...and I know anyone who may still be reading these probably wants them to be over by now, too. Well, rest easy, today's is the last one.

Track and Field: The greatest Olympic misnomer (though it doesn't have much competition)... this could easily be 10-15 separate events. And probably should be. This, more than any other event/category of events, is the true Olympics. Well, except maybe race walking. I've recently read an article where it was compared to letting people who can't swim very well compete in the dog paddle, which was funny until I realized that the dog paddle is about the only style of swimming that isn't an Olympic competition (why? We should start a petition to the IOC to include it as soon as possible and correct this enormous oversight immediately!).

Sadly, if you ask NBC, the "field" part of Track & Field doesn't exist, or at least isn't worth any more than a brief mention. Ask me who won the long jump this year, and I'll be clueless (well, I'd look up the results, but you get the point). The most they've shown of any field event is a 5-minute recap, complete with both of the important participants' performances (usually, the American and the winner... maybe a glimpse of the other medalists). Oh boy, how exciting. Quite sad, because the field events, while not as quickly-developing, as, say, the sprints, can be just as fun to watch.

As for the "track", one cannot mention the 2008 competition without mentioning Usain Bolt, who, while not winningnearly as many medals as Michael Phelps in swimming, quickly put doubts even in NBC's minds about who the greatest athlete ever is (and thank goodness... the talk of Phelps as greatest athlete only lasted a couple of days, and I don't know how much more I could take of it). I mentioned before that Phelps won 3 golds "that matter" (to me, obviously not to Phelps or the American public) - one in an individual event, and 2 in relays. Bolt also won 3, and only 1 was in a relay... a more impressive performance by my count. Oh by the way, like Phelps, he won every event he entered, and unlike Phelps, he set a world record in every event he entered as well, a feat much more difficult in track & field than in swimming, where world records seem to fall every Olympics.

But enough comparing the two... they're both great, that much is clear. All three of Bolt's records impressed me a lot... the 100m record, because he was slow to start and was celebrating 15m from the finish, and still set a world record (I shudder to think how fast he might've been); the 200m record, because the record he broke was one that many thought would stand for decades, and he broke it running into a slight headwind; and the 4x100m record... well, first it has to be said that it is not Bolt's, but rather Jamaica's, since it was a relay... this impressed me because they broke it by 0.3s, a huge gap in the world of short-distance running.

I wish Bolt would have run the 400, and the 4x400... he was so dominant in the 200, I just can't see him dropping off so much over just 200 more meters that he wouldn't still win. Hopefully he'll run those in London in 4 years' time. Sadly, the speculation has already begun here that he may have been doping. Odd, no such speculation for Phelps, surely because Americans never dope (ahem... Tim Montgomery, Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones, anyone?). Anyway, I hope that no Olympians dope, but as that is not the case (several had already been disqualified for it), I at least hope Phelps and Bolt don't. Would be far too disgraceful for their respective sports otherwise.

Now, I recognize there were other track and field events besides those run by Bolt... unfortunately, I can't cover everything (and couldn't cover the field events if I wanted to, for reasons already mentioned), and those were certainly the most memorable.

Trampoline: Not sure why this is listed as a separate sport instead of being just one more apparatus in gymnastics. For what it's worth, its scoring system seemed better than that in gymnastics, so maybe it's not all bad. As for the competition itself, it was pretty interesting, although seemed to me to be quite dangerous... I wonder how many injuries happen in that sport.

Triathlon: Endurance sports such as the triathlon and marathon are unlikely to ever be all that exciting for spectators, myself included. Still, any athlete who participates in them, even if they are slightly crazy, has my respect...

Volleyball: I'm rather surprised by the success the US men enjoyed, considering volleyball is pretty much classified as a "girls' sport" here... with the US women also making the final, it offered plenty of opportunities for TV coverage, which is a good thing, because I found this along with badminton to be the most exciting of the actual sporting events (as opposed to pure athletic competitions like swimming and track & field) to watch. Congrats to the US for the excellent performances, though as with most sports, I wanted the US to lose (what can I say, the media's "patriotism" has the opposite effect on me than on the American public).

Water Polo: This is something I look forward to every time the Olympics roll around, and every time it disappoints. Why I look forward to it is beyond me, as odd as that may sound. Not a terribly boring sport, but there were better, perhaps made worse by my high expectations.

Weightlifting: Never ceases to amaze me how much those guys (and gals) can lift. Perhaps oddly, this was one of the most exciting sports for me, and the TV coverage was pretty good too, leaving me quite happy with it. Saw one competitor get hurt pretty badly, though... a shame, but this event is inherently dangerous, too.

Wrestling: The Greco-Roman variation didn't impress me too much... I said before that there is no Olympic competition for wrestling with one hand behind your back, but this is pretty close in terms of restricting the athletes and artificial rules. The freestyle, on the other hand, was much more fun to watch. The coverage wasn't too extensive in either variation, though. From what I did see, the scoring controversies that plagued the sport (according to what I read online) were nonexistent, fortunately, although there was one rather famous one during these games (I did not see the match that caused it, not even in replay), where a Swedish wrestler thought he was robbed of a victory in a semifinal, won the bronze in his next match, but declared he was not satisfied with anything less than gold, and during the medal ceremony, accepted the bronze medal, then promptly took it off his neck, placed it on the mat, and walked out of the ceremony in protest, for which he had that medal taken away by the IOC.

(Yes, that was one long sentence... I need to catch my breath after that one)

I guess I've seen worse ways to protest (see Taekwondo), and at least based on the few matches I've seen, the scoring was at least mostly accurate. Then again, I don't know too much about wrestling, so perhaps it's just that I don't know errors when I see them.

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Well, that wraps it up. Overall, a good and enjoyable competition; let's hope future Olympics find ways to improve on it (although they're adding more events, I've heard... not a good start). In the meantime, bring on Vancouver 2010!