Battle Of The Bulges

The semifinals for the men's 3m springboard diving at the Beijing Olympics were appropriately shown after midnight on NBC. Presumably it was to keep the kiddies and the faint-hearted from seeing the bodacious bulges most of the divers were sporting. Most of the men are on the small side in height but for whatever reason they seem to be full size or larger in the naughty bits area and relatively speaking, it's a sight to see.

Usually the television cameras won't acknowledge that male divers or swimmers even have a body below the waistline if the athletes should dare to bare even the slightest hint of anything more than a Ken doll front. The rules seem to be just a little relaxed for the diving coverage and it is quite a shock to see what we have been missing. You can't help but stare at the rounded protuberance pushing out the fabric, and wonder what's in that pouch? A cup? A codpiece? A flotation device?

With the high-def coverage it all looks pretty real, although with seemingly more tension on the lycra than in the board, you wonder if the divers will spring out before they spring up. Of course the benefit of a couple of pud pounds is that it cans be used as a substantial counter weight when the diver is facing backwards on the end of the board standing on just their toes.

One of the biggest of the big boys is American Troy Dumais. 2008 is his 3rd Olympics, after placing 6th in both Sydney and Athens. It was noted that he has only 4% body fat, which is probably way to little. About Troy from the TMI department, Cynthia Potter blabbed, "He said he had trouble with his bottoms yesterday." Considering that equipment of his, they're probably just a little sore, but it's nice to know there are more than one of them to share the load. Cynthia went on to say, "He didn't kick out and go in as straight as he would like to." Ouch.

Another of the well-endowed buff divers is the ever popular Alexandre Despatie from Quebec. As usual, he showed his stuff, literally. Man, that's what I call a well stuffed tourtière.

Chris Colwill is the other American in the competition. He's just happy to be there although he sometimes look like he doesn't know where there is.

Surprisingly there was a dive shown by Ken Terauchi from Japan. Japan is the country that currently has the 9th most medals at these Olympics but whose athletes NBC has cast as extras in their production. We only get a glimpse of them when the commentators are compelled to explain that somehow someone from a country other than China or the United States has won (during the commercial break?) one of the other medals.

Very sexy is Yahel Castillo from Mexico. He is compact, dark, and handsome. He also has the best haunches by far. He's got that badunkadunk in the rear working for him big time.

I should mention that Reuben Ross from Saskatchewan is cute. Commentator Ted Robinson expressed amazement that Canadians in the middle of that empty space between New York and Alaska could actually have pools and learn how to dive, which didn't seem very nice.

The best diver of the semifinal was He Chong from China. It was too bad that Cynthia Potter and Ted Robinson didn't do a Abbott and Costello routine with the name: "He first.". "Who He?" "He He", etc.

My personal favorite was Illya Kvasha. He's just really charming in a Ukrainian kind of way. Unfortunately, of all the divers I mentioned here, he and Ross were the only ones that didn't end up in the top 12 and on to the finals.

The thing the viewers weren't suppose to hear: before a break to commercial there was about a second of Abba's Dancing Queen heard playing at the venue. From what I know of spectators at men's diving events, it seemed to be a good song choice for the clientele.