Ryan Lochte on Funny or Die!

The Olympic Ticket Scalper with Patrick Stewart, Ryan Lochte, Simon Pegg & Maisie Williams from Patrick Stewart

Peeing in Pools with Ryan Lochte from Ryan Lochte

Classic. This is a well done treat for swim fans. I need to somehow add "fastest pee in the west" to my piece on the Developmental Stages of Swimmer Potty Training. Haha!

Jumping Back on the American Bandwagon

I had a lot of conversations with coaches and swim fans leading up to the trials and the games.  I read a lot of stuff, including things from Olympic Gold Medalists like Mel Stewart and really smart multi-lingual people like Chris DeSantis.  I was forming opinions based on all of my inherent brilliance plus all of the information I have absorbed through those conversations and various media, and found myself in the same place I always seem to always end up when nearing the end of each Olympic cycle, thinking:

1.  We are crazy for having our trials so close to the games and we need to just start being like everybody else.

2.  We are watching the decline of American Olympic dominance.

...but of course, after the dust settled on swimming in London, it is pretty clear that I, and many of the other pessimists I surround myself with in the world of swimming, don't know what the hell we are talking about.  This was a pretty damn good meet for the USA.  It wasn't just the Missy show on the women's side, and no one is walking away feeling like if it weren't for Phelps and Lochte we would hardly have won a medal for our men.

Olympic Look Back: Take it Down a Notch Australia

The following is the first in a series of retrospectives on the 2012 Olympics. A lot happened during the meet, and I wanted to have the chance to put the meet in the rear view before discussing it. Because talking about Denmark's medal free performance is still too raw, I'm starting with Australia. The consensus is that they had one of their worst Olympics. I wont disagree with that. But what do we make of it?

Watching the End of An Era

Thanks for the good times Michael.

Phelps, Hansen, Kitajima... As the names rolled out for the final race of the London Olympics, I started to feel pretty nostalgic. Cseh too...the final race of the 2012 Olympics was going to be the end of an era. This is truly the first generation where the best of one generation all stuck around to race the next wave. It made for probably the most exciting Olympic racing I have ever seen. Many of the story lines are not new- young stars breaking through and veterans making one last stand. It just seemed that, in 2012, there were far more of both than there has ever been.

John Leonard Through Swimming History

With John Leonard doubling down on his comments regarding Ye Shiwen in the last twenty four hours, we decided to go through our swimming archives, to chronicle Leonard's reactions through some of the most dramatic events in swimming history. Enjoy!

Still Feel Good About the Danes?

A member of the Danish Olympic squad, pictured on part of his 21 year visit to a semi-autonomous island in the Atlantic

Yes. A month ago I wrote a blog about the remarkable results Danish swimming has achieved since the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Some of you may be following the results of the meet wondering if it was all a bunch of hot air. After all, the Danes have yet to medal with just three finals sessions left in the entire meet. Still, their best chances for a medal are all yet to come over the last three days. That's why I'm choosing to plant my feet again and proclaim it will be a banner Olympics for the Danes. In many ways it already has been.

I have actually been able to watch some of the Olympics this time around!

My wife has even been watching it with me!

It has been an awesome ride so far.  It has been weird watching bits live and more bits delayed.  For a little while I tried to avoid all the spoilers out there in social media, but after NBC decided to intro a clip with "will Missy Franklin win her first gold medal?"  and then 30 seconds later show a picture of her with said backstroke gold, I figured what the hell... no one can avoid the results with them running the show.  Even after knowing that Allison Schmitt was gonna win the 200, when I saw it I was so excited that I wanted to tweet about it, but then realized that everyone else probably tweeted about it seven hours ago.  I didn't want to be that guy...