We've all played some sort of intramural sport where the officiating is horrible at best. We've seen high school games where the officiating was just ok. And we've seen blown calls at the professional level. So here's the question I have to ask.

Before we had all of this technology available to us, is there any way in the world that Phelps would have gotten the gold in the 100m Butterfly? Even in the picture on the right (which was so beautifully captured by Sports Illustrated), it looks like Phelps lost. In fact, even when they slowed the video down, I still was convinced he lost. Maybe it's some sort of conspiracy that I haven't picked up on because I'm an American and biased towards Phelps. Maybe he really didn't win.

Then I started to wonder. How many swimmers, or track athletes for that matter, have been given a silver, when in fact they actually won the race? Or who lost out on the medal when they should have gotten the bronze?

And why do I even care? With each race I've been obsessed with how close the losers are to winning. An athlete will spend four years building up to this moment and then they'll lose the race by a whopping .3 seconds and the announcers won't even acknowledge how close they were to winning. It's very similar to when a referee misses a call and the announcers act oblivious to it. I just sit there amazed that no one even acknowledges what just happened. Didn't they see what I just saw?

I guess it doesn't really matter. They're probably all on the juice anyway..... (I've got to have some conspiracy associated with the Olympics. The athlete's have always been ahead of the testing. You don't think they are now???)