We're Not So Bad After All

Anyone else notice where Canada now stands in the Beijing Games medal standings?
If you base it on number of golds won — which seems to be the way they're doing things on the official Olympic website — then Canada rates a tie for 15th with nine other countries. Using the total medals earned puts Canada 17th, but its seven medals rank only one back of Cuba, Kazakhstan and Romania, who share 14th position.
In other words, we're on the cusp of being exactly where the Canadian Olympic Committee predicted we'd wind up (top 16) before these Games in Beijing started. A standing, we should add, that a lot of folks thought ludicrous when our gang was still sitting on a goose egg Friday night.
Funny what one huge weekend can do to change that perception. Double digits in the medal count doesn't seem that far off anymore, does it?
*****
One more staggering number about a guy who's authored many in the past week.
An average of 31.1 million viewers tuned into NBC's Saturday prime-time coverage of the Beijing Games, making it the most-watched Saturday evening program on the network since 1990.
By the way, Michael Phelps, the guy most responsible for making that happen, was four years old at the time.
Phelps' record-breaking performance (eight gold medals in the Water Cube, more than any other Olympian at a single games) has put NBC Universal (seven networks) on pace to record the highest total audience for an Olympic Games in U.S. television history. With 191 viewers through Saturday, NBC's numbers are already higher than the 17-day totals for Salt Lake City 2002 (187 million) and Sydney 2000 (185 million).
Saturday night's audience peaked at nearly 40 million between 11-11:30 p.m., when the U.S. won the men's 4x100-metre medley relay, earning Phelps his eighth gold.
Oh, that program on NBC 18 years ago that rated higher than the Phelps show last night? Empty Nest, starring Richard Mulligan, which drew 31.4 million viewers on Feb. 24, 1990.