The Olympics are now nearly half way over so its time to hand out some awards, kind of like how baseball writers hand out fictitious mid season awards at the All-Star Break:

Best Moment of the Games: Men’s swimming 4x100 Free Relay

Here is a sample of some of the text messages and facebook status updates I saw within 10 minutes of the race ending (for the older typical KWTO 560 am listener that tripped and fell on the internet and landed on this site imagine a telegram that arrives instantaneously).

“46.06…Jason Lezak…Holy S***…F*** you France.”

“Suck it Bernard.”

“OMG I just s*** myself.” (I am assuming this one is regarding the Olympics)

“USA Men’s 400 relay!!! WOW!!! Screw you Frenchies.”

“F*** you France, whats up now!!!!”

“Life has many paths, what one to choose is the question…”

That last one has nothing to do with the Olympics I just find it funny when people try and be philosophers on facebook.

It’s funny to note that the Olympics that are supposed to promote peace, love, and harmony also seem to bring a whole lot of profanity aimed at other groups of people. I can imagine Morgan Freeman’s voice over for the London games now, “The 2012 Olympics on NBC: Eff You World.”

The 400 free relay was the perfect storm to grab the casual viewers interest even before the race started – Phelps chasing history, Frenchman Alain Bernard’s trash talking, and the freakish thought that every team in the field had a chance to break the world record. The race lived up to all the hype and more, it is one of those moments that even if you have no interest in swimming at all you will remember this race for the rest of your life. Going into the race it was thought the Americans had to be a body length ahead of France going into the anchor leg, definitely not ¾ of a length behind with 45 meters left. Lezak catching and passing Bernard in the last 15 meters isn’t supposed to happen in real life, it was like Mario Kart 64, Bernard slipped on a banana the same time Lezak ran over a mushroom.

Granted Bernard didn’t swim a smart race, he over swam his first 50 and died the last 15 meters, allowing Lezak to draft off him the majority of the race and pass him in the end. Draft or no draft, Lezak’s time of 46.06 is an out of this world performance; the guy should never have to pay for a drink at a bar in the states unless he tries to assassinate the president or something outlandish along those lines. The finish was one of those rare moments in sports that seemed to bring a country together. If the primitive yells of Michael Phelps and Garret Weber-Gale along with the ear to ear smile of Cullen Jones in contrast to the look of shock/horror/depression on the French team didn’t make you proud to be an American you a probably not an American (this is the internet after all, someone from any country could be reading this. I am sure the people of France do not list this as the greatest moment of the Olympics thus far).

Sorriest Moment of the Games: Medal Ceremony for 84kg Greco-Roman Wrestling

Ara Abrahamian of Sweden, congratulations, you are the biggest jackass this side of Dustin Diamond. You may recall Diamond had a sex tape leaked on the internet in 2006 and then alienated every member of VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club during a weigh-in in 2007 before challenging host/drill sergeant Harvey Walden to “physical combat.” At least the artist formerly known as Screech Powers had the decency to be a jackass on a crappy VH1 show and poorly made internet porn, you on the other hand sir decided to be a jackass while representing you country in the biggest moment of your life. Apparently Abrahamian felt wronged by the judges in his semifinal match against eventual gold medal winner Andrea Minguzzi of Italy. After the match Abrahamian confronted the judges in a violent manner and had to be restrained by teammates.

Abrahamian would go on to win the bronze medal match, and then decided to try and take the gold medal in “jackass.” During the medal ceremony Abrahmian left the podium, set his bronze medal in the middle of the mat and walked out of arena. This is not the first time Mr. A has been guilty or poor sportsmanship. After losing the final to Russian Alexi Michine in the 2004 games, Abrahmian wrote on his website’s homepage “The final ended 1-1. That means losing, in case you meet a Russian.” Abrahmian will now go down in history not as a two-time world champion and two-time Olympic medalist, but instead as a sore loser on his sports’ biggest stage.

To be honest I do not know the ins and outs of international Greco-Roman wrestling so this whole topic is a bit foreign to me (Rimshot), but there is a time and a place to try and prove your point. Abrahmian should have swallowed his pride, accepted his medal, and filed a protest after the fact (I feel the same way about the members of the USA Men’s Basketball team for their refusal to accept their silver medals after losing to the Soviet Union at the ’72 games). No one person or team is bigger than the Olympics and to throw a hissy fit on the world’s stage spits in the face of the peace, love, and harmony that the games are supposed to be all about, which brings us to our next award…

Most Peace, Love, and Harmony Moment of the Games: 100,000 Condoms

For years the IOC has passed out free condoms in the Olympic Village; Beijing kicked it up a notch passing out 100,000. There is no way I can write any more on this topic without getting disciplined by the higher ups at Meyer Communications. If you would like to hear some good condom talk however, call 868-6100 any weekday morning between 9-11 am and tell Scott Puryear you want to hear some “rubber talk.”

Most Disgusting Moment of the Games: Janos Baranyai

Go ahead and type the 77kg Hungarian weightlifters names into youtube and watch him try and life 148kg. Youtube has been removing this video the moment it shows up so it may take some patience. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s so graphic or because NBC is like the Nazis when it comes to copywriting their footage. Anyway, if you are lucky enough, or unlucky enough, depending on what you define as interesting, enough to see this footage you will see a mans elbow bend the complete wrong way it is supposed to bend while trying to hoist a ridiculously large amount of weight over his head. I’ll warn you this video is the type of thing that will make your joints hurt, possibly the worst I have seen since Shaun Livingston’s knee injury from the 2007 NBA season.

Gayest Moment of the Olympics: Karch Kiraly on beach volleyball relationships

Listening to beach volleyball analyst Kiraly describe the turbulent relationships between males beach volleyball “partners” will make any heterosexual man want to look up lesbian porn, chew tobacco, and play poker just to fell like a man again.

“It can be real tough to tell your partner that you have found someone else. Chemistry may be off, things might just get stale, sometimes it’s just best for all parties involved to move on a find someone else.”

Those may not have been Kiraly’s exact words, his may have in fact been gayer, but I’d say it would probably be better for beach volleyball’s future in this country if they referred to each other as teammates instead of “partners.”

Most Blown out of Proportion Story of the Games: Spanish Basketball Picture

The Spanish men’s basketball team posing with what has been described as “slant eyes” (there has to be a more PC term to use doesn’t there?); was it stupid to do? Yeah probably. Was it funny? Maybe if you have a crappy sense of humor (I actually think it’s more funny that they thought it was funny). Was it so offensive that it should become an international incident? Apparently if your name is Jason Kidd the answer is yes.

Kidd has gone on the record claiming if the American National team had taken such a picture they would be kicked out of the Olympics and suspended from returning from the NBA. First off, I doubt that is true and would like to know how Jason jumped to that conclusion. Secondly, doesn’t he have enough to worry about? I won’t even mention that Kidd is the third best point guard on his team, or the fact that he has the ugliest jump shot of any All-Star guard in the NBA, but doesn’t Kidd have his own problems to worry about? Is this the same Jason Kidd that was arrested in 2001 for domestic abuse and sued in 2007 for groping a girl in a nightclub? Seems Kidd should worry about his own problems a bit more and let other people handle Pau Gasol and Jose Calderon’s poor attempts at comedy.

Some Gymnastics observations/questions I have that I could not think of a way to morph into awards

Is there anything more annoying than listening to the USA women’s gymnastics team stand with their arms wrapped around each other after the first night of the competition and try to get each other excited? It’s like they are all trying to prove that they are the most spirited/supportive/overly optimistic of the group.

Is American gymnast Jonathon Horton going to be the first guy to ever win a gold medal at the Olympics and still have trouble getting laid when he comes back to the states?  Even though he might not be getting a lot of action I give him better than 50 percent of odds of playing a role character on a Disney Channel sitcom.

What executive at NBC thinks it’s a better idea to give Christian Slater his own show with him having a split personality when the time slot would get such better ratings if it was just nonstop Bela Karolyi talking about what ever Bela Karolyi wants to talk about.

Thursday nights the finals of the women’s all around was on NBC while at the same time “To Catch a Predator,” was on MSNBC. Is NBC executive Dick Ebersol making a social commentary?