The real story that Bob Costas won’t discuss — because NBC invested $900 million in broadcast rights for Beijing and had to deliver a feel-good Olympics for their advertisers — is the explosive dimension of athlete activism before the Games.  Jacques Rogge won’t discuss it either.  But as IOC president, Rogge was surely involved in pre-Games defusing of a dangerous and complicated situation that involved a number of countries.  It was international sports realpolitik at its best.

Former Olympic athlete Lauren Meece, who competed in Judo in 2000, is angry about some perceived push by gays to get Olympic athletes to come out, and she wants gays to shut up. She wrote a column for the Express Gay News:

The GLBT community should let gay athletes deal with gay issues off of the podium. In the name of the Olympic spirit and humanity… shut up and let gay athletes focus on the endeavors that they have worked so hard to reach.

Natasha Kai of the U.S. was not the only out woman to stand on a soccer victory podium.  German lesbian midfielder Linda Bresonik stood with her victorious teammates after Germany beat Japan 2-0 for the bronze.  At home, she plays with the SG Essen-Schoenbeck as well as the national team.  

In the softball finals, the U.S.  team went down to Japan 3-1 in a huge upset.  But hey, we did get a silver, not a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.  Which meant that hitter/second baseman Vicky Galindo (who is bi) and out lesbian catcher Lauren Lappin were showing off their medals with their teammates. 

It’s tough enough running a 200m race against the best sprinters in the world, and it’s hard enough to do it in 85-degree weather. But to have to wear a full body suit when everyone else is in shorts and tanktops: borderline cruel. That’s what Bahrain sprinter Roqaya Al-Gassra faced these Olympics, holding to Islamic law and covering all of her body but her face and hands as she ran through to the semifinals and missed the finals by 0.11 seconds.

Out at the Rowing/Canoeing Park, the atmosphere was surprisingly casual. One little grandstand full of people, Chinese rock music playing, and 25 women diving off a jetty for the start.  Since they weren’t swimming in lanes, they had huge black numbers inked on their arms. Camera crews in boats got you as close to the swimmers as in the Water Cube. The online commentator mentioned that Russia’s Larisa Ilchenko was doing what she is known for — lurking just off the pace, drafting, drafting, then sprinting for the lead at the end.  It worked, and she won the first gold, with a time of 1:59:27.7. Great Britain took silver and bronze. The U.S.’s Chloe Sutton finished  23rd. The Chinese swimmer was DNF. There was a patter of applause, and that was it. History sometimes get made very quietly.

It was “focus on females” as the network honed into synchronized swimming, more gymnastics and the individual dressage finals. While the frenzied Phelps medal race was on, the Netherlands’ Anky van Grunsven has been quietly pursuing her third Olympic gold. This is a huge achievement in dressage, where you can’t pile up medals the way you can in swimming.  In all Olympic history, no individual rider has collected more than two golds.  Van Grunsven and Germany’s Isabell Werth, the two grandes dames, have been dueling for years.

What a thrilling quarterfinal match in women’s volleyball between the U.S. and Italy. The Americans were down 2 sets to 1 after losing the third set badly, 25-19, but they stormed back to win the fourth set and crushed the defending World Cup champions in the tiebreaker, 15-6. The star was Lindsey Berg, who substituted in late and sparked the Americans on their come-from-behind run. One question for volleyballers: Why are the first four sets played to 25 points, but the crucial fifth set is played to only 15? Seems odd to me.

New to the Olympics: marathon swimming, to be held at the Rowing-Canoeing Park in Beijing starting tomorrow, August 20th. The Park is a lake-size sheet of water where the winds can kick up some nasty 2-3-foot whitecaps. The 10K swim for women is August 20, and the men’s swim on August 21. Swimmers will make several rounds of the park for the distance.  The U.S.A.’s Chloe Sutton is a heavy favorite to win, according to one sport swim site I found.

LGBT interest here: Our own Diana Nyad was one of the great pioneers of this daunting sport, so she’s partly responsible for the fact that it has finally been granted Olympic status.  

While most everybody was watching Phelps collect another gold medal, some of us were watching the U.S. softball team collect Chinese Taipei 7-0. Two out women are playing on the U.S. team, contributing to their huge winning streak. In fact, Vicki Galindo (who is bi) is becoming a valued player. Listed as 2nd and 3rd baseman, she’s also emerging as a hitter. Though slender as a reed, she packs a wallop - which is why they sent her in to back up Crystl Bustos, who was already on 1st base. Vicki made her first Olympic hit and got Bustos home. Meanwhile lesbian Lauren Lappin is being the competent infield catcher.

The Germans continue to absolutely dominate in dressage.  Isabell Werth is a grande dame with piles of world championships and five Olympic golds, including this new one.  Watching her negotiate the grand prix test on her 12-year-old gelding Satchmo, I was struck by her image of confident traditional female in top hat and snow-white stock tie.  She was guiding her horse-shaped universe with such complete invisible control that she looked like a statue in a park.  We’ve gotten so used to seeing high profile women like Britney Spears come unglued on TV — even the spectacle of our U.S. female gymnasts struggling so nakedly with all their emotions and nerves in Beijing — that it’s startling to see a woman who projects such an opposite image.

A friend of mine derisively calls the American women’s girls gymnastics team “America’s Sweethearts”.  That is, when he’s not derisively calling them “The Pixies”. Watching the team finals competition the other night on NBC, I got increasingly creeped out by the whole thing.

German fencing champion Imke Duplitzer – one of the 10 out athletes in Beijing — may have missed a gold medal yesterday in women’s individual épée, but she should get a diamond-studded platinum medal for speaking out on human rights. Gorgeous gutsy Imke is right in the middle of that firestorm in China, around the PRC’s human-rights policy. As far as I know, she is the only one of our 10 who has spoken up.

We praise these young athletes when they succeed, so we might as well call it like it is when they don’t. Last night, with the Chinese women’s gymnastics team’s lead slipping to just 1.00 point with just the floor exercise remaining, American gymnast Alicia Sacramone completely choked, falling on her butt and stepping out of bounds. Her score was a miserable 14.125 and the Americans’ hope for gold was over. This followed Sacramone’s fall off the balance beam. Her mistakes in these two events were the difference between gold and silver. Choke.