Watching a large block of the Olympics last night yielded a few semi-random thoughts:

The men's and women's gymnastics apparatus finals: I can understand why these incredibly strong, flexible, tough, determined, fearless, crazed little freaks of nature (in the best possible sense) dedicate their (mostly) young lives to their sport: how incredibly exhilarating it would be to be able to flip flop and fly one's body around as if The Rules of Gravity did not apply to you, as if you were exempt from the inexorable pull of the earth that forces the rest of us to wriggle ignominiously in the dust.

The high jump: I am astonished that (mostly) very long, lean individuals can contort and elevate themselves over a bar nearly 8 feet in the air, treating the bar as if it were lethally electrified, squirming magically over it, not so much defying gravity like the exuberant gymnasts, as sneaking past it while it isn't looking. It is all the more flabbergasting when the gold medal winner is only 5ft 11inches tall, springs in his legs or not.

Diving: I love to dive and can actually do both a front and back flip off a diving board, but every single time I have dived head-first from a high dive - even just 10 ft. - it hurts my head like a screaming mofo when I hit the water. Maybe one of the requirements to being a competition diver is a total lack of sensation in the top of one's head.

Women's beach volleyball: where else on broadcast television could you watch four lean women in bikinis bound about in the sand, glistening with their womanly dew, rubbing and adjusting themselves all over the damn place, hugging and slapping each other - and not think anything of it other than "Wow, they're really good"? Men's beach volleyball isn't nearly as interesting.

Limits? The driving force behind all ahtletics, and especially athletics at the Olympic level, is ever more - better faster, higher, farther, more complex, pushing the human form to do things it was not constructed to do. I thought of this watching the gymnastics when the commentators remarked that you don't see nearly as many perfect landings anymore because the routines get more and more complicated and difficult.

In a fascinating story, the NY Times says that athletes may be running up against the limitations of human physiology:

"Athletes are reaching their potential," said Mark Elliott, an assistant track coach at Louisiana State University, which has highly ranked men's and women's teams. "You won't see much faster times anymore. If there's any going beyond the records, it's just going to be very, very small."

....For decades, female athletes were closing the gap between their performances and those of males. Women had long been denied the athletic scholarships, endorsements and training resources that men had received, and as the playing field began to be leveled, women made rapid improvements.

In 1970, the women's world record in the 400-meter dash was 18 percent slower than the men's. It is 10 percent slower today.

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