If you mean the first at this Olympics, yes. If you mean the first ever for a US woman fencer, no - Mariel Zagunis won women’s saber in ‘04 and ‘08.
It is, however, the first ever Olympic gold medal for a US foil fencer, male or female. It’s a pretty big deal.
It still cost $15 billion or so for the London Games. Not nearly as crazy expensive as Beijing or Sochi but still a lot.
But at least it wasn’t money spent on buildings that are just sitting there as eyesores. And, all the handy maps and guides around are definitely good tourist infrastructure
Some of this is already the case. At the parade of nations, one country was represented by a sports official because its three athletes were all marathoners and don’t travel for more than a week. And I think they’re expected to leave if their event is over early.
And the IOC changed the rules a couple of years ago to allow the venues to be spread around a country or to allow joint bids. I think, in fact, that Oslo and Stockholm were thinking of a joint bid for the 2022 Games.
Hmm, I did a cursory Google search and it looks like you are correct. I must not have been paying close enough attention over the past couple of years.
Good thing the IOC honchos are finally starting to emerge from the rock they’ve been living under. I hope this change leads to some interesting nations who’ve never hosted before getting their time in the sun.
Presumably that neither Norway nor Sweden wanted to host the 2022 Winter Games was a huge wake-up call for them. I mean, many of the winter sports originated in the Scandinavian countries (it’s called Nordic skiing for a reason). If they don’t want to do it, what does that tell you?
Most major cities have at least one of those, there are plenty of opportunities to use a good pool. Also platform diving occurs often enough - many US colleges have aquatic centers with all the basic features. They just don’t have the seating, broadcast, and security features.
I’m not suggesting that all the indoor events be in the same building. Some of them are big draws with arena seating, some of them are smaller. I just wonder if it would bring the costs down if the Games were four weeks long and used some of the buildings twice.
I don’t know if viewer fatigue would be an issue. The Olympics already do certain events in sequence. Swimming is a big event during the first week, and track-and-field is during the second week.
The Boston bid for 2024 was going to use a lot of existing facilities; TD Garden, Gillette Stadium, Harvard Stadium, and arenas at BU and UMass Lowell. According to Wikipedia, they needed to build a velodrome, aquatics center, and a temporary stadium for the track-and-field. Not cheap by any means, but better than a site that has to build everything from scratch.
BTW, apropos of nothing, it seems to me that by now most of the major world cities have hosted; London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, with the notable exception of New York City.
NYC did bid in 2012 but didn’t get chosen.
I would guess NYC is just too crowded to make an Olympics work.
As far as I can tell, that was the only time NYC ever bid for the Games and yet the 2000-person town of Lake Placid upstate has hosted the Winter Games twice. And I don’t buy density as a reason for it not to work; it’s only really dense in Manhattan and both Tokyo and Beijing hosted, and they’re pretty dense.
The disruption to a city required by the Olympics is major. The reason the citizens of Boston rejected the idea of an Olympic bid wasn’t just the cost, it was the massive chaos that would take place during the games. It requires designated certain traffic lanes for exclusive use by Olympic officials, shutting down other roads and bridges, etc. NYC would be able to handle it better than Boston, but it would still be a cluster.
Hosting the Olympics is kind of like moderating this board; I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do it but I appreciate that they do.
How big of an upset was this, France over USA in basketball?
Pretty big, I guess. USA’s last loss was in 2004 I think they said.
Now, not being sarcastic or casting dispersions on the sport, but I’m watching Japan V Mexico in Soccer, and I’m hearing this strange sound. What the hell is that??? Rewind, make sure its on the broadcast, and not in my house. Nope. It’s coming from the TV.
I swear to god, I’m hearing crickets in the stadium! 
It was in 2000, and I’m pretty sure what was said was, it was the first Greek track & field win in the Olympics since Spirodon Louis won the Marathon in 1896.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think each surfer gets a 0-10 score for each wave they ride, and their top two scores in any round are combined for their final score. The “P” numbers appear to be “priority” numbers; if more than one surfer is trying to surf a wave, the one with the lower priority number at that point gets to ride it.
Sorry about the three posts in a row, but I missed the edit window.
I think it’s because only the four in blue count towards the team score. Two of them are eligible in only one apparatus. I want to say that in the qualifying round, all four compete on each apparatus, and the low score on each one is tossed out, and in the finals, the coach chooses three per apparatus (not necessarily the same three for each one), and all three count.
I distinctly remember the commentator emphasizing that it was the first Greek win in a short distance run since the ancient games (which it was), but I have no cite for the comment – just my memory.
Brian
Let’s hear it for the equestrians! Worth getting up at 4 a.m. EDT for the team dressage. There’s also a highlights segment on NBC Sports in the early afternoon (1 p.m.ish). Individual dressage takes place on Tuesday and Wednesday (freestyle), followed by 3-day eventing (Thurs., Fri., Saturday, Monday) and then showjumping second week. In between I’ll just watch the evening NBC coverage of the rest of the sports.