Most of the US population is tuning into these Olympics for the primetime coverage on NBC, and rightfully so - the swimming, gymnastics, track and field, and basketball competitions are during that time period because that is where the US is expected to be the most competitive and therefore where the most compelling television should be.
That has been true so far, perhaps none more so than last night.
- Michael Phelps was after his seventh and record-tying gold medal of these Olympic games in the 100-meter butterfly. It was widely considered to be his most challenging individual event, since it was the only one where he was not the world record holder. The race was tight, with Phelps trailing by a small margin to Serbia's Milorad Cavic for most of the race, but as expected, Phelps turned on his end-of-race rocket pack and began closing the gap on Cavic.
It was neck and neck headed to the wall, and Phelps and Cavic both wound up less than a full stroke away from the wall. Cavic decided to cut his stroke short and reach for the wall, while Phelps instead chose to take the extra half stroke in order to reach the computer sensor at the end of the pool.
The results were incredible. Phelps had eked out the gold against Cavic by 0.01 seconds. Cavic's coach (who just so happens to be off to Michigan to coach the swim team of which Phelps is now a former member) filed an official protest, but the review board went to the cameras and agreed that the computer was correct, and that gold medal number seven belonged to Phelps.
Luck was not so nice to teammate Ian Crocker, who missed the bronze medal by the exact same 0.01 second margin.
- The non-primetime action has also had some of its own intrigue. As was widely reported, American James Blake pulled an absolutely stunning upset of soon-to-be-former world #1 Roger Federer to advance into the quarterfinals in tennis and face the 12th-seeded Fernando Gonzalez of Chile.
It was a genuinely entertaining match, with Blake notching the only service break to take the first set 6-4, and then Gonzalez successfully fending of Blake and getting a service break of his own to take the second set 7-5. Normally, in men's tournaments, the matches are best of five sets. Here in the Olympics, it is not only cut to a best of three, but that third set is a superset - instead of going into a tiebreaker at 6-6, play continues in regular games until someone wins by two.
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