For its 23rd (!) season premiere, The Oprah Winfrey Show will be paid a visit by more than 150 U.S. Olympic team members.The guest list includes gold medalists such as Michael Phelps (who has become about as omnipresent as Eddie Cibrian on ABC), Nastia Liukin, volleyball queens Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, and hoops stars Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Lisa Leslie and Dwayne Wade (who always cracked me up on A Different World).As reported by the AP, the episode tapes Wednesday at Chicago's Millennium Park (to air Sept. 8) and is fancied as a both a "welcome home celebration" for the athletes as well as a showcase for the Windy City, which is among the candidates to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. By noon Saturday, the line of Oprah and Olympic athlete fans hoping to nab one of the 2,000 free tickets up for grabs stretched several blocks. — Matt Mitovich
read more
The other night, NBC ran a cute piece toward the end of its prime-time broadcast—which means it probably aired somewhere around midnight—about how people are battling sleep deprivation thanks to how late we’re all staying up to watch the Olympics each night. Somehow I was awake to watch it—although someone in the office told me they saw the piece repurposed at another time, so who knows when I saw it; it’s all a blur.The point being that when big Olympics events are live, as they were the first week of the games with Michael Phelps’ awesome miniseries-like laps of swimming history and the team gymnastics competitions, there’s an undeniable thrill watching them unfold in real time, no matter how late it goes. (I groaned one night last week upon realizing the women’s gymnastics weren’t starting until 11:10 pm/ET, but I stayed glued until well past 1 in the morning. No regrets.)But this week it’s a different story, and it boils down to ...
read more
It came down to the last event of womens gymnastics but Shawn Johnson finally is an Olympic champion The West Des Moines Iowa teen had a stellar balance beam routine to win the event ahead of her teammate all-around champ Nastia Liukin 1622516025 She looks like a kid on the best of Christmas mornings Al Trautwig said of her magical smile at the medal ceremony Johnson was one of the biggest gold-medal hopes coming into Beijing so it was a disappointment to win only three silvers team individual and floor exercise While some might consider this gold to be huge redemption for the reigning world champion she says shes proud of all her medals I would never trade one of my silvers for gold What I went through to get them is very special to me and really touched my heartOn the other end of the scale American mens gymnast Jonathan Horton was considered something of an underdog But after leading the US to team bronze he capped his Games T
read more
A great night of performances in a variety of sports was tarnished Monday by some unattractive whining from the NBC gymnastics crew The controversial tie-breaker in the womens uneven bars certainly didnt seem to make sense but you have to wonder how much howling we would have heard if an American had come out top Chinas He Kexin and Nastia Liukin of the US had identical scores but a seemingly arbitrary formula gave the gold to He NBCs team Al Trautwig Elfie Schlegel and Tim Daggett took great issue with this and Trautwig even went so far as to question whether He felt she deserved the gold Back in the studio bellowing Bela Karolyi continued his ranting to Bob Costas who did his best to remain impartial I dont remember anyone questioning Paul Hamms all-around victory four years ago when a scoring error pushed his South Korean opponent back to silver The next event the mens vault also involved a tie-breaker one
read more
Sandra Izbasa saved the best for last The final competitor on the floor exercise event final the Romanian strung together an effortless routine to unseat 2007 world floor champion Shawn Johnson from the leaderboard and deny her the gold medal that was oh-so close Johnson had the burden of going first posting a 15500 that withstood six gymnasts until Izbasa leaped past her with a 15650 at the last possible minute With second-place finishes in the team competition and all-around three-time world champion Johnson now has three Olympic silver medals She has one more shot at gold in the beam final on Tuesday Teammate and Olympic all-around champion Nastia Liukin earned bronze giving her a medal of every color and putting her one shy of matching her father Valeris haul in 1988Upset was the storyline in the womens finals Chinas Cheng Fei a three-time world champion on vault seemed like a shoo-in for gold until she shockingly landed on her knees on her second attempt That
read more
