I believe Japan may have put a team together in order to have a team for the Olympics. Home team qualifies automatically and according to the commentators, they were not a long-term team with a lot of experience. They just don’t have the strength and stamina of a higher level team. USA has won the last three(I think) gold medals.
If you like handball, you should watch the Sweden vs. Bahrain match. It was a very tightly-contested match.
Sweden won by one goal after being down for two-thirds of the match. Bahrain had a chance to tie with a seven-meter shot to end regulation time, but the keeper saved it.
Since women’s soccer is becoming more popular I wonder if FIFA will age restrict the Olympics in the future.
To the extent that I understand anything, there are already lots and lots of high profile tournaments in the men’s game. World Cup obviously, but then Euros, various continental cups, etc. So adding the olympics as a full-fledged men’s tournament would (at least in FIFA’s eyes) threaten to dull the luster of some of those. But in the women’s game there’s only WC and Olympics that anyone really cares about. And given that they’re already things people care about, seems a bit hard to imagine doing something to make them less important/relevant/promising.
Or more succinctly, the men’s game already existed and had established relevant big tournaments when soccer was added to the Olympics. Not so much for the women’s game.
And, there just aren’t enough women’s teams that are truly competitive on the world stage to warrant that.
Well, there are confederation championships for the women too it’s just that for most of the game there have only been like 3-4 teams that weren’t trash at any given time so the tournaments couldn’t have been very compelling (the US outscored their competition 26-0 in the last tourney). I’m just curious if that will change as the women’s game gets better.
Men’s olympics soccer predates the World Cup, and Uruguay actually wears 4 stars on their jersey to count 2 Olympic victories. So it has been the case in the past that one tournament’s prestige was degraded. Who knows.
How exactly is surfing being scored/judged? I tried to understand what I read about it, but I don’t get it. I see the current heat of surfers in the upper left corner and numbers next to their names.
What does any of this mean?
Women’s softball, USA v Australia was a good one tonight. Walk-off double in extra innings win for the Americans. Pitcher Monica Abbott was impressive. She got into a pinch in the 8th with the bases loaded, walked in a run, and struck out the next batter. And she was hitting 70+ mph on the radar gun consistently through the end of the game! 
I get annoyed by the NBC announcers but their legit happiness at
Ahmed Hafnaoui winning was really nice to see.
Well, I’m currently in the 4th, so thanks for saving me the trouble of watching the rest! 
Sorry!
It’s okay. I’m really not enjoying it anyway. Just too lazy to find something else to watch.
I was really looking forward to the quality of the men’s gymnastics, China vs. Russia vs. Japan, but I’m watching a full replay of the qualifying round and sitting through Artur Dalaloyan’s routines is absolutely miserable. He ruptured his Achilles in April and is apparently competing without medical clearance and every landing has me holding my breath and cringing. After his floor routine he was doubled over and crying. It feels like watching Kerri Strug’s second vault dragged out over 4 hours.
This dude has balls of steel
Im watching the bike race and its sad that there are few fans cheering them on like the recently completed Tour de France.
South Korea did the weirdest thing. I just don’t understand this. From here:
"A South Korean TV network has apologized after using inappropriate images and captions to describe countries during the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony on Friday.
The broadcaster, MBC, used images of pizza to describe Italy, upheaval for Haiti, Chernobyl for Ukraine, salmon for Norway, when athletes from those countries entered the stadium for the opening ceremony.
In its captions broadcasting the ceremony, the network referred to the Marshall Islands as “once a nuclear test site for the United States,” and Syria as the country that has “a civil war going on for 10 years.”
Germany just scored to take the lead in the 74th minute against the Saudis. They are a man down due to a questionable red. A loss will effectively eliminate them. A draw will put them in a must win against Ivory Coast. Footballing wise they seem to have lost their mojo. It seems to me that they try to be too technical.
USA men’s basketball loses!! I’ve been rooting against the USA since the original Dream Team, so this has nothing to do with politics.
Team USA goes down to France in the basketball
I hope this means we send our best in 2024. No picking on the guys who went, but we need more NBA top talent to step up again. I hope when it is in LA in 2028, people volunteer to win this thing.