- Australia's largest state hits record-high COVID-19 cases despite weeks of strict lockdown. 'It's a tinderbox ready to explode,' one official said.
- eToro says crypto made up 73% of trading commissions in the last quarter, as retail customers dived in
- A flight attendant says she was too exhausted to report a passenger who shoved her when a flight was overbooked: report
- US jobless claims climb for first time in 5 weeks, to 353,000
MICHAEL PHELPS IS the most decorated Olympic athlete in history, with 22 medals, 18 of them gold.
Despite being 30 years old, an age when many Olympians are past their prime, Phelps is once again gearing up for another Olympics run in 2016 in Rio.
Phelps enters the lead-up to the 2016 Olympics with a goal: to be healthy.
In a story from Yahoo’s Pat Forde, Phelps said he’s been pleased with his dominant times since coming off a six-month suspension for a DUI, and he’s looking forward to seeing how he performs in Rio. Forde describes the exchange:
“It excited me to see times like that again… At meets, I can still step up and swim some of the best times I’ve ever swam, at age 30.”
Then Phelps dropped this opinion: “I don’t think I’ve had an Olympics at 100 percent.”
But what about Beijing, when he set the Olympic record for individual golds with eight?
“I broke my wrist six months before,” he said.
If he’s 100 percent come August, we might see an epic swan song. That hope, coupled with the enthusiasm from San Antonio, has only made the commitment to training beyond the pool stronger.
It’s difficult to tell what other injuries Phelps is referring to. Either past injuries before the Olympics in 2000, 2004, and 2012 went undocumented, or Phelps was simply dealing with nagging injuries that weren’t identified.
Either way, if Phelps said he’s never been 100% for an Olympics before, the world might be in for a scary showing. As Forde notes, Phelps wowed at the 2015 Winter National Championships in San Antonio, clocking the fastest time in the 200-metre butterfly that year, and setting world-best times for the 100 butterfly and 200-metre IM.
Phelps just needs to stay in this peak condition for seven more months to make it to Rio. If he does, we could see Phelps become the oldest swimmer to ever win a gold medal.
How do they get the figs into those fig rolls? :)
Regardless of all the permutations, one thing remains unchanged – UEFA should reinstate goal difference as the primary way to separate sides the with the same points.
Nice work, but a little confusing where you write: “Should Russia gain a draw [against Slovakia], then Ireland can only qualify in the highly unlikely scenario that they fail to beat Andorra in their final game.” What you mean is that Ireland then could only win the group in that highly unlikely etc. Elsewhere you’ve been using ‘qualify’ to mean ‘come first or second’, which is fair enough. Especially since coming second could still mean automatic qualification as best second-place team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_2012_qualifying#Ranking_of_second-placed_teams
Thanks Harry. I’ve altered the sentence slightly to make it clearer.
What about the best second place team , they qualify automatically. Can we do that?
It’s still mathematically possible, though it would require a number of results in other groups to go our way.