Good afternoon Ladies and Gents. Hope everything is going well in your life, right now the Olympics are going on and it's absolutely beautiful. I love the competition, and the patriotism it brings around the world. If you haven't seen the 4x100 IM swimming relay, stop whatever you're doing and look it up, simply amazing.
So our random facts this week are inspired by the four year wonder that is the Olympics. How the games started are debated quite often. Some believe they were started by Heracles to appease Zeus, while others believe it was started based on the Greek ideal of Olympic truce. For those who believe in the Heracles story, once he finished building the Olympic stadium, he ran in a straight line for 400 steps. This was the measurement the competitive field was supposed to be, and why one lap around the track is 400 meters.
While which fact you want to take is up to your opinion, there is something about these games that is non-debatable. Michael Phelps is a golden God in the US right now. He set the all-time record for most gold medals won in the modern era. However there is one record that he will not beat, considering he's said this is his last games. The greatest Olympic athlete of the old days was a wrestler by the name of Milo of Croton, who scored a victory in six different games, the only person in history to achieve that milestone. Suck it Dara Torres (competing in her fifth games, a Women's American Swimming record)!
One last tid-bit of my ranting. The pre-games tradition of carrying the torch from Olympia to the host city by runners was first implemented by the Germans in 1936 to promote their National Socialist party. Have a safe, fun weekend and we'll put up some pictures of our Tour de Fat experience.
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The history lesson is beautiful. Not so fast on the "Phelps is done" line of thinking. It seems a trip to London may be on his agenda in four years. Then again, if he doesn't go no one would blame him.
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