Posts by Jj Cooper at FanHouse

The life of an Olympic athlete isn't easy. You train for years to compete in an event that often lasts less than a minute. For four years you work out for hours a day to put yourself in position to do your best.

Many athletes will avoid junk food, alcohol and anything else that will stand between them and a chance at an Olympics medal. They'll go through workouts that leave them rubbery-legged and completely gassed in their quest for the gold.

And once their events are over, a whole lot of them are letting off lots of steam. They rush to McDonalds for their first taste of junk food in quite a while. They grab some booze, and as Matt Syed, a British Olympian in table tennis in 1992, explains, they look to hook up with anyone, and everyone, before leaving the Games.

As you probably heard last week, the number eight is considered the luckiest number in China. People pay thousands of RMB to get cell phone numbers or license plates with eights in them. It's why the games began at 8:08 p.m. on 8/8/08. It's even part of the reason that Beijing made such a push to land the '08 games.

So it's only fitting that Michael Phelps set his unfathomable record in Beijing. Eight races, eight gold medals. He's the only Olympian ever to do it, and we all knew that it was coming.

Usually sports greatest moments are great because they are so unexpected. It's a impossible catch by David Tyree, or Michael Jordan's hanging jumper at the buzzer, or Tiger Woods hitting an impossible shot.

This was different. We knew it was coming. We knew it was likely that Phelps would become history's greatest Olympian tonight, but it just added to the anticipation.

"What he did today beats the Tour de France, it beats a pressure putt in the U.S. Open, it beats every part of what sport is. Every single athlete in the world needs to tip their hat to Michael Phelps, because what he did is simply amazing," Brendan Hansen said to NBC as soon as the event was over,

Dara Torres will just have to come back in 2012 to get that first individual gold medal.

Torres got off to a slow start, but that didn't seem to matter as she powered her way into the lead in the 50 meter freestyle. But in the final five meters, Germany's Britta Steffen managed to out touch her, a la Michael Phelps in the 100 meter butterfly, to win the gold by one-hundredth of a second.

While Torres didn't get her first individual gold, she did set a new American record, and added her 10th Olympic medal--when she won her first gold in 1984, some of her competitors in tonight's race weren't born.

Dara Torres is old enough to be most of her competitors' mother, so it's fitting that she is serving as the swim world's matriarch.

The final seconds before a swim race are all about focus. And that's never more true than in the 50-meter freestyle. One slight hesitation at the start and you're finished, because there just isn't enough water to make up for an early mistake.

So that makes what Torres did Friday night seem so unexpected.

As the eight swimmers for Torres' semifinal headed out to the blocks, Sweden's Therese Alshammar's suit ripped. At first Torres tried to help her fix it, but when it became clear that Alshammar's suit was too far gone to be saved, Torres ran over to the side of the pool to flag down an official to make sure that they didn't start the race until Alshammar had run off and gotten changed.

Michael Phelps is a perfect 7-for-7, by one one-hundredth of a second.

If it had been a 95-meter butterfly, Milorad Cavic would have been the gold medalist. But even though he shorted the wall and actually took his final stroke into the wall, Phelps somehow figured out how to win his seventh gold. He was saved by the fact that Cavic's was actually a stroke short--he had to coast for way too long into the wall, which may explain the .01 second difference.

"That's usually when I can try to catch some ground if I need to. I had no idea the race was that close. I was lucky to get my hand in first," Phelps told Andrea Kremer right after the race. "I thought in perfect situations I could do it."

If there is one bit of bad news for Phelps, it's that he finally didn't manage to set a world record. Ian Crocker's world record still stands, although Crocker probably isn't going to get a whole lot of consolation from that--he missed the bronze medal by .01 of a second. Phelps had come into the race with a shot of going a perfect 8-for-8 on world records, he'll have to settle for swimming for a record-breaking eighth gold tomorrow night.

For most of this year's Olympics, Michael Phelps has just had to make sure he didn't mess up.

With the exception of the 4X100 meter freestyle relay, Phelps has come into every event as the clear favorite. But that's not necessarily the case when he faces off against Ian Crocker in the 100-meter butterfly tonight. Phelps has a very clear chance to win the gold, but this is one event where he doesn't hold the world record--Crocker does.

So it should be a very interesting night as Phelps goes to equal Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals in a single Olympics.

With a win in the 200 meter butterfly Tuesday night, Michael Phelps became the winningest Olympian of all time. No one had ever won 10 gold medals in their career--Phelps has done it and he's still only 23 years old.

It's a sign of how dominant Phelps is that setting the career mark for gold medals is only a sidelight in his quest for eight golds in this year's Olympics (which would break Michael Spitz' record for a single games). Heck, halfway through his Olympics program, even eight golds may not be his ultimate goal. As Time magazine pointed out today, the U.S. 4X100 meter freestyle's improbable win means that Phelps also has a chance to win eight golds while setting eight world records.

Of course, Phelps won't admit to it. But if you're as gifted as he is in the water, and you shrug off world records as easily as a coat, no mere clocks will keep you feeling challenged - you need something to motivate you. Setting eight new marks in a single meet might do it.

The Opening Ceremonies were both expensive and amazing, with unreal coordination of 2,008 drummers, 2,008 oarsmen and the largest LED screen anyone has ever seen. It generated rave reviews and extremely good ratings for NBC.

But in the week since then, we've seen that some of the events were not everything the seemed. First it was the fireworks, which actually were CG-enhanced and digitally inserted into the broadcast because a) it was hazy that night and b) helicopters shouldn't fly near fireworks.

That makes some sense, even if it was a black eye for the event organizers. But now it's come out that the adorable nine-year-old girl who sang during the Chinese flag presentation was a fake.

Pro Football Talk had it half right. The Steelers did sign Byron Leftwich on Sunday, but they left Daunte Culpepper sitting out on the free agent market.

The two veterans had a throw-off to compete for the spot, with the Steelers coaching staff choosing the younger Leftwich over Culpepper.

It wasn't that long ago that Leftwich was giving Pittsburgh all kinds of problems. Talent-wise, he could end up being an upgrade over Charlie Batch (who should be back after six to eight weeks), but Batch is credited for being a player who serves a coaching role as well. And while Batch is injured now, Leftwich also has some injury issues--he's never been healthy for a full season.

But he is one of the better backup quarterbacks you could ever find during the preseason. Normally teams are left trolling for the Vinny Testaverde's and Kelly Holcomb's of the world. In Leftwich, Pittsburgh has a quarterback that you could believe in if Roethlisberger suffered a long-term injury (so is Batch for that matter).

The Steelers also reinstated Casey Hampton from the physically unable to perform list, having decided that the mammoth nose tackle has lost enough weight to put on pads.

Michael Phelps just passed his first test in amazing fashion.

The 400 IM is Phelps' baby, an event he hasn't lost in six years, so it's no surprise that he won the gold. But even with all of that, it was shocking to see how easily he blew away the field, with Ryan Lochte and Hungary's Lazlo Cseh straining to try to keep up.

Phelps exploded on the last turn, to the point where he actually slid into the final wall on his back looking up to see the time, and still broke his own world record by a second and a half.

Phelps 4:03.84 was four seconds better than his own Olympic record he had set earlier this meet.

It's a disappointment for Lochte, who swam slower than he did at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Lochte matched Phelps through the first 200 meters, but he ran out of gas in the final 200 meters, allowing Cseh to nab the silver medal.

Phelps' next even on his quest for Mark Spitz record of eight golds is the the 4X100 meter relay tomorrow night (on NBC at 11:26 p.m. ET), assuming that the U.S. men qualify, which is about as likely as their being some smog in Beijing over the next two weeks.