What You Missed While You Were Watching Michael Phelps

In the first week of the Olympics, Michael Phelps won a ridiculous 8 gold medals, Usain Bolt made the best sprinters in the world look like also-rans, Misty May-Traynor and Kerri Walsh have continued to roll in beach volleyball and the Chinese gymnasts have won what seems like every single available medal. Everyone in the US has seen those events, but there's been a whole lot of other stuff going as well. Here's a quick recap of some of the bigger story lines that didn't get a lot of airtime in the US.

Wrecked and overturned boats, wild storms and days worth of protests ... Sailing has been crazy

First there wasn't enough wind in the Qingdao area to have a sailing competition. Then there was a storm that snapped the sail off a Danish boat and overturned an American one. The Danes ended up winning the 49er class race while borrowing a boat from Croatia, but that kicked off a flurry of protests that 6 hours of deliberation by the judges hasn't cleared up (they are scheduled to reconvene again on Monday to attempt to sort out the mess).

Olympic boxing judging is still broken at best, and corrupt at worst

It's becoming repetitive to complain about judging in boxing at the Olympics, but this year might even be worse than normal. There's already been so many individual complaints that it's impossible to list them all, but the fight involving Ecuador's Luis Porozo might have been the worst. There's been accusations of a pro-Chinese bias in scoring fights, there's been a continuation of the brutal inability of amateur judges to properly score body shots and there's little understanding by any of the boxers on how the scoring system is working. In other words, business as usual in Olympic boxing.

Huge upsets in Archery shocked South Korea

South Korea entered the Olympics as overwhelming favorites in all the archery events, but shocking upsets in both the men's and women's competitions left them without an individual gold medal. The women's tournament was possibly the biggest upset of the entire Olympics as South Korea brought the top 3 archers in the world and had won every women's gold since 1984, but they watched #27 seeded Zhang Juan Juan of China beat all 3 of the Koreans head to head on her way to the gold.

British Cycling had a phenomenal week

First, Nicole Cooke won the women's road race, then Emma Pooley got silver in the time trial. For most cycling teams, that would have been one heck of a week. For Great Britain it was just a start, as they have utterly dominated the track events in the Laoshan Velodrome with wins in the men's team sprint, men's keirin, men's and women's sprints and women's individual pursuit. Of the 7 gold medals given out in track cycling so far, Great Britain has won 5 of them. What is happening in the velodrome is possibly the most dominant show by one team in any sport so far in the Olympics. (ed - corrections made on number of medals)

Brazil and Argentina are facing each other in soccer ... in the semi-finals

The absurdity of the soccer draw has come to a head, as Brazil and Argentina have dominated the field but are still facing each other before the gold medal match. Argentina's Lionel Messi is one of the 2 or 3 best players in the world, and has been the unquestioned star of the tournament with his spectacular play, but Brazil's loaded squad has been equally as good. Both countries sent their best teams possible, the semi-final matchup on Tuesday should be epic. It's just too bad it's not for the gold.