A friend recently noted that one of the best parts of watching the Olympics is not having to pay attention to what’s going on with the Presidential election.

While we totally agree with him on that point, we think the best part of the Olympics is trying to figure out why there’s a beach volley ball event on virtually every single night.  Come on! By the time those girls have gotten all the sand out of their nether regions, it’s time to strap on their bikinis and start all over again!

We have to admit that we’ve spent many evenings over the past week sitting on the couch watching those incredible athletes, listening to rhetoric more overheated than Granada (they won their first gold!) and enthralled by Bob Costas’ color coordinated shirts and ties.

As a tribute to all the Games, this week’s “What Else But Indie?” is a salute to Olympic sports, indie style.

Galen Rupp, the silver medalist in the 10,000-meter race, faces the 5,000-meter with counsel from his former high school coach and the company of his training partner, the British runner Mo Farah.

Author W. Bennett, who has run twenty-two marathons, completing more than 515 road races through May 2004, found coaching from another source in his book, Running with Jesus.

“Perhaps”, the book description suggests, “that’s where he [the author] developed the attitude that he could deal with anything with the Lord’s help, but there were many, many things he could not handle unless God helped.”  Amen to that.

Women’s Cross-Country cycling is scheduled for Saturday, August 11 and Men’s for Sunday, August 12. And while most people will be watching to see who crosses the finish line first (will it be Mark Cavendish, the current road cycling world champion and the reigning BBC Sports Personality of the Year?), here at IndieReader we’re going to be looking for visible panty-lines.

Because it turns out—who knew?—cyclists don’t wear them!

How do we know?  Because we checked out A Year Without Underwear, written by Colonel Ralph Monfort, who decided for his fiftieth birthday gift to take a yearlong, forty-one country, fully supported bicycle odyssey.

Written as a series of e-mailed reports from the field, the reader will soon find themselves “vicariously sharing adventures in Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia as if with an old friend.”

An old friend who hasn’t worn underwear.  In a year.

Speaking of steroids (hey, it’s sports, someone’s always talking about anabolic steroids), author Professor Frank (that’s it, no last name…just Professor Frank) has put together, Anabolic Steroids and Making Them, a nifty “comprehensive compilation of making anabolic steroids from their original patents.”

A do-it-yourself manual for those who don’t want to have to, you know, score them from someone else.

Let’s face it…there was tons of controversy over Oscar Pistorius, the 25-year-old South African amputee runner who competed against able-bodied athletes in the 400 meter race. Did he have an advantage? According to Francois Van Der Watt, the prosthetics manager at Ossur Americas in Houston, “In my opinion, there’s no advantage to being an amputee.”

Lew Shaver’s book, Damn Bunch of Cripples, is the “narrative of my education in disability awareness.”  A coach and administrator on the intercollegiate, national and international levels for over 30 years, Shaver has been worked with individuals with disabilities and admits that, “In putting this narrative together, one very real issue I struggled with was how to deal with the present climate of political correctness.”

May we suggest starting with a different title?

While, We’re Gonna Need More Arrows!:Hunting Adventures Around the Country and Around the World is more about killing and eating and less about which country hits the target the most times,  it does involve, well, arrows.

NOTE: Americans scored an upset of South Korea in the semifinals at Lord’s Cricket Ground, but we were crushed an hour later in the gold medal match by Italy.

Mike E. Neilson, “A teacher by trade but a hunter by the grace of God”, has put together a collection of hunting adventures from around the country and around the world.  “Share the adventures as the author tackles water buffalo on two continents with archery tackle. Go along with the author as he hunts red stag, peccary, wild hogs, exotic rams as well as the local wild turkeys and whitetail deer. See the mountains, feel the wind and rain, smell the forest floor as you trek to Australia, Argentina and Mexico searching for game. Travel the states in search of hogs and turkeys with both gun and bow. Live the adventure!”