Bolt or Phelps?

Or live adjacent to the 7/8 of the planet covered by, you know, water.

 

Ya, but they don't hold Olympic events in lakes, rivers or oceans. Or glacial runoff. Toooooootally different.

 

and they don't run olympic track events on regular roads or in parks where joe schmoe would mostly run.

 

Actually, they hold a lot of the events on natural bodies of water - sailing, rowing, canoeing, kayaking, etc. And swimming as well, back when they restarted the modern games:

In the first four Olympics, competitions were not held in pools, but rather in open water (1896, the Mediterranean Sea; 1900, the Seine; 1904, an artificial lake; 1906, the Mediterranean). The 1904 Olympics' freestyle race was the only one ever measured at 100 yards, instead of the usual 100 meters. A 100 meter pool was built for the 1908 Olympics and sat in the centre of the main stadium's track and field oval. The 1912 Olympics, held in the Stockholm harbour, marked the beginning of electrical timing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_at_the_Summer_Olympics

 

I was joking, jg.

But I do appreciate the extra knowledge thrown my way.

I haven't paid much attention to this year's Olympics, but if they institute swimming the English Channel as an event for the next games, I'll be glued to the TV. Even better, if Chicago ever gets the games, I'd love to see swimming in the Chicago River.

 

Pall, there is a marathon (10K) swimming event in open water (or at least in the pond where they hold the rowing and the canoe/kayak events). It was pretty damned cool.

 

Why didn't anyone tell me that was on TV? I'm always looking for something good to watch!

 

Whatever.

I haven't run in years.

 

We need a 'dry humor' font in here. Not the full French blue of sarcasm, but something for those slow on the rhetorical uptake - like me. Powder blue, perhaps, or a nice periwinkle.

 

I have to say I thought Bolt was amazing. I watched Phelps do his thing and was impressed but I got a different kind of feeling of excitement when I saw Bolt run. Maybe it is cause I love watching elite track athletes but my opinion is Bolt was the standout.

 

It's Phelps for me without question. And the basis is that he used a wider variety of skills. Had he won all his golds in freestyle sprints, that would be different. But he mastered different strokes -- yeah, it's all swimming, but the butterfly and the backstroke are very different things.

Not to take anything away from Bolt -- what he did will not soon be forgotten -- but his events all essentially consisted of running as fast as possible.

 

The point about swimming versus running is a valid one.

To be the fastest man running on the planet means you are probably the fastest man as nearly every human who has participated in a sport has had to run competitively -- be it running in basketball, running to first base, running in football, team handball, there is running in conditioning for tennis, handball -- and track.

People run.

Only certain people swim meaning, the best swimmer in the world is the best of a much, much smaller pool of participants.

Not too mention the fact that what Bolt did and the ease with which he did it was ridiculous and no disrespect to Phelps, the most impressive thing these Olympics have produced.