The Enumerative: Best Names at the Games

Welcome to our incredibly innovative feature, The Enumerative. Because lists are awesome, plus effective time killers, in this space we'll provide a top five based loosely on something that has recently occurred in the sporting world.

It was the men’s track and field 100 meter final that made me realize what my subconscious had been telling me since almost the start of the Beijing Olympics – man, there are some righteous names floating around at these Games.

In my humble opinion, here are the top five:

5. Efthalia Koutroumanidou - Yeah maybe I’ve been watching too much of the Olympics, but I caught this Greek beach volleyball darling in a prelim against one of the Chinese juggernauts and the rest of the day I was saying her name to myself like it was a mantra. I accented it thusly – “eff-THA-lee-ah COO-TROO (caesura) MAN-ih-doo.” It’s like a bleedin’ ‘aiku now innit?

4. Richard Thompson - I know the name in and of itself isn’t much, but when I learned that the very same man who wrote “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” was also an Olympic sprinter for Trinidad and Tobago, well, to say I was impressed at the breadth of the man’s talents is to understate the case considerably.

3. Libby Trickett - Libby Trickett? Libbiny Snickett? Jiminy Cricket? What is she, an animal in a Disney movie? Or a Dickens character? “Please mum, may I have more porridge with my peas before I swim the 400IM through the swampy streets of London?”

2. Nastia Liukin - If I was writing a novel about Olympic gymnastics and I was going to have a short, spunky, fresh-faced America’s darling character and an evil, leggy, ice-maiden Moscow-born villain character, I might have named the spunky one “Shawn Johnson”, but I never would have thought to name the evil one “Nastia Liukin” because it’s just too perfectly awesome and I don’t have that good an imagination.

1. Usain Bolt - As if there was any doubt on number one – The Sprinter Who Is Also a Superhero. Of course there is the whole “Lighting Bolt” business, which is indeed the ill mcdill to the tenth power of ill, but let us not forget the first name “Usain,” which in my personal opinion is just plain insane in the membrane. And for all those haters out there who think he shouldn’t have pulled up early to start his celebration, just remember that superheroes are different than you and me and they can do whatever they damn well please.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.