Hating on Michael Phelps

Taking a break from liveblogging the road trip to hate on Michael Phelps. Actually, to hate on all the adulation the media is showering on him. Ok, we get it - the dude is an awesome swimmer - can we move on now?

This morning on the news, they were discussing Phelps' narrow victory in the 100m fly. The way they were talking about it, you would think the guy cured cancer. At one point, the news anchor said something to the effect of "If you're depressed, just think of Michael Phelps' victory - that's what we do." We then switched the channel to ESPN where they somehow managed to bring up Michael Phelps in every segment. The sidebar on the right would say that the subject was basketball, but somehow the piece was on Phelps' relationship with the team. Luckily we left before the biopic on Phelps' greatness.

Let's get some f'ing perspective here people - the dude won a swim race - that's it. Sure it takes a ton of training, pressure of the moment blah blah yadda yadda. It doesn't change the fact that it's still just a swim race.

And while we're on this, the whole thing about going for 8 golds - well that's just because there are so many goddamn events in swimming. Why the hell are there even "butterfly" races in the first place? We don't have inferior stride races in track and field events, do we?

When you see how hard it takes for some medals (basketball, tennis, baseball), it just makes this 8 medal hubbub seem even more ridiculous. For basketball, they have to play a round robin tourney, then go through single elimination. At the end of Phelps' run, he would have spent a grand total of what, like 30 minutes in the pool? And it's not like they have medal events in full-court bball, half-court bball, 1 on 1, 3 on 3, 30 min bball and 60 min bball. There should just be two swimming events - long distance and short and enough of this stroke b.s. Front crawl is the fastest, so stop using inferior strokes!

I hope you enjoyed this edition of haterade. Now back to our regularly scheduled liveblogging.