d already done it: 11 golds total, 5 at Beijing 2008: ALL in world record time.

Gold No.1 - 400m IM - 10th August
He set an Olympic record in the preliminaries, then broke his own world record by almost 2 seconds, in 4:03.84. Top European swimmer Laszlo Cseh of Hungary was more than 2 seconds behind.

Gold No.2 - 4×100m freestyle - 11th August
He swam first in 47.51 (US record). The US team won in a new world record of 3:08.24, slicing almost 4 seconds off the former record set earlier on the same day. This race has been dubbed the greatest swimming relay of all time, since 5 teams broke the world record, and Jason Lezak’s amazing split (46+ secs), which if he didn’t, Phelps’ 8-gold target would’ve been in tatters. The US beat silver medalists France by 0.08 seconds.

Gold No.3 - 200m freestyle - 12th August
He broke his own world record by nearly a second, and won gold by nearly 2 seconds over silver medalist Park Tae-hwan. The new world record now is 1:42.96.

Gold No.4 - 200 m butterfly - 13th August
He looked displeased after getting out of the water, then revealed that his leaky goggles almost cost him victory. Still, he managed to shave 0.06secs of his own world record, at a time of 1:52.03, beating Laszlo Cseh by almost 0.7 seconds. Phelps said: “…I wanted 1:51 or better, but in the circumstances it’s not too bad I guess.”

Gold No.5 - 4×200m freestyle - 13th August
A mere one hour after the above event, Phelps swam first in this relay. The Americans duly won in a world record time of 6:58.56. They were the first team to break the seven-minute barrier in this event relay. The previous record was broken by more than 4.5 seconds!

Gold No.6 - 200m IM - 15th August
Michael Phelps won in 1:54.23, bettering his own world record by half a second, and was more than 2 seconds faster than the silver medalist, who still broke the European Record.

Gold No.7 - 100m butterfuly - 16th August
This was probably his toughest event. He was not the world record holder, and being a notoriously slow starter, was close to losing out, being seventh after the turn, before turning on the style at the end to finish at 50.58, beating Milorad ÄŒavić by 0.01 seconds. Phelps set an Olympic record and equalled Mark Spitz’s record of seven golds in one Olympics.

Gold No.8 - 4×100m IM - 17th August
With this, he’s broken Mark Spitz’s seven-gold-in-a-single-Olympics record. This is an event the Americans have never lost, and with world-class specialists in each field it’s almost certain they’d win anyway. Just look at this lineup: Aaron Peirsol (Olympic champion and world record holder in the 100m backstroke), Jason Lezak (who produced a world record split in the 100m freestyle relay earlier, Brendan Hansen (former world record holder for the 100m breaststroke), Michael Phelps. The old world record was obliterated by 1.34 seconds, with a time of 3:29.34. Silver medalists Australia, 0.7 seconds behind, also broke the old world record.

Source
The Star, 2nd August 2007

Check out these superlatives: more than 15,000 performers. 4 hours long. Reportedly cost over USD300 million to produce. Attended by more than 100 heads of state, heads of government and sovereigns, by far the largest in Olympic history.

An NBC commentator said: “No matter how spectacular others have been, and there have been many, that this is uber-spectacular. Even if they pull off 75% of their plans, it will truly be over the top and it should be something that that anybody who sees it will never forget.”

Well, no matter how good it is, people will remember the fakes and the failures, which include the following.

On 11th August, 3 days after the opening ceremony, it was mentioned in Gizmodo that what must be the world’s most spectacular display of Microsoft Windows XP Blue Screen of Death ever seen was right there on the roof of the Bird’s Nest:

This photo was first posted at powerapple.com. The date is 9th August instead of 8th August because by the time the torch was lit by Li Ning, it was near or after midnight in Beijing.

Rivercool was inside the stadium during the ceremony and reported that the BSOD was there for about 2 hours, from 10pm to midnight local time. Why the technicians didn’t notice it is anybody’s guess. An even more pertinent question is: what was the purpose of the roof projection?

Bill Gates was at Beijing too for the Olympics. Wonder what he thought of this.

Then, on 12th August, 4 days after the opening ceremony, Lin Miaoke, 9, who sang “Ode to the Motherland” that night was revealed to have only been miming, and that it was not even her voice, but rather that of Yang Peiyi, who was not chosen because she wasn’t pretty enough, even though her voice was better than Lin’s. Apparently it’s something to do with her crooked teeth, rather than a need for acne cream. This decision was defended by the organisers as “it was in the best interests of the country.” As for Yang, she was reported to have said that she did not regret the decision, as “she was satisfied to have had her voice featured in the opening ceremony.”

This was the performance:

Before that episode, on the 10th of August, it was revealed that a fireworks display used during the opening ceremony was a digitally-crafted fake a year in the making which was then inserted into live TV feed at the correct moments. Those watching TV would’ve seen 29 (or was it 28?) firework “footprints” travelling across Beijing from south to north. Later a senior official from the organising committee confirmed that footage of the display had been produced before the actual opening ceremony. It was explained that this was done for “convenience and theatrical effects,” because following the footprints’ real trail would’ve been too dangerous for a helicopter camera:

It must be said that the footprints were well and truly set off, which can be clearly seen from the ground:

Source
The BBC, 12th August 2008
Gizmodo

The 2008 Olympiad must be the most reported - written about, videoed, photographed event of the year. Hundreds, if not thousands of journalists and of course bloggers are covering it. Then there comes a point where one gets sick of it all: Olympics overdose, if you will.

When this happens, only truly iconic, truly memorable images will be good enough to jolt you back to your senses.

So ladies and gentlemen, IMHO, the best photograph of the current Olympics I have seen so far is the following, of US President George W Bush looking at World and Olympic champion beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh. He visited the US team at Beijing’s Chaoyang Park Beach on 9th August 2008.

The only caption possible is: WOW!

Source

… was played by Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992), in that infamous Catherine Tremmel interrogation scene, no matter that the film received a mere 6.8 at imdb and given 2 stars by eminent movie reviewer Roger Ebert.

To add juice to the matter, it was reported that while appearing in a later movie “Inside the Actors Studio” (1994), Sharon Stone said that she did not know that director Paul Verhoeven was “filming up her dress” during this scene, and that when she saw the rushes, she slapped Verhoeven’s face and asked him (or rather ordered him) to remove the shot. But Verhoeven said that what Sharon said she did, did not happen at all.

Click here to see the scene

Devenna Jaikob was Miss Sabah / World 2008 in April. She was also the 2006 Unduk Ngadau. She went on to represent Sabah at recent Miss Malaysia / World 2008 pageant, but went out in the earlier rounds. Frankly, I thought she looked prettier than the winner.

The following photo was taken during the rehearsals of Miss Sabah / World 2008, sans make up:

…and the following photo was taken during the pageant:

Does she look like she needs an Orovo drink?