I’m afraid I’ve come down with a truly bad case of Olympic fever, and unfortunately, it’s been distracting me from my bloggy duties. Each and every night I’ve been trudging downstairs on my sore foot so I can watch everything live. But all of that going up and down the stairs, all the hours of coverage, on top of all my other usual duties, it’s only left enough time to eat and sleep! There just hasn’t been much time for blogging. I’ve tried several times to blog about the many exciting, interesting, or scandalous things happening throughout these games, but alas, the entries kept getting so terribly long that I always ended up just throwing in the towel and promising myself that I’d take care of it tomorrow.

    Enough of the procrastination! It’s about time I posted *something*! Alas, I won’t be posting all the various thoughts I’ve had about the many shenanegins and goings on, but I do want to at least post something. So today, I’ll bring you a story from the Water Cube, which – surprise surprise – doesn’t have much to do with Michael Phelps. Not that he isn’t amazing, not that I’m not totally proud of him, but I’m sure we could all use a little break from the mania.

    Our story starts with the 2004 Athens games, where we were all caught up in the first round of Phelps hysteria. But naturally, even Phelps couldn’t swim in every single race. Since I’m not all that familiar with the sport of swimming, I’m certainly not familiar with the myriad other racers who were vying for medals. Because of that, I had no clue who to root for when Phelps wasn’t in the pool. Since racing of any kind isn’t nearly as much fun when you don’t have anyone to root for, I had to come up with some system to figure out who to cheer on in the pool.

    While most people would cheer for their countrymen, that seemed a bit generic and expected to me. Besides, this is the Olympics; I wanted to be a little more internationally minded. Others might root for the prettiest swimmers, but meh, since when have looks had much to do with athletic ability? No, none of these methods worked for me. But what was I to do?

    The answer came in the form of a Dutch juggernaut by the name of Pieter Van den Hoogenband.

    That’s right, I was rooting for the swimmer with the funniest sounding name. It was long, it was crazy, it felt funny as it rolled off my tongue, and best of all, it filled up the entire name bracket when they showed the lane assignments. Throughout the entire competition, whenever the announcers would present him to the crowd, I’d start giggling like mad. I was in love, so much so, that I even blogged about him way back then. The moment I saw him, in fact, I remembered hearing his name during the 2000 games in Sydney, and when I decided to blog about him in 2004, I discovered that I had already mentioned him once before, in one of my very first blog entries. It was destined to be!

    Unfortunately, these Beijing games are most likely going to be Van den Hoogenband’s last Olympics. Not only that, he just wasn’t swimming very often. So what was I to do? Who would I root for now? Thank heavens, fate didn’t fail me, for another swimmer emerged to take his place. Indeed, Great Britain came through for me, presenting their swimming champ, Liam Tancock.

    Of course, when I made this discovery, my Mom also happened to be sitting next to me. So when I started laughing hysterically, pointing at the screen, shouting, “Tancock! TANCOCK!”, it was slightly embarrassing… until she started pointing and laughing too. 🙂 Finally, I had someone to cheer for, someone whose name made my belly shake with laughter. I was a happy, happy Olympics fan.

    As if that wasn’t good enough, the next night it got *even better*! Because this time, the Canadians were not to be outdone!! In the same race where my newly beloved Tancock was racing, the Canadians decided to one-up them in the very same race! They introduced… Keith Beavers!!

    Think about that! In one race, in lane one, was Tancock, and all the way on the other side of the pool in lane 8 was Beavers. It was a Tancock/Beavers sandwich race!

    Naturally, my Mom also happened to be there for this discovery too… yet again, hysterical giggles, pointing at the screen, shouting, “Beavers! BEAVERS!!”, then that feeling of awkwardness. Although this time, the awkwardness was mixed with slight concern that I might have to explain to my Mother what ‘beaver’ is a euphemism for – up until a year ago, she didn’t even know what ‘Johnson’ meant. But no, within a second, my Mom was laughing too. There was a chance, of course, that Mom might have been laughing just to go along with the giggles. When I said, “Imagine that, they’d make a *fantastic* law firm – ‘Have you been sexually harassed? Call Tancock & Beavers today!'”, my fears were calmed when she soon piped up with, “Or they’d make a great fertility clinic.”

    Thanks to the Olympic teams of Great Britain and Canada, the pain of losing my beloved Pieter Van den Hoogenband has been assuaged, and now I can say goodbye to Pieter and hello to Beavers & Tancock. Aren’t the Olympics beautiful? 🙂