I had never even THOUGHT to be curious about why countries are placed where they are in the Olympic Village. What a logistical nightmare!
NYTimes had a huge Olympics feature looking at all kinds of interesting things. I clicked for Justin Gatlin; I stayed for the photo essay of Olympians with their heroes.
My friend Liz was on a podcast talking about recording the oral histories of Mormon women around the world!
GFY has a running joke/narrative that Princess Anne (the Queen's daughter) is secretly a no-nonsense private detective, which is totally untrue but also totally believable thanks to her (as put by a commenter) Resting Skeptical Face. Anyway, they did a round-up of photos of her in honor of her birthday and it is a treat to see this woman in action, detective or not.
Case in point: did you know that there was an attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne in 1974, during the course of which she said to her attacker: "bloody likely!"?
I love the Chinese swimmer who totally talked about having her period during the Olympics. (Possible autoplay video warning.) [HT Crys]
This article about why there are so many ties in swimming just brought up MORE questions for me: pools aren't perfect enough rectangles for thousandths scoring? Their size could vary according to the temperature and number of swimmers?? Other news said that there may even have been a current in the pool that favored swimmers in higher lanes. I feel like in track and field, they've gotten to the point where they'll fuss a bit about wind-aided or not, but otherwise it's like, look, just do your best. Do tracks expand and compress? Do certain lanes have advantages over others (almost certainly)? How much of, well, nature can we correct and corral and time?
Ryan Lochte: a swimmer caught in a rip-tide of self-absorption.
