Stefanie sun yan zi

Wednesday, August 13, 2008
my thoughts on the olympics

what a wonderful olympics it has been so far... from the spectacular opening ceremony at the grand Bird Nest stadium to the various achievements by the different countries.

for the locals, the best performer has to be 18yr old swimmer tao li, whose fifth place finishing at the 100m butterfly finals allowed her to be the first singaporean to make it to the finals of the olympics. it is not an easy feat to achieve, considering the earlier 2 rounds she had to go through in order to qualify for the finals. in the process, she also set a new asian record of 57.54s, if i'm not wrong. haha...

however, the most inspiring figure to me so far has to be michael phelps of usa. with 11 gold medals so far from athens and in beijing, he is the most decorated olympiad of all time. and that's not all, for he has the opportunity to take it further with 3 more events to go and possibly more olympics to take part in (for goodness sake, he's only 23 yrs old!). yesterday as i watched the american team in the 4x200m freestyle relay, i couldn't help but be amazed by their ability and determination to be the best ever swim team. michael phelps led the team from start, opening the lead to 2 body lengths before handing over to fellow freestyle specialist ryan locht to open up further. such was the confidence in the team that olympic rookie ricky berens was drafted in to be the 3rd swimmer in the relay! the anchor of the team, pieter vanderkaay is also one whom i admire greatly, for he was the one who helped the team to shave almost 5s off the previous world record when with about 25m remaining, the intensity at which he kicked and pushed himself was evident for all to see. even the commentator was gushing "he wants the sub 7 record badly!" hahaha... therefore i think this is truly the most inspiring olympics event i've seen thus far. go! go! michael phelps... i really hope he can achieve his personal dream of getting 8 gold medals to banish the ghost from the athens games. jiayou! :)

___* hummed a yanzi tune + 6:35 PM

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