Olympic Thoughts:

• Hope she doesn’t get booted off the team for racism:

Swimmer turns down LeBron

Lauren Perdue is one of the United States’ top swimmers, and on Wednesday she swam the first leg of the 4×200 women’s freestyle relay. That’s nice and all, and she’ll likely take home some hardware, but her primary notoriety is coming from a couple of tweets she sent out last week.

Just before the Games began, she tweeted, “Lebron James just invited me to dinner…Um wuuuutttt?!?” Around that time, the photo at right showed up on Perdue’s Instagram account. That is most definitely LeBron, trendy dork glasses and all.

Here’s that picture:

Here’s another I swiped from her twitter feed:

That tweet (from the story) doesn’t appear to be on her twitter page anymore. And, the way Perdue describes it, James was really just heading for the cafeteria and asked her along. He wasn’t asking her for a date or anything. And there doesn’t seem to be any hint that she’s in any trouble over the whole thing.

I really only used this story because I like those pictures.

• Olympic rowers work so hard their bodies cease to function as anything but extras in Ben-Hur

I’m remembering this right, right? There was a slave-ship part in “Ben Hur?”

The story:

Olympic legend Matthew Pinsent, who retired after winning the last of his four gold medals for Great Britain at the Athens Games in 2004, revealed how it is not uncommon for rowers’ senses, such as their hearing and even their vision, to shut down during a race due to the physical side effects of the sport’s torturous test of spirit.

…Athletes have been known to suffer from memory loss. The sight of an Olympian throwing up over the side of the boat after a race is not uncommon.

Pinsent described how it takes a few moments for the initial pain to set in, but once it does, the remainder of a race is nothing but punishment for the competitors.

I was a member of the University of Wisconsin’s freshman crew team for…oh, about half a year, and I never experienced anything like that.

Of course, the reason I was a member of UW’s freshman crew team for half a year was: I sucked. Which may be why I never experienced anything like that.

• The Olympic Picture of the Day:

Well played, NBC. Found at Twitchy.