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Swimming drowns March Madness |
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Tuesday, 03 April 2007 |
There has been drama, tears, fights and insane rivalries this past week in sports. No, I’m not talking about March Madness, I’m talking about the World Swimming Championships.
I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes already, as if to say, “What’s so exciting about swimming?”
Others, who know my love of the sport, are citing my bias when comparing something such as swimming to March Madness.
Well, yes I am biased, but I think that anyone can appreciate swimming,
not just us nerds who used to Nair off our arm hair before a big race
(and just as a note, extremely bad idea).
March Madness has seemed positively dull this year. Of course there
have been several “exciting” games, but for the most part, it has been
pretty predictable.
We ended up with two No. 1s and two No. 2s in the Final Four, with the
two No. 1 seeds going on to play in the National Championships. How
boring can you get.
The big “Cinderella story” of the tournament came when Virginia
Commonwealth University, an 11th seed, knocked off Duke University, a
sixth seed, in the first round.
Anyone who knew anything about the season Duke was having shouldn’t have been surprised.
While the events of March Madness have seemed relatively boring and
mundane, the World Swimming Championships have been edge-of-your-seat
exciting.
People around the world have watched in awe as Michael Phelps went for an unprecedented eight gold medals in a single meet.
While he did only end up with seven (due to a teammate in his last
relay starting too early and being disqualified – Ian Crocker you
should probably hire a couple of body guards), he still walked away
being the talk of the meet.
Not only did he win seven gold medals, he also broke five world records.
Watching the red “world record” line follow him closely as he would
touch the wall was some of the most exciting moments I’ve seen in
sports in some time.
While not all of the meet was televised and the parts that were on TV
were on in the afternoon, what I did see had me screaming and
practically throwing things at my TV as I hoped the swimmer’s could
pick up the pace.
The United States won more gold medals and more medals in general than
any other country that participated with 40 – 21 of which were golds.
That’s an amazing feat, yet it seems as though swimming gets little
respect, especially now when people are so focused on filling out their
brackets.
It isn’t every day that you get to see world records broken at such a pace that they were during the swimming championships.
It also isn’t every day that you get to see such dedicated athletes perform.
Yes, all athletes are dedicated to their sports and all have to
maintain certain procedures to keep their bodies in shape, but
swimmer’s are of another kind.
Lots of sports, such as basketball and football give you breathing room
as far as being in shape goes. While the athletes in those sports are
in shape they don’t have to count calories or have practically zero
body fat like swimmers.
Look at the body of Michael Phelps. He is extremely lean and basically
only eats carbs in order to burn them off while he’s swimming. Swimmers
are athletes in every sense of the word. Yet they get little
respect in most circles.
When I swam in high school, everybody and their brother joined the swim
team because they viewed it as an “easy” way to get another sport under
their belt, not realizing the hard work it takes.
Sure, most people can get in the pool and doggy-paddle around. However,
most people can also pick up a basketball and put it through the hoop,
yet they don’t have delusions of grandeur that being on a basketball
team is easy.
Swimming isn’t easy, and for those of you who think it is, I’d love to
see you swim a 200 fly or how about the 200 IM. If you even knew what
those two things mean, you’re ahead of the pack.
Maybe one year instead of having brackets and pools for March Madness, we can do it for swimming.
You could pick the top-three finishers in each race and as a
tiebreaker, decide how many golds each country would swim away with.
I’m not quite sure that would catch on. However, it would be great if people were glued to their TVs the way that I have been.
Not only are you rooting for your favorite swimmer, but you’re rooting for your country.
How much more patriotic can you get than that?
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