So, if the 3,463,682,201 stories appearing in my RSS feed (per minute) are any indication, this Phelps guy is the big story of the Olympics. That’s all well and good, and more power to the guy, but as I understand it, he was the overwhelming favourite to win everything long before the games started. This strikes me as shitty narrative management.

Say you pitched a movie script, and it went something like this:

1. Gifted athelete works his ass off and becomes the best in the world at what he does
2. Athlete arrives at the Olympics as a heavy favourite to win a busload of medals
3. Athlete wins busload of medals, pretty much exactly as predicted
4. Fin

Forgive me if it seems like this is a “man bites dog, film at 11″ story.

Now, if he were to lose to a plucky fat kid — or, say, a lovable chimp who drinks beer — who got into the Olympics via some bizarre technicality… that would be a story.

p.s., Yes, I know that in one of his medal-winning performances he won by a hair’s-breadth. Woop-de-shit. I’d also like to point out that in this Olympics he’s only won 7 gold medals to date, which is only 7 more than I won, and I didn’t even compete.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.