'Serenity'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Pretty sure it's the freestyle since he won the 100M free.
He also won the 100M fly, is what I'm saying. (At a guess, I'd actually also say free since that's the stroke he's most remembered for. But if he were even competent at breast or back, he'd've been doing IM too. But not the instant messaging kind. Not in 1972.)
(eta: also, by "competent" I mean "world class", not, say, "failing to drown")
Wikipedia is strangely silent about which stroke he did in that last medley, but either free or fly seems most likely.
OK, maybe my half-rememberd stat is that Spitz did it in two strokes (free & fly) and Phelps in all four (turns out one medal was an IM).
Aren't there? I mean, aren't there individual medals for most if not all of the pieces that make up decathalon?
They're all individual events, but they're contested by different athletes entirely.
I'm not sure if that's always been the case.
You know Eric Heiden is an orthopedic surgeon now?
He also won the 100M fly, is what I'm saying.
Yeah, but the fastest guy in the free is faster than the fastest guy in the fly. So in a medley relay you'd want the fastest freestyler over the fastest flyguy.
Unless.. you were so much faster in the fly than your nearest competitor that you'd stretch the lead more there. But I don't think that was the case.
You know Eric Heiden is an orthopedic surgeon now?
I did know that. I also recall that he tried to make the summer olympics as a bicyclist.
They're all individual events, but they're contested by different athletes entirely.
Well, right. So the opportunity is there, if one were to reach those levels of proficiency, it's just that that's a seriously hard thing t do. There's more overlap in the skills from one event to the next in swimming/gymnastics, for sure. Or I suppose I should say, evidently - that's a good question about whether that level of specialization in track and field is a recent development.
The bicyling/speed skating thing is less uncommon than you might thing. (As in, I recall somebody else did that and it was somebody not named Beth Heiden.)
My brother and I got in an extended conversation in which we were ranking sports by their relationship to survival skills. We had some debate over where in the ranks team sports fit, and over whether slower strokes in things like swimming fall, but agreed that racewalking was kind of a massive fail. Why walk if you can run?
And then we watched youtubes of it and got hysterical.
It's a reasonable way to exercise, I'll grant that.
OH, joy, Gustav is heading into the Gulf, and the storm track has it bulls-eyed on Louisiana. And I have to work the weekend over Labor Day. So much for my quiet holiday weekend, where I'm working till 10PM on Sunday and picking up again 8 AM on Monday.