'FOX Sports' - Ian O'connor names Jason Lezak as his "Sportsman of the Year"

Ian O'Connor wrote a very fun article about Jason Lezak overcoming significant odds to defeat Alain Bernard in the final leg of the 4x100 relay to make Lezak his "Sportsman of the Year."

On the morning of Aug. 11 in Beijing, Phelps was the wailing baby, a relay journeyman named Jason Lezak was the distraught mother and a French terminator named Alain Bernard was the 2-ton car.

This is the story of how my Sportsman of the Year got those four wheels off the ground.

[Link]

I am loving those mixed metaphors but Terminators come from "Austria-Kaleefornia" not France.

Two other aspects of the article that were missed: The press keeps playing up the Alain Bernard remark that "...We will smash them," but that statement was severely lost in translation and portrayed the French as little "Gary Halls.'"

If an American 4x100 free relay team said to the swim press, "we will beat them." An American or a Brit would read that as "our team is going to win," They would not read it as "we are going to mug them" or "we are going to inflict repeated blows."

There is no translation for the word "beat" in French that morphs the word into "defeat" like we do in English. They use the word smash which has the exact same meaning. English is a very colorful language with lots of nuance; there were translation issues here that portrayed the French incorrectly .

The second thing that bothered me is that they showed a photo of the 4x100 Medley relay team rather than the 4x100 free relay team thereby excluding Cullen Jones along with Garret Weber-Gale who both contributed significant swims to the victory.