Olympic Champions and world record holders

It’s hard to believe that the Olympics Games in Beijing took place nearly a year ago given the many unforgettable performances witnessed by the world. For most people, one athlete’s performances stand out in particular. Michael Phelps undoubtedly took the show with an unprecedented 8 gold medals, 7 world records and 1 Olympic record. In total, Phelps has won more gold medals than any OIympian with 14 and has broken 35 world records the last of which he broke just today at the World Championships.

Phelps is definitely one of the greatest athletes of all time, with more to come. Call me biased, but Phelps’ records are a little overplayed relative to Bolt’s world record performances on the track at 100m, 200m and the 4×100m relay. Here’s why.

Since comparing the two sports directly isn’t an equal comparison, I will represent the records in terms of percentages.

The 50m freestyle and the 100m dash are the shortest sprint races contested at the Olympics in swimming and track and field respectively. a quick look at the world record progression (50m free/100m dash) shows that over the course of 33 years, the 50m freestyle world record has dropped 2.92 seconds, representing a 12.24% change. On the other hand, the 100m dash record (discounting the pre-electronic timing era) has fallen from 10.06 to 9.69; a 3.68% change over 44 years. Furthermore, in the case of swimming, we often see the same record broken multiple times in the same meet. In track, this hardly happens and the time in between record changes is much longer except when someone breaks their own record.

The same comparison can be made for the 100m freestyle and the 200m dash, the next distance up in each respective sport. Starting in 1975, until the 2008 Summer Games in which records were broken in both events, the swimming record fell 7.96% compared to the track record’s 2.27%. Looking at progressions for other records, the drop in the swimming records are much more dramatic over time compared to track records with track records being broken less frequently. It would seem, judging by the rate of world record progression, that swimming records have not approached the limit that track records are at currently.

This is also demonstrated by the fact that over the course of the last 8 years, Phelps has broken his own 200m butterfly record 7 times dropping his record by 2.96%. Usain Bolt broke his own 100m dash record by 0.31% and Michael Johnson’s 200m dash record by only 0.10%. Bolt’s 200 record was even even more impressive due to the fact that many considered Johnson’s 19.32 record as unbreakable. Phelps was able to break 7 records due to the sheer number of event distances and strokes for him to swim. As a versatile and dominant swimmer, he can swim the same distance using multiple strokes. Bolt doesn’t have the same options available to him.

Bolt’s records are a more impressive historic achievement despite the fact that the swimming records are broken with much greater margins and frequency. Swimming records still have some ways to go before athletes physical ability to break them will be questioned. Phelps is no doubt an astonishing athlete, but Bolt’s record breaking performances still awe me in a way that Phelps’ performances never did for me.

I realize my comparisons are highly unscientific and very rough so feel free to tell me I’m wrong. Although there are others with me on this one.

Further reading

• USA Today’s comparison of Bolt and Phelps
• http://kempton.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/usain-bolt-vs-michael-phelps/

The iPhone isn’t the only contender to be my most desired smartphone. While the Google G1 and the Android platform looked promising, it’s first iteration didn’t really live up to it’s full potential or hype in my opinion. The second generation Android phone doesn’t change much. With my general dislike of BlackBerry or Windows Mobile based devices, I was thrilled with what the Palm Pre has to offer. Reading about it really doesn’t do it justice; you need to watch the demo of the new WebOS to really get a sense of why it’s so cool and how Palm has positioned itself to be the most legitimate iPhone competitor.

This brings me back to my original point. The Pre is being released exclusively on Sprint. Sprint (like Verizon) uses CDMA technology, one of the main reasons for my general Verizon-bashing. Why is CDMA so bad, you ask? Gizmodo summed it up, saying:

Sprint and Verizon’s Secret Shame: CDMA

To the end user, CDMA and GSM don’t seem very different—Sprint, a CDMA carrier, offers the same services as AT&T, a GSM carrier—except when it comes to how they handle phones.

GSM phones are identified by the SIM card that they carry, which can be moved between phones at the user’s will. Not so with America’s other wireless standard. Effectively, a CDMA phone is like a GSM phone with the SIM card welded to its socket. Your CDMA phone is permanently locked to your carrier, and your mobile connection is permanently bound to your handset—unless your carrier is kind enough to authorize a transfer to another phone.

The presumably intentional effect is that there’s no market for 3rd party hardware in CDMA, which is fine for carriers, shitty for customers. Worst of all, there’s no good reason for this. CDMA SIM cards exist. They’re called R-UIM cards, but US carriers are in no rush to implement them.

Furthermore, CDMA severely limits my options for using my phone abroad. I realize that the cell phone companies would rather me use my plan and rack up ridiculous international charges instead of simply replacing my SIM card with one from a local provider but Verizon’s poor selection of phones (each with the same terrible UI) and their general Mac-unfriendliness don’t help their case either.

Ultimately, do any of these networks really offer such better service than the other that compels me to use one over the other. I’ve heard all the arguments for Verizon’s network being “better.” I’m much more skeptical of these claims. Even in upstate New York, I never had a problem with AT&T really. I think Verizon’s reputation of network availability is somewhat exaggerated and doesn’t come near to outweighing better pricing schemes, the flexibility of GSM, or my satisfaction with a phone I actually like. I think will only continue to see increasing parity in terms of quality of cell coverage from the major players (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon).

What are your expierences with any of the phones or networks? Is the coolness of the Pre worth going with Sprint’s CDMA? Anyways, I have six months to wait and see.