Matthias Steiner wins gold in the men’s +105kg category.

Clean & Jerk 258 kg / 568 lbs
Snatch 203 kg / 447 lbs

Matthias Steiner wins gold

His wife died tragically in a car crash in July 2007. Awe inspiring performance from him.

Michael Phelps is going after eight gold medals in Beijing. He has started in fine form, his time of 4:07.82 in the heats of the 400m individual medley was 1.44 seconds faster than the next fastest competitor, and a new Olympic record.

Can he do it? He seems to be completely focused on it, even passing on appearing at the opening ceremony. If he makes it will he go down as the greatest Olympian ever? I am no swimming fan, but this is going to be something to watch!

Update 1: 1 down, 7 to go. A dominating performance, he smashed his own world record by 1.41 seconds.

Update 2: Gold number 2 came in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. The U.S. team won in a world-record time of 3 minutes, 8.24 seconds.

Update 3: Gold number 3! He blew away the field in the 200-meter freestyle and set another world record (1 minute, 42.96 seconds)

Update 4: Gold number 4 and 5! He won the 200-meter butterfly, setting yet another world record and then swam the leadoff of a runaway victory by the U.S. 800 freestyle relay team, which shattered the old world mark by more than four seconds.

Update 5: Gold number 6, world record number 6! Phelps dominated right from the start of the 200-meter individual medley and won in one minute 54.23 seconds.

Update 6: Gold number 7! Wow that was his toughest one yet, he won by one-hundredth of a second! To be honest I really didn’t think he was going to take this one. 50.58s vs 50.59s! The first non world record swim as well, though he broke the Olympic record.

Update 7: Gold number 8, world record number 8. The most dominate performance in Olympic history?

8 gold medals, 7 world records in these Olympics. 16 total Olympic medals, 14 of them gold. Absolutely incredible.

President Bush made a surprise visit to the beach volleyball venue, where he watched the U.S. men’s and women’s teams practice.

Here he is with the 2004 gold medal winners Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. The bikini-clad players eventually drew him on to the court to participate in a warm-up drill bumping the volleyball back and forth.

May-Treanor bent over and offered the President a chance to give her a spank on the ass (you know, the whole “nice play” thing people do in sports these days…), instead, he playfully used the back of his hand to tap her on the small of her back. Missed opportunity I’d say.

Looks like President Bush might just be a fan. Cheerleader-in-chief?