Bobbing for Medals: 2024 Edition
We spend most of the day watching the Olympics, so you don’t have to.
I believe the official display of the 2024 Olympics for athletes (though mostly women) is what’s known as the “Taylor Swift,” putting one’s fingers and thumb together to form a heart shape, replacing the previous choice of waving, blowing kisses or tapping one’s chest. I don’t say this pejoratively or in praise – just that it’s something (after hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of watching) that I’ve noticed.
What a tremendous Gold medal women’s soccer match between Team USA and their big rival Brazil. At the half, 0-0. And then twelve minutes into the second half, Mallory Swanson scored her fourth goal of the games, and the U.S. held on to win 1-0. As I’ve noted, I’m especially biased, too, because Mallory Swanson is married to the Chicago Cubs' shortstop Dansby Swanson (and she plays for the Chicago Red Stars in the National Women’s Soccer League).
Side note: The Chicago Cubs are pretty good at promotion, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes place, but this is my hope for the team -- That in a week or two, they have a pre-game ceremony, first sending out the team's shortstop, and we hear to Public Address announcer say:
"And to catch the first pitch is Mallory Swanson's husband." (Huge cheers.) "And to throw out the first pitch, please welcome...Mallory Swanson!!" (Massive roars.)
My love of long distance running paid off again with the men’s 5000k race. Very close for most of it, but Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen took his fluid, graceful kick to run away with the Gold. But also worth noting is that not only did USA’s Grant Fisher come from far behind to get the Bronze medal, “from far behind” must be described as – when Ingebrigsten made his fluid kick from second place on the shoulder of the leader…Fisher was all the way back in eighth place! And further, he became the first American to double, with medals in both the 5000m and 10,000m race (for which he also got Bronze).
In the premier middle-distance race, Faith Kipyegon of Kenya set Olympic history by becoming the first person to win the 1500m race three Olympics in a row. She just did.
But there was an abundance of tremendous middle-distance races. Like the U.S. women blowing away the field in the 4x400m relay. The U.S. men winning their 4x400 relay – with a neck-and-neck amazing final leg run by Rai Benjamin, the U.S. Gold medal winning in the 400m hurdles, holding off Botswana’s 200m Gold medal-winner Letsille Tebego.
But of course, the granddaddy of long distance running is the 26.2 mile Marathon, and the men held theirs today. (The women will be on tomorrow on the closing day.) It was wonderful to watch, through historic quarters of Paris, out of the city past Versailles Palace, through the outskirts of beautiful woods. It also had a grueling long uphill climb, followed, of course by a challenging downhill descent. And then, back in Paris, running alongside the Eiffel Tower and ending outside the renowned Palais des Invalides The race itself was close for a while, but then Tamirata Tola of Ethiopia broke away with perhaps 3-4 miles to go and ran with a 20-second lead most of the rest of the way, setting an Olympic record of 2:26:34. To put this in remarkable, that’s a pace of running a mile at 4:34…but doing it every mile for 26 miles! (Not terribly long ago, during the lifetime of many people today, the magical standard for running a mile was 4 minutes -- for one mile.) His win stood out for two reasons – the first is that he wasn’t even supposed to be in the race, but was an alternate who had to take over when another Ethiopian runner got hurt, and the second is he had earlier won the 10,000k race, and so became only the eighth person in Olympic history to accomplish this double. Two Americans impressively finished in the top 10 – Connor Mantz in eighth place, followed by Clayton Young, who was so excited with his position finishing and charmingly stayed around at the finish line as a sort of unofficial greeter, congratulating the runners who came in after.
I have a fond spot for several Olympic events, having attended them at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. One is the Marathon – both the men’s and women’s which was the first-ever in Olympic history. For that, I drove to nearby Santa Monica City College where it started. For the men’s I walked a couple miles (to avoid traffic and parking) to the neighborhood they’d be running through.
As I’ve noted, I like cycling events, but especially those indoors in the Velodrome. The past few days, the NBC Family of Olympic Channels have had cycling on the schedule three times – and all three times, they’ve had the previous event run over and pre-empt. Imagine my angst. I finally gave up and instead watched replays on Peacock. In part, too, it was because I wanted to see a discipline called the omnium. Hey, how can one not love a sport that has an event called the omnium? Not only that, but also one called the keiran. And even more oddly, since it’s no normal but strange for a cycling race, the Madison. And all the better, the omnium, keiran and Madison held in the Velodrome. The omnium is actually a collection of four different races in which points are accumulated. The keiran is one of the stranger races you’ll ever see – the riders go Really Slow, almost playing cat-and-mouse, so slow it’s surprising the bikes don’t fall over, and then suddenly – and why at that moment, I’ve never figured out – they break out into a furious sprint. One of the women’s keiran races I saw was won by a Dutch cyclist who had one of my favorite names at the Velodrome, Hetty van der Wouw, who moved to the next round. And then there is the Madison.
The Madison is especially odd, (which is saying a lot for Velodrome races, and not only for its unexpected name, all the more so because the other two disciplines are the omnium and keiran) – 120 laps, which must be dizzying, but every 10 laps they not only assign points, but also have a sprint. I have no idea how points are being accumulated – no small matter for a race that takes 50 minutes -- since even more than for most Velodrome races I haven’t figured out how they all work. Thank goodness for announcers giving the score. Though I do know you get 10 points for lapping another team, and lose 20 points for getting lapped. Lots of “carnage” in the race, as the announcers put it, with several teams crashing – including Italy, which was in the lead at the time with 23 laps to go. However, since they had another team cyclist in the race, they were able to keep the lead temporarily. They ended up getting the Silver, with Denmark receiving the Bronze – and Portugal won the Gold, its first-ever Olympic cycling medal…though I have absolutely no idea how points worked out. I was glad – and very surprised – that they showed the anthem ceremony, but that might have been because the two Portuguese cyclists were so jubilant that they were arm-and-arm boisterous as they belted out the anthem, faces with ear-to-ear smiles, even doubling over in joyous laughter, giving one another a bear hug after. And why is it called “Madison”? Because the first of these races was held at Madison Square Gardon.
As I’ve written for the past several Olympics, it’s deeply disappointing – and wrong-headed – that NBC has cut back on airing the wonderful, offbeat, charming and smart videos that Mary Carillo has long done about the culture of the host country of the Olympics. Nor, inexplicably, do they even make available online the few that they do broadcast – neither on the official NBC Olympic website or on YouTube. I’ve only see one aired, and that was during a pre-Olympic broadcast. At least they have her announcing women’s tennis (she was a professional tennis player for four years before injury ended her career -- and even won the 1977 French Open mixed-doubles title, partnering with John McEnroe, and she and McEnroe reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, so she was no slouch), but that’s no replacement. I did check out and discovered that NBS’s syndicated The Olympic Zone show, broadcast in most markets a half-hour before the Primetime show airs, happily runs some of videos! However, they’re not available online either – and it doesn’t let NBC off the hook. (Instead, they have the insipid videos with Snoop Dogg.) So, to do my best, I did at least find a similar video that Mary Carillo did six years ago at Wimbledon. It’s not prime Carillo, but it’s fun and gives you a good idea of what she does. Here, being in England, she decides to go to the British School of Excellence (yes, it’s a real thing) to find out what she’s been doing wrong and how to improve.
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