That American girl that won the 200 breaststroke (Rebecca Soni) is the spitting image of Mel from Flight of the Conchords. I laughed a little during her medal presentation because she even had the same awed look Mel gives every time she sees Brett and Jemaine.

Rebecca Soni is just too cute. I wanna give her a hug.

I'm confounded by these gymnasts' leotards. Hot pink? Really, Nastia? I like you but ... no. And what's with the metallic and sparkles everywhere?

OH YEAH. NASTIA AND SHAWN ALL THE WAY!

Shawn Johnson had such a good Olympics. Her final rounds were fabulous!

Nastia is the shit, yo. SHE STUCK THAT LANDING OFF THE BEAM! 16.125! Awesome.



Also, whoa. Those girls are bendy.

Yay Nastia and Shawn! They both did excellent jobs tonight. Congrats to both of them. I still think Nastia and Shawn got hosed on their bar routines though. I have to say, the judging this year has just been all kinds of weird.

I agree. Total shenanigans on the judging.

Reminded of the near riot in Athens after Nemov's low scores.

Yeah, the judging has been awful. No one really talks about how badly the US got hosed in the team comp. on beam. The Chinese were ahead by 1.1 points going in. They had a fall, a really bad routine and a decent routine. The US had a fall and two very good routines. At the end of the round they were behind the Chinese by 1 point. Screwy. I wonder how much that played into them boffing the floor routines.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!! Yay for Nastia! Yay for Shawn! Yay for all the swimmers!!! (And was it wrong when I thought that if the gymnastics arena didn't have the US Anthem, someone could run over to the Water Cube and get it as it's been played there a lot?)

Watching Bela Karolyi during Nastia's floor routine was hilarious.

From the NYTimes writeup:

Heh, "listed as." I guess the Times has some doubts.

Congrats to Nastia and Shawn!

Bela is hilarious. I cracked up when he mauled Bob Costas.

Nastia's floor routine was absolutely fantastic. She aced it.

It's good that she'd overcome the burden of a name like 'Nastia'. What were her parents thinking? Poor girl.

Yes! That was so awesome. Turns out nothing brings out my patriotism like eating cookies while watching girls fly through the air wearing sparkles. Seriously, though, I kind of teared up when Nastia and Shawn were waiting for the scores and then again when I saw Nastia's dad's face.

Next olympics, they should totally replace the boring NBC commentator guys with Bela Karolyi. If they could work out some kind of picture-in-a-picture deal, it would be tv gold.

Yay Nastia and Shawn! I really wanted Nastia to get the gold. She's such a graceful gymnast and her floor exercise was gorgeous.

Bela is so entertaining.

I actually think her name is Anastasia and she just decided to go by Nastia.

I think after the AP was able to find a Chinese newspaper article that listed one of the Chinese girls as being 13 just nine months ago, I think there is a lot of reason for doubt there.

I know a lot people are complaining that it's all just sour grapes, but the fact is, the US does have a couple of other gymnasts who would have made the team if there was no age requirement. Those girls have to wait until London to compete. Yes, the US did have mistakes that cost them the gold, but if there was no age requirement Alicia Sacramone (the poor goat in all of this) would not have even made the team.

By fronting an underage team so brazenly, it undermines the integrity of the games. It's a huge offense to all the teams that followed the rules.