Heck, I wonder what his 9.69 could have been if he hadn’t showboated for the last 5 meters.
There is a beach volleyball court at my kid’s (very small) high school. It’s just a sand pit between the tennis courts and the big flat grassy area used for sundry activities that require a big flat grassy area. It’s the size of about eight parking spaces.
The very big university she is going to has a couple of courts just outside the rec center. Just a big rectangle of sand cut out of the huge grassy area between the rec center, some residence halls and one of the libraries.
Are you referring to the race in which Usain Bolt appeared to look to the side and grin at the camera, mid-race?
That was a thing of Beauty! Turn the corner, hit the smoke and leave the other three just looking stupid! The camera angle from behind was amusing. They all just kinda shook their heads in dismay! (Yeah, I know. They were seeing who was gonna make a break, but it sure looked funny!)
In the 1988 Summer Olympics, American Carl Lewis won the men’s 100M final with a time of 9.92s.
In this year’s Olympics, Jamaican Oblique Seville ran a 9.91 in the final and finished last.
It’s the first time in history that eight men have broken 10 seconds in a wind-legal race.
Well, yeah, tho at the very end. Estimates I subsequently found online indicated that it could easily have been quicker than his later 9.58 time, maybe 9.52.
I remember an episode of The Graham Norton Show in which Usain Bolt was a guest and Graham showed that photo.
We just watched the Women’s road race (bicycle). Mrs. L.A. said, ‘Well, that was worth burning my rice over!’ (In actuality, she didn’t burn it. It just boiled over.) The woman from Alaska won Gold in under four hours.
- Carlos Yulo wins the Men’s Vault, making him the first multiple gold medal winner in Philippine history.
- Nesthy Petecio handily beat her Chinese opponent in Women’s Boxing 57 kg quarter final, guaranteeing her at least a bronze medal.
Wow. Brazil vs. Poland Women’s Volleyball was a barn-burner. I thought for sure Brazil had the match won, then Poland caught on fire. Brazil did eventually win… with a score of 38-36. Not that I watch a lot of volleyball, but I’ve never seen scores that high.
ETA: The Polish coach looks like he’s cruising for a heart attack.
Just saw some kayak cross. I never realized kayaking could be a contact sport. I like the fact that they have to roll under a bar.
Faulkner didn’t originally qualify for the Olympics for road racing. She was qualified for track cycling (which she will also compete in). At the last minute (well, technically the last month) one of the road cyclists dropped from the team and Faulkner was brought in as alternate.
Track cycling tends to favor speed over endurance. While Faulkner has won (non-Olympic) road events in the past, track cycling is more her thing. Which means she was likely faster at a sprint than almost every body else in the field, or at least faster than the favorites were.
So she pulled away from the other road leaders at practically a full sprint speed with a distance shorter than she’s trained at for track cycling. So combined with the fact that this wasn’t her first road race, the odds were pretty high that no one else was likely to catch her because she didn’t appear like she was going to run out of energy. It no doubt came as a surprise to the other leaders (especially considering she was a practical nobody in this race) when she did so, but they had to weigh the high odds of getting a medal if they didn’t pursue (since there were effectively four people competing for three medals) versus trying to catch up with someone who was in her element at that moment and possibly missing out on the medal race entirely when the pursuer ran out of juice and would be overtaken by the other two.
Saw the women’s individual all-around. Highly entertaining as always, but not much drama (despite NBC’s rah-rah hypemeisters constantly trying to convince me that there was). A couple Italians and an Algerian (There’ll be another time… ) looked strong in the early going and just couldn’t keep it up in the second half. That left Suni Lee to erase all remaining doubts by gutting out a clean floor routine and locking up bronze, and Simone Biles needing to nail a tough beam and floor routine with an injured calf to reach the top of the mountain again and doing just that. In the middle was the stellar Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, who, how should I put this, gave the greatest effort of everyone not named Simone Biles (ultimately finishing a shade under 1.2 points back). To her credit, she was respectful enough to get on the floor and wave the flag after the competition even though she stated beforehand that she wanted to beat Biles and had to be a bit miffed that moment. I find it more than a little stunning that Biles, at age 27 and with a closet full of medals, is just now…JUST NOW…starting to give up ground to the rest of the world.
Field hockey: Not my favorite game, but I’ll watch it whenever it’s on. Only seen the Argentina-USA opener so far (that unfortunately got cut off due to, ahem, inflexible time blocks). Stylewise it’s pretty similar to soccer with the large field and heavy emphasis on ball control. However, because the rules are not hellbent on putting the offenses in cement shoes, there are plenty of good scoring chances and a savvy team can capitalize on them. It’s actually comparable to the more familiar hockey in which if you mishandle the puck or make a bad pass, no outrageously generous “offside” is going to save you from Leon Draisaitl. I can actually get a feel for which team is better. And of course, I can’t not support a women-only event.
Skeet shooting: I remember seeing this a long time ago (on ESPN, I believe) and seeing close-up shots of where the bullets hit. I think that would’ve been a great idea here, inasmuch as all I could ever make out were guns being pointed into the distance and some puffs of red smoke. Another event where I have to ask, who the heck enjoys watching this? I get the sense that amazing athleticism is being performed here, but damned if I can figure out what it is.
3x3 basketball: Still don’t get what’s the big deal. I always thought major sporting events like the Olympics were for getting away from the street.
As for Noah Lyles in the 100m, the expression “You take a shot at the king, you’d better not miss.” comes to mind.
Robot_Arm - I’m familiar enough with sports radio. But when an athlete has to withdraw from competition due to a completely unforeseen medical condition which is potentially lethal, and the intellectual amoebas respond by getting genuinely outraged and calling her a quitter and a traitor, after everything she’s accomplished, I think that’s a little more serious than whining about Clayton Kershaw’s playoff chokes or Tuo Tagovailoa’s contract.
John_Difoo - Yeah. NBC didn’t show even one of their routines. What happened? Even if they lost all their best coaches, with this pedigree someone should’ve made a run at the top 5.
Spoons - I only noticed a couple of soccer games, but basketball, both standard and 3x3, is all over the place (even between non-American teams!), and there’s been altogether way too much damn tennis. The thing that grinds me about modern tennis is that it’s so draggy. All the cheers and shouts and posturing and pacing and glaring and the judge desperately trying to get everyone settled down again…AFTER. EVERY. POINT. And let’s not forget challenges, which can easily eat up another 1-2 minutes each.
Red_Wiggler - Video here. Femke Bol is one of those names that for various reasons I only get familiar with after becoming a soaring superstar. I remember seeing her at a Diamond League mixed 4x400 earlier this year, and it was almost eye-gouging seeing her take control in the anchor spot. She reminds me of a young Jessie Graff: so amazingly powerful that NBC can’t ignore her any longer.
Mahaloth - I watched that. For the record, the Korean, Kim Woojin, had won the gold in this event four straight times going in. Man, this is one of those times when it completely, royally sucks to be second. You make it that far, you finally have a chance to topple the indomitable king, you take him to the absolute brink, and then…you come up short by an EYELASH. And then it’s another four years of what-coulda-beens and if-onlys and just-a-millimeter-here-or-theres. Unbelievably brutal. (Aside: What do you think of Joe Kovacs finishing second to Ryan Crouser in shot put three Olympiads in a row? I’m thinking something along the lines of “Damn, maybe I should have stuck to football like my dad insisted.”)
What do you mean? Surely men also play field hockey.
Took the opportunity to delve into the individual sports. Watched some archery, handball, and track and field (I ran in HS). Confirmed my impression that it is a little interesting to see the different sports and how they are competed at the highest level, but also confirmed my impression that I’m not all that interested in watching most all athletic competition. (Sorry, don’t mean to yuck anyone’s yum.)
Canada wins its first ever gold in the most inaccurately named event, the hammer throw.
What’s odd here is the winner, Ethan Katzberg, is only 22. That’s amazingly young in a strength event - he is the youngest winner in the event ever. He won the event easily, just absolutely blowing the field away; the gap between him and the silver medallist was greater than the gap between silver and 10th. It was the biggest margin of victory in the event in 104 years. The competition was basically over upon his first throw. Katzberg could win this gold a few more times.
Yup, at this Olympics. Tomorrow is the men’s semifinals, Netherlands v. Spain and India v. Germany.
It is not the most highly publicized event.
And it’s not as if men’s field hockey was added recently as some sort of equality thing. Men’s field hockey has been in the games since 1908 while women’s hockey was added in, I think, 1980. And for a long time India was dominant.
Right now on USA I’m watching something called Sport Climbing. Not exactly riveting, but somewhat interesting.