PS

I believe, Mr. Moderator, that it was that old bugaboo, “operator error”

PS: Peter, yeah, during that one BB game, they kept on about "this woman is the only person to EVER get 5 gold medals" or whatever the record was. So what? It's women's basketball. Let her poll vault (well it won't be my pole, as I think she's the one who they said right there on TV is engaged to a woman - I can't take a kid anywhere!), run a race and do hurtles, broad jump, hurl a disc, and throw a javelin. That's Olympics.

If there is to be any team sport at all, I think Ultimate Disk (disc?) ought to be it - it does involve hurling a disc around, right? Plus, the teams will have something readily available in which to mix their weed during commercial breaks.

PS: Thank you for the additional advice, SafeNow. This particular kid is pretty cautious, but I did give him a talk about the rip tides and getting carried out there, even when he CAN swim well. We will be careful if I ever remember to bring the boogie board to the beach to begin with. I never thought skim boards looked like that much fun to begin with.

Ganderson, I fixed that. Was it you, or the software? I'd like to know if it was the latter, for sure.

Bill and Czar. I'm a very light user of TV as in NEVER at home. We were on a fun trip, so this was a special "treat" for my kid, which didn't pan out anyway. We did watch some swimming on youtube later. I had no idea that these guys do this fish move under the water before they come up to finish the crawl "sprint" or whatever it's called. "Freestyle" is, I assume, the name due to the fact that one can do any stroke he wants, but the crawl is the fastest. Is that correct, SafeNow?

PS
The hagiography of athletes, especially of the female and non-white varieties, has gone to absurd extremes. In the Nike commercial linked at this tweet, they actually say the US Olympics Women's Basketball team is the "greatest sports dynasty ever" (even though an average high school boys team could whup them, and there is very little international competition).

More than that. The ad compares them favorably to... Alexander the Great. I kid you not. You know, the guy who took over basically the entire known world? Yeah, he wasn't as amazing as a bunch of dyke basketball players.

It's all so stupid.

https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1424506563469905923

PS Teevee? Thanks for going there so that we don't have to.
Sportsball is over thanks to the COV-LARP and no one wants to see pampered primadonna legends in their own mind prattle on about muh oppression while seeing a beautiful place on the dime of Team USA.

Root against Chiquitastan and Traitorgov in every endeavor.

PS Re reference to NBC and the Olympics, NBC is bad at everything. Watched an Indycar race at Nashville, and they made a complete hash of the coverage. The race wasn't very good, of course, being a wreckfest, but NBC was farcial in both camerawork and commentary.

PS
My comment came up labeled “ Safe Now” Sorry Mr. Now!

PS.

Good points Mr. Now. The trend in all sports is for longer practices. When I was a HS lacrosse coach I limited my practices to 1 1/2 hours- any longer and the kids, many of them, lost focus. I was always willing to hang around after practice for kids who wanted to shoot or generally horse around, lax wise as kids, even older HS age ones don’t get enough unstructured play, IMHO.

The school where my son was the head boys’ lax coach had a athletic department policy limiting practices to an hour and a half- a good thing. I went to a big time D I practice once; the coach had a big countdown clock- one and a half hours.

I used to also tell my high school charges that, growing up in New England, they should learn how to do two things, skate and swim, swimming being the most useful. Of course, as I hockey guy I don’t really believe that, even though it’s true….

PS

Mr. SafeNow... you’re right, albeit a bit of a buzzkill. I hate it when the draggers venture away from the shorepound and I have to bail to avoid running over them.

PS Thanks, Achmed. One last thing. You mentioned your son and the ocean. I was an ocean lifeguard. I will take the liberty of reminding you
that while spinal injuries from bodysurfing or skimboard surfing are extremely rare, when they do occur, they can be catastrophic. skim boards are actually the more dangerous, because they are moving faster, and so there is less time to get your arms out in front of you before your head plunges into the sand. Kids often take risks because they feel invulnerable. Plus it is fun to harness the power and energy of the ocean. So be careful. Sorry if I’m speaking out of turn here, but I’m not called “SafeNow” for nothing.

PS: Oh, SafeNow, I meant to mention that I agree with our take on the overwhelming practice times. If your kid is meant to be an Olympian, people will figure that out. Otherwise, just enjoy the competition, but don't waste your whole youth in the pool, on the BB court, etc ...

Alarmist, it was apparently the 2nd-to-last day. Who cared?

PS: Thank you for writing in, SafeNow. I think I remember the short discussion recently by you and others about swimming practice time. (This was before I got tired of it, and quit reading any more iSteve posts about the Olympics. I don't at all begrudge him this stuff, as HBD was his original reason for writing, as I recall, and the whole thing, besides being a political shitshow is also an experiment in HBD.)

Anyway, in our family, what you write about is not a worry. We lean too much the other way really, not pushing him at all in sports. I don't think that's a big part of the road to his future. However, the kid has loved the water since before he can remember - especially the ocean. I also think swimming is one of the best exercises for adults of them all.

I have gone as far as taken lifesaving courses back in the Scouts days (yeah, did that mile swim, but after 1 lap doing the crawl, I switched to the elementary backstroke to finish), but now, I enjoy most swimming along the bottom. It's peaceful, and I like to see how long I can hold my breath. My wife really needs to do swimming for exercise. I think she would enjoy it.

PS

They’re doing an Olympics? I didn’t notice.

PS I guess your boy likes swimming, and in a few years might go out for the swim team. I recently posted this, but will repeat it. Many many years ago, when I swam competitively, swim practice was only one hour. That’s high school, and that’s college. Now, from what I hear, it’s much longer, even double practice. I know this sounds old fashioned, but I think one hour was perfect. it’s a great sport, and I got a lot out of it. But one hour achieved almost all the speed that was possible for me, and, left time for study, socializing, and a job. I think this is one way in which the old US did things smarter. I can’t prove it, but I think if parents could vote for practice length they would vote for one hour and in fact kids would too.