Herb Strentz reviews the most famous 200-meter final in Olympic history and its aftermath. -promoted by Laura Belin

With the 2021 Olympics nearing the finish line, one of many track events to watch will be the 200-meter men’s final, scheduled for Wednesday, August 4.

While we don’t know who this year’s finalists will be, we can say with certainty the 1968 final for the 200-meter distance will be revisited, as it is every Olympiad and many times between.

Judging from past press coverage, Peter Norman will not be mentioned. That’s because on the 200-meter victory stand, two Black Americans, Tommie Smith (gold medalist) and John Carlos (bronze) raised gloved fists in a Black Lives Matter protest — back then it was called Black Power.

You have to hand it to the Republican strategists behind a new vehicle that may collect tens of thousands of names and addresses for future use by Governor Terry Branstad’s re-election campaign.  

Barack Obama held an invitation-only event in Davenport today and emphasized economic issues:

Obama noted that he was raised by a single mother who sometimes needed food stamps to feed her family. He said he and his wife, Michelle, needed scholarships to attend college.

He said Americans are worried about a souring economy, in which home values are sinking and good jobs are disappearing. He said he would use billions now being spent on the Iraq war to create new jobs rebuilding American highways, adding high-speed railroads and increasing renewable energy sources, such as wind farms.

Two Iowans are among the “everyday Americans” who will address the Democratic convention in Denver. Candi Schmieder from Marengo will speak today, and and Katherine Marcano from Cedar Rapids will speak tomorrow.

Governor Culver will also speak at the convention on Tuesday.

The DemConWatch blog has all the details you need about the convention speakers and agenda.

How much of the convention will you watch? Which speakers are you most anxious to hear?

Feel free to share your closing thoughts about the Olympics in this thread as well.

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton has the quote of the day, referring to the Republican ad trying to stoke resentment that Obama “passed her over”:

“I’m Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve that message.”

SECOND UPDATE: I forgot to mention that sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 pm central time tonight, Senator Tom Harkin is going to introduce former Republican Congressman Jim Leach at the DNC. Should be worth watching! Leach endorsed Obama earlier this month.

For her incredible performance during the Olympics, which culminated in a gold medal for balance beam.

I have friends whose kids take gymnastics at Chow’s in West Des Moines, and apparently Shawn is so kind and gracious with the kids who look up to her there. She did us all proud.

She was fantastic on the days she earned silver medals in the team exercises, all-around competition and floor exercises. I suspect she would have taken the gold in the floor exercises if she hadn’t been scheduled to perform first in the final. She had a flawless routine, but the judges often leave themselves room to go higher later when they are scoring the first competitor (at least that’s what some of the commentators were saying during other individual competitions). I wouldn’t have blamed her for being very angry, but she was smiling and sportsmanlike in her comments to the media after the competition.

Nastia Liukin, the all-around gold medalist, was amazing as well, even though she may have been robbed of the gold in uneven bars. The Chinese gymnast who won gold in that event through a controversial tiebreaking procedure was reported by the official Chinese agency Xinhua to be 13 years old last year. Gymnasts are required to be at least 16 years old to compete in the Olympics.

There needs to be an investigation of some of the scoring in the gymnastics competitions. Alicia Sacramone (who had to go first in the final for the individual vault competition) ended up finishing fourth by hundredths of a point, even though she landed on her feet, and the Chinese gymnast who won bronze fell to her knees on one landing.

Use this thread for any chatter related to the Olympics. Des Moines native and Roosevelt High School graduate Lolo Jones looked dominating in her semifinal in the hurdles.

UDPATE: Lolo Jones was leading the 100-meter hurdles race until she hit the second to last hurdle. She finished out of the medals, which must have been crushing after she posted a personal best time in the semifinal. Elite-level sports can be a heartbreaking business.

What sports are you watching? I am tired of them showing only the sports Americans can win medals in.

It seems the gymnastics judges are being a little more generous with the girls from China. I didn’t stay up late enough to see if Shawn Johnson won a medal in the individual competition.

One of my friends thinks after the Olympics they will strip China of that team gold medal on the grounds that some of the girls are under 16. I seriously doubt that will happen.

Use this thread to discuss anything related to the Olympics past or present.

Are you watching the Olympics? Which sports do you follow?

We decided to relax our “no tv on while kids are awake” rule so the kids can watch a bit of the Olympics. Already I remember why I loathe network sports coverage. There seem to be two minutes of commercials for every minute of action on NBC.

In 1996 I lived in the Czech Republic and watched hours of coverage of the Atlanta Olympics on state-run Czech television. There were no commercials, and they had extensive coverage of sports where Czechs and Slovaks do well (like canoeing and kayaking).

Watching the gymnastics made the biggest impression on me, though. You could tell that most of the people in the arena were watching large tv screens. There would be huge cheers whenever an American finished a routine. Meanwhile, Czech television was showing all of the gymnasts. You’d see some girl from a different country finish an amazing routine to dead silence from the crowd.

Or, in the middle of a difficult maneuver, the competitors from other countries would have to deal with deafening roars from the crowd as an American finished up on a different piece of equipment.

The crowd was so unsportsmanlike in not acknowledging good performances from non-Americans that I felt embarrassed to face my European colleagues at work.