Diana's Day

TigerBlog may have to start rethinking his position that Ian Darke is the best announcer he's heard in a long time.

After listening to Arlo White during these Olympics, maybe it's just every British announcer who is great.

Okay, no, Darke is still the best. Arlo, who according to his Wikipedia bio was named after singer Arlo Guthrie, is a close second.

He certainly brought his A+ game yesterday to the U.S.-Canada women's soccer game at the Olympics. His performance was perfect, and it needed to be, since this was as good as an athletic event gets. It would hardly do for the play-by-play announcer not to rise to that occasion.

TB understands why people are quick to label recently completed moments as "the greatest ever" or crown athletes as "the best of all-time" without any real historical analysis. Why wouldn't you if you were on TV or something, where the whole show is about making bold statements.

Take Michael Phelps. Is he the greatest Olympian of all time? Maybe. Certainly he has the medals to back it up.

But he's also had the opportunity to win more medals, something that is specific to swimming and gymnastics, which is the sport in which the old record holder for most career medals competed. She was a Soviet gymnast, and TB isn't going to look up her name.

So is Phelps the greatest? He could be. He's done it over time. He's done things in a single Olympics that no one else has ever done. He's done it with a mother who appears to crave the spotlight so much that she could be a Kardashian.

On the other hand, is Phelps a greater Olympian than Usain Bolt? You could discuss this for hours and reach no definitive conclusion, and that's just from this Olympics.

So even with his disdain for making the over-the-top statement, TB will still throw this out there: Yesterday's game was the best soccer game he's ever seen, and it's up there with any game in any sport he's ever watched that wasn't played by the U.S. Olympic hockey team in 1980.

It had it all.

It came in the Olympics, which bring with them a certain level of pressure right off the bat. The game came in the semifinals, which as TB said yesterday, means the difference between guaranteeing a medal and having a shot at gold or having to come back from the disappointment to play another game, this time where a loss means no medal at all.

This was also a game between two neighbors, the one who is the dominant one in the sport (the U.S.) and the other who is constantly getting slapped down (Canada).

And it was on live TV. With Arlo White.

Beyond that backdrop, there was the game itself. Three times, the Canadians took the lead. Three times the Americans came back. Do you ever see that in soccer?

And how many international soccer games have you ever seen that end 4-3 with a goal in the final seconds of stoppage time in the second OT?

Of course, what would a great game be without some controversial officiating. The third American goal came on a penalty kick after a very questionable delay call against the Canadian goalkeeper, followed by a questionable hand ball against the Canadians on the resulting free kick.

If TB could change on thing about international soccer, it would be to have the time kept on the scoreboard. The ref clearly could stop it whenever necessary, like due to injury and all.

In yesterday's game, a rather arbitrary three minutes were added to the final 15-minute OT. The game-winner came with about 30 seconds left. Had it been two minutes rather than three, it would have been off to penalty kicks. Who knows how much time really should have been on the clock at that point.

The Canadian team featured Princeton alum Diana Matheson, who according to TB was the second-best player on her team. And she was definitely the fittest player in the game, as her impact grew as the game went on.

By the end, when everyone was dragging, she was still going full speed.

Her ability to control the ball, to find the right person to pass it to, to defend without fouling, to disrupt the American possessions, to do this all for more than 120 minutes was amazing to watch. It's even more amazing when the fact that she stands a shade below five feet tall and, at least when she was competing at Princeton, wore size 4.5 shoes are factored in.

Matheson along with current assistant coach Esmeralda Negron led Princeton to the 2004 NCAA semifinals, something no other Ivy League women's soccer team had done before or has done since. As he watched the game, TB wondered whether or not Matheson would have had a chance at the U.S. national team had she been American.

Because of Matheson and the underdog factor, TB found himself rooting for the Canadians.

As the game went along, though, it became apparent that this wasn't just another game, even for the Olympics. This was a stunning display by both teams, one where the drama of every moment somehow eclipsed what happened just before it, where the next turn was completely unforeseeable.

In that way, it was fitting that it not come down to PKs, that it be won cleanly, the way the Americans did.

TB isn't sure how Canada bounces back from that. To be so close to a medal and then have to pump the balloon back up again to take on France in the bronze medal game Thursday? That won't be easy at all.

While it was obvious that the Canadians were crushed when it was over, it was just as obvious that it appeared that everyone on the field knew that they had been a part of something extraordinary, a game that was beyond special.

This was as good as athletic competition gets.