So we didn’t get as many golds as China, but we did win more overall medals, and we didn’t do nearly as bad as some places. The National’s Ayman Safadi takes his fellow Middle Easterners to task for getting pwned so hard in Beijing:

Shameful. This is the least that can be said about the performance of Arab countries in the 2008 Olympic games, which ended at the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing on Sunday. The Arabs left the games with seven medals, of which only two were gold. One athlete, Michael Phelps, won more medals than 22 Arab countries.

Read on for a lickin’ like you ain’t never heard.

Usain Bolt provided the biggest thrills from Beijing. But he wasn’t given the sustained attention Michael Phelps got, and his legacy won’t last as long as Mark Spitz’s.

That’s only because dominant runners can’t pad their medal counts in the sort of filler events available to swimmers.

There are 13 swimming events for males going 200 meters or less. There are three such sprints in track, including one relay.

Seven of Phelps’ eight medals came in events where he traveled either 100 or 200 meters. All of Spitz’s 1972 golds came at those same distances.

Everybody in the world runs and only a few rich kids have ever swum the breaststroke or butterfly. So this disparity makes no sense.

But this is an easy fix: Add some silly new track events. Just throw in some flourishes to sprinting, like running while pounding your chest or running while pretending to fly. Bolt has already displayed prowess in these styles, and shown them to be thrilling.

So then the track event now known as the 100- and 200-meter dash could be called the 100- and 200-meter freestyle.

Coming up with names for the new running events won’t be tough, either. Imagine the water cooler talk when these races get certified.

“Damn, did you see Bolt win the 200 Showboat last night?” and “Man! No way anybody’s gonna touch Bolt tomorrow in the 100-meter Birdman!”

Would the showboat or the birdman events be any sillier than the breaststroke or butterfly? Nope.

Then let Bolt cherry pick from the foolish number of relays and medley events available to swimmers, and he goes home with more necklaces than Mr. T. And more than Phelps.

Where’s the justice?

Following her devastating bronze performance in the 400 meters, U.S. track star Sanya Richards was all about the tightness that afflicted her hammie down the homestretch.

“I just feel so betrayed by my body once again and it’s such a tough break for me,” Richards told the press.

Richards, of course, was in full command of the race until the end, when, according to one account, “she felt a pinch in the back of her leg, her mother saw her grimace and her father saw her turnover ‘go herky-jerky.’”

Then she was overtaken by two other Olympians.

As the most amateur of viewers, I saw none of what Richards’ parents saw. And neither did the commentators for NBC, the finest track-and-field analysts in the world.

So what really happened here–did she have a slight tweak in the leg, or was the competition just a touch better on this day?

So yesterday, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post wrote a nice little post about how NBC conveniently omits mention of less pleasant aspects of life in China. The money graph is here:

Political protests? Not on this channel; no sir. Beijing’s fearful pollution? Maybe, but only if a marathoner coughs up a lung or it spoils a beauty shot. Doping scandals? In passing, perhaps. Tibet? China’s role in Darfur? Now, wait just a second. . . The aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake? Why be unreasonable. . . Tiananmen? Mao’s barbarities? No, and hell no.

Instead of actually covering real life in China, Farhi noted, the network has Mary Carillo running around doing lifestyle features on China. First came a piece on all the big things that China has built over the years. Then came the panda piece.

And last night, Carillo dined. She nibbled on fried scorpion, she had some odd duck parts, she chowed some entrails, and she went to a tea house and was blown away by the long spout on the tea kettle.

After a few minutes of that, I had to give it to Farhi: A piece on pollution, the pros and cons of the Three Gorges Dam, Internet censoring would have been far more welcome–anything but Carillo stuffing her face with a cuisine that we’d never consider embracing here in America. What a shock!

Of course, then you have to consider this Hobson’s choice: Carillo-generated fluff or synchronized diving. I’ll take a bowl of fried scorpion!

The D.C. Olympic Team is back.

Two years ago, for the winter games in Turin, local voting-rights activists acted on a plan put forth by various folks over the years (among them Sam Smith, John Capozzi, and LL) and tried to pull together a curling team.

This year, says team organizer Mike Panetta, it’s going to be racewalking.

Panetta, who also serves as the District’s elected shadow representative, explains the rationale behind the team thusly: “Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Samoa, and Puerto Rico—all of those territories can field their own Olympic teams, so if we’re going to be the red-headed stepchild of American democracy like those places, we should at least get our own Olympic team, too.” Doing so, he says, also takes advantage of all that Olympic media hype to bring attention to voting rights.

Though a mere three months from the Beijing games’ opening, the DCOC’s efforts are just getting underway. “It’s the sort of thing where the timing is critical. If you do it too far out from the Olympics, you don’t get the attention,” Panetta says. The team’s Web page has been updated, though, and a Facebook group is forthcoming.

So why racewalking? Panetta cites logistical concerns: “You need something that doesn’t require a specific location or equipment or any resources, so that’s why speedwalking is perfect.” Not heeding such considerations last time, he says, made assembling a curling team difficult. And, no, they never made it to Turin.

Also, Panetta says, walking is “a very Washingtonian activity. People are in training 24-7.”

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