I'm about a week too slow on this news, but there was an interesting American-Dutch connection last week, in Australia. The World Championships in swimming were held in Melbourne last week. The famous Dutch swimmer, Pieter van den Hoogenband, was there in full effect. He is the pride of Dutch swimming. He's not bad looking either. But while googling him yesterday, I found out he is married and has a newborn son, and he's only 29!!! That's rather un-Dutch.
Ok, those personal comments aside, Pieter's biggest competitor has been US swimmer Ian Thorpe. However, he recently retired from swimming, and the big dawg is now Michael Phelps. This 21 year old from Baltimore is some super hero in swimming, if you didn't know. He appeared out of nowhere at the last summer Olympics and took everyone by storm, at the age of 19. He even broke the world record in 4 individual events just last week! They called him 'dolphin-like'. He beat Pieter by a full 2 seconds in the 200 m freestyle, and Pieter was not even doing poorly!
And all last weekend, the sports news was full of this world championship coverage and shock that Phelps broke 4 WR, and left Pieter in his wake. They just cannot understand how he can be that fast. They cannot understand how he can beat Pieter! Pieter cannot even understand it. He's already rethinking his training and approach to the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing because of Phelps' recent performance.
This is just another example of a flourishing, competitive American-Dutch relationship. Except this one is in sports. :-)
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