The 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London have come to a close. Here are some reflections looking back at the XXX Summer Olympics.
*Like I said before, Michael Phelps was dominant. He will go down probably as the best Olympian of this generation. It will be a long time (if ever) that someone will match his medal total.
*Along the lines of dominant, Usain Bolt would qualify as well. To repeat gold in sprinting is very impressive. Definitely when you think speed, Bolt comes to mind. It will be interesting to see if he will compete in Rio in 4 years. I haven't heard otherwise. So we could have the first man to three-peat winning the gold in the 100m....which would put him in line for best Olympian of this generation with Phelps.
*It was great to see an All-American final in women's beach volleyball. Misty May-Treanor & Kerri Walsh Jennings won their 3rd gold in a row. They were impressive in that they only lost 1 set in their Olympic career together. I admit that I was rooting for Jennifer Kessy and April Ross to win but in the end was happy for Misty and Kerri. What's interesting is that Misty is retiring but Kerri is continuing on to Rio. So she could be going for her 4th gold medal in 4 Olympics. Something to watch for...
*The women's basketball team won their 5th consecutive Gold medal dating back to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. It is the longest Gold medal streak in any women's sport in the Olympics. It seemed that in this Olympics a lot of talk went to the women's soccer team and not so much to the basketball team. But regardless, what the basketball team did was impressive and they will strive for a 6th straight Gold medal in Rio.
*On the men's side, they did their job in winning another Gold medal. They had a tough finals against Spain and won by only 7. A lot was made about this year's team in comparison to the '92 Dream Team but in an of themselves they were a good team. I still don't think this year's team could beat the '08 Redeem Team, but they did win the Gold so props to them. I hope that the pros continue to play in the Olympics because it makes it mean more. I don't think there will be changes in 4 years but after that who knows.
*This Olympics was definitely the "Social Media" Olympics. Twitter was still in it's infancy in '08 and was picking up steam in '10 in Vancouver but this year it was everywhere. Coupled that with smart phones and online coverage and it seemed that everyone was talking about the Olympics in those mediums. That coupled with the disdain for tape delay (a tradition in Olympic coverage) made for a lot of frustrating times when it came to the "primetime" events. Part of that I said before was the '08 games had more of the "primetime" events live & not on tape delay given it was halfway around the world. With it only being about 5 hours from East Coast to London it was just rough. However, the next Winter & Summer games could be less of that. I do think NBC will tweak their coverage and improve it based on the "social media" response that was given.
*Overall, London did a great job and should be commended. It'll be interesting how Rio does in 4 years.
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