No love for Kosovo, which also won its first gold medal (and I think first of any color, considering that this is the first summer Olympics in which it has competed as a separate nation)?
Speaking of Olympic judo (the event in which Kosovo won its gold), I was half-expecting to hear that Fabio Basile would have his gold medal taken away after failing to show proper respect at the end of his match (you are supposed to bow to your opponent and the referee at the end - and that drinking gesture with the hand was seriously pushing it).
My son is six years old, so this is the first Summer Olympics he has been old enough to understand. He has been loving every minute of it! Doesn’t matter the sport, he is fascinated. It’s a joy to watch.
Considering how many world records have been set in swimming, I can’t help but think that there’s going to be an announcement in the next week or two: “All world records set in swimming events at the 2016 Summer Olympics are erased, owing to the fact that a remeasurement of the pool revealed that it is, in fact, only 50 yards (45.72m) long.”
I wouldn’t put something like this past anybody - remember a few years ago, when, during the gymnastics event, when the vault was lowered from the men’s height to the women’s height, it was lowered 5 cm (2 inches) too much?
Random stuff: Nice comeback by the US Women in Volleyball vs. Netherlands.
Lame, lame 1980’s video-game graphics used in the challenges. Just show us the replay, okay? (Beach Volleyball)
That gal Mary Whipple (?), commentator for rowing? Talk about a voice for Telegraph! Where’s the mute button on this new remote?
I always watch waaaay to much of this stuff. Even stuff I have no interest in. I watched women’s basketball the other day. Today, caught some women’s rugby and ping-pong, fer Christ’s sake!
How do you know if you don’t care about rugby and table tennis until you’ve tried watching them?
That’s what I love about the Olympics, the chance to see events that I don’t get the chance otherwise, and done by the best in the world. I watched some fencing and archery today; hope to see some shooting, sailing, and equestrian before the Games are over.
My daughter is 7 and my son is 5. Same here. Hugely into it.
I’d say for national pride, but tennis has the Davis cup, which is also played for no money and represents country over individual. And it is every single year.
Yesterday I caught some of the Handball competition. I was so confused - I thought handball was banging a rubber ball with your hand against a wall in an indoor court. This was a combination of basketball and hockey, with no ice. Fast and fun to watch.
While watching some women’s synchronized diving (?) I did a double take when Tania Cagnotto won her first ever Olympic medal, a silver, in this her FIFTH Olympics.
That’s some serious tenacity, but geez. I think I’m really spoiled by American athletes, because my first thought when I heard that is how do you get to keep representing your country without success? After the second or third time with no medals, you’d think they’d find someone else.
When I hear 5-time Olympian, I think of stories like Michael Phelps: More medals than you can shake a stick at.
American diver Troy Dumais qualified for four Olympics and only won one career medal in the very last one, a bronze in the 2012 men’s 3m springboard synchro.
Since I haven’t seen this reported outside cycling press, van Vleuten is more or less okay. Severe concussion and three “minor” fractures in her lower back, and she’s tweeted about leaving the hospital soon. In a Dutch-language interview she seems more upset about the lost opportunity than the injuries. Given that I thought she was dead or paralyzed with the way she just lay motionless on the side of the road, a pretty good outcome.
If you keep winning your country’s Olympic qualification competition, you can keep going to the Olympics, even if you don’t win any medals. After all, it indicates that that country has nobody better to send in that event.
That’s some sterling logic you’ve got going on there.
“The absolute best person we’ve got couldn’t manage a medal last time around, so this time why don’t we send our second-best person and see if they do any better?”
I think you also need to meet some standard, like top-20 in the world rankings, to go to the Olympics at all, depending on the sport. If all 207 teams sent their three best divers the competition would take all summer.
The Philippines rather unexpectedly won a silver medal in Women’s 53 kg Weightlifting. The Chinese frontrunner had already set a World Record in the snatch but inexplicably failed all three of her clean and jerk attempts. This moved everyone else up in the rankings - [del]Taiwan[/del]Chinese Taipei got gold, Philippines silver and South Korea bronze. This is the Philippines’ first medal in 20 years. The medalist, Hidilyn Diaz, is the country’s first weightlifter and the first Filipina to win an Olympic medal.
ETA: I should qualify that by saying she’s the country’s first weightlifter to qualify for the Olympics. Rio is actually her third Olympic games.
The gymnastics just makes my jaw drop. Anybody who hasn’t tried apparatus like the rings or the pommel horse has no idea how hard they are — I’d guess 90% of people wouldn’t be able to do a single required move on them, even allowing for terrible form. And yet, the Olympic-caliber gymnasts make it look so easy.
Diving - and, for that matter, swimming, and track & field - does have a standard that every athlete needs to meet in a qualifying period in order to be eligible.
Well, that’s not entirely true; in both swimming and track & field, any country that does not qualify anybody of a particular gender in any event is allowed to enter one athlete of that gender in one event. Almost always, it’s the 100m in track & field and the 50m freestyle in swimming, although some countries enter the 100 free instead, and I vaguely recall a story about a country that used its “free entry” to include some high ranking official’s brother in something like the marathon.
For example, the men’s 100 freestyle minimum qualifying time is normally 50.70 seconds, but it includes swimmers from Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, and Nepal, none of whom were under 58 seconds in the qualifying period. Usually, they are ignored unless there’s a story involved (I think in Beijing, one of the “free” qualifiers ended up being the only person in his heat when the other two false started; it turns out that he had to train in a hotel pool that’s only about 20m long as it’s pretty much the only pool in the entire country); I have a feeling the only mention this year will be the swimmer from the Refugee Team (there is one in the women’s 100 freestyle as well), whose best time is 55.59.
