Suck It France! (And Other Olympic News)

I wish I was a better person about this - and I might have been, if not for French Jackass Alain Bernard, who broke the cardinal rule of jinxing. When asked about the battle in the Men's Swimming 400 Freestyle Relay, he had the escargots to say "We will smash the Americans, that is what we came for." Oh, really? With Michael Phelps leading off the relay with an American record leg of 47.51, and Garrett Weber-Gale and Cullen Jones keeping us in the race, the stage was set for Jason Lezak. Going into the last 50 meters, he was about a half of a body length behind, yet he somehow willed himself to catch up with Bernard in the last 25 meters - and then somehow (I still don't know how) touched the wall .08 seconds ahead of the big-mouthed-soon-to-be-crying Bernard. In order to do so, he swam the fastest relay leg in history at 46.06. A hundred meters is 328.08 feet. That's swimming the length of a football field. In 46 seconds.

In other Olympic news:

Rafael Nadal hates the humidity, but still won two out of three sets to easily advance in his search of the "fifth slam" of 2008. Either way, the Spaniard will be the number one ranked player in the world officially on August 18th. Roger Federer will battle it out with Nadal once again at the US Open next month where, presumably, the weather will be more to Rafael's liking.

Seven world records have been smashed in the Swimming Cube. Among them, Kristy Coventry of Zimbabwe kicked ass in the 100 Free and Japan's Kosuke Kitajima used American Brendan Hanson former world record to towel off with in the 100 Breakstroke.

India won it's first individual gold medal EVER - Abhinav Bindra won the 10 meter air rifle shooting competition. Go India!!!

Gymnastics is a scary, injury filled place for the American's right now. Our women qualified in second place behind China due to last minute injury (including Samantha Peszek hurting her ankle in warm ups!). The good news: Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin are one and two going into the individual all around. It's going to be a battle royale for the team competition!!!

There's a German female gymnast that's rather interesting, for three reasons: 1 - She's Russian. 2 - She's 33 years old. 3 - She became German in order to secure medical care for her son, who had leukemia. Oxana Chusovitina is the war horse of the Olympics... she won the vault at the European Championships and will challenge for that medal next week. How badass is that? Also, her son is in remission and can do a backflip. NBC was delighted in producing a mini lifetime movie about her during prime time last night, but it's still an amazing story.