Bobbing for Medals: 2024 Edition

We spend most of the day watching the Olympics, so you don’t have to.
 
In answer to many inquiries – okay, none – yes, I have a music file I created years ago with the Olympic theme, and I listen to it every morning during the Games.  It sets to the tone for the day and is part of my pre-competition preparation.  This all takes years of training, you understand.
 
Yesterday, I mentioned Rai Benjamin almost jogging to win his heat in the 440m hurdles.  The finals were much closer, but he pulled away the last 75 meters or so to win the Gold against his longtime rival from Norway, Karsten Warholm.  This was Benjamin’s chance for redemption since the 2021 Tokyo Olympics when he finished second to Warholm by .23 seconds.
 
Of all the track relays, the one I like the most (I’m not a big track relay fan, as I’ve noted, particularly in the shorter races) is the 400m relay, and there were two interesting heats.  On the women’s side, the USA team crushed their heat, running away (literally) with it and winning their heat by a massive 3.3 seconds.  This doesn’t guarantee success in the finals, of course, though it’s an event the U.S. women have won since 1996.  The men’s heat was very different.  The first leg was run by the youngest runner ever on U.S. Olympic track, 16-year-old Quincy Wilson – and he was seriously off and was left far behind in last place.  Fortunately, the other three Americans cut the margin and on the final stretch broke through to finish in third place and make the finals.  I’m sure they’ll have a different team for that race. 
 
By the way, what’s always amazing to me about the 400m run (whether as a relay or individual) is that it's basically sprinted -- and it's the length of about four football fields!!  That's some sprint.  I don’t know if NBC Primetime will show the heats, so here’s the women’s commanding race.  It’s impressive.
 
I can't embed it on the website, but the video can be seen here.

​As for the shorter women’s 4x100m relay, it was extremely exciting. After a slow baton pass (which has become an American Olympic track tradition) on the third leg, Sha’Carri Richardson had to come from behind on the final leg to win the Gold.  Interestingly, because the announcers’ attention was on the U.S. baton pass, they totally missed seeing an even worse pass by Great Britain, and didn’t ever comment on it.  A huge and significant oversight given that Great Britain finished second by just .07 of a second.  (By the way, I hope NBC Primetime shows the ground-level, side view replay of the last 30 yards – it’s tremendous.  Not only do you get a great look at Sha’Carri Richardson far-enough behind that she’s out of sight that close to the end and then exploding out of the pack past everyone, but you also get a hilarious view of her turning her head near the very end to find out where everyone else is, sees she’s ahead of them all and then blasts past the finish line.)
 
And once again, the U.S. men’s 4x100m relay team (who seem even worse than the U.S. women at this) had a major screw-up on the baton pass, and finished far out of the medals.  In fact, it was so dismal that they were disqualified.  I was going to call it “inexplicable,” but since it’s happened so often, I think the problem has transcended that.  It’s now five consecutive Olympics that the U.S. men haven’t even medaled in the event.  I don’t believe all have been because of a terrible baton pass, but many have.  And five times in a row out of the medals speaks for itself.
 
The 10,000m race is high on my list of favorites, since I love long distance races.  And the women’s didn’t disappoint.  The three Americans held close for about 9,700 meters, but faded.  However, what a battle for the Gold.  Sprinting the last couple hundred yards.  Finally won by Kenya’s Beatrice Chabet – the first woman to ever win both the 10,000m and 5,000m races in the same Olympics.  And she’ll be running in the Marathon, too.  But high praise to Italy’s Nadia Battocletti, who finished second by only .1 of a second.  Her Silver medal was Italy’s first-ever medal in the race, and she was in tears of joy afterwards.
 
Wonderful Gold medal soccer match between Spain and host France.  With the local crowd going crazy, France closed a 3-1 deficit in the final minutes to tie and send the game into overtime.  But Spain scored twice in the extra period and won 5-3.
 
Some afterthoughts about yesterday’s great, exciting basketball game between the USA and Serbia.  The only thing I’ve haven’t liked about the U.S. Team (and haven’t liked for 28 years) is that they always call themselves “the Dream Team.”  And, no, sorry, there is only one “Dream Team.”  The first one.  This isn’t an old curmudgeonly rant about the old days – but about reality and perspective and understanding history.  In 1992, pros were allowed to play Olympic basketball for the first time.  And so it was a special honor, not just for the NBA but virtually for the honor of the country to play on the team.  And so all the very best legendary players agreed to be on the team.  They didn’t call themselves “the Dream Team” because they were NBA stars (like all subsequent teams), but because it was a team put together of future Hall of Famers, including those sitting on the bench!!!  Some of the greatest players in the history of the game.  That’s why someone gave them the name “the Dream Team.”  It was an ethereally remarkable team.  Since then, including this year, the Olympics squad has always been a great All Star team.  But it’s not the Dream Team.  Yet they always call themselves the Olympic Dream Team.  Here’s the deal:  when you can have the equivalent of a team with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson…and you could stop right there, but then add Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, Scottie Pippen and Chris Mullin – ALL of them now in the NBA Hall of Fame!!!! – you can ask permission to call yourself Dream Team 2.  But that is “the” Dream Team.
 
Kudos to the Olympic Zone show – that’s syndicated and runs the half-hour before NBC Primetime -- for running a segment with Andrea Joyce on the subject I wrote about yesterday – how insanely high the 10m platform dive is, but we rarely see it from the proper perspective to make it seem as horrifying as it is.  The whole piece was about showing that perspective.  At one point, as a U.S. diving official lead slowly Joyce along the platform to the edge, Joyce – still about 15 feet from the edge – said, “Why are my knees already shaking?”
 
I had to go out on an errand and so had to figure out what was the best time.  I checked the broadcast schedule, and at one point on NBC and the USA Network there were okay events, but ones that would be going on for a long while, so I could catch some of them.  And on the E! Channel, they had Rhythmic Gymnastics…immediately followed by Break Dancing (sorry, I mean “Breaking”).  I laughed and thought, okay, that’s a great time to go out!
 
(Later in the day, NBC showed a Gold Zone segment from Peacock -- their Olympics version of the NFL Red Zone – with the screen divided into four blocks, a different event in each block.  And one of them was Break Dancing.  I couldn’t avoid seeing it for a few seconds before having it seared into my eyes, and changing the channel.  But it was as awful an Olympic “sport” as my worst fears.)
 
Let the Games continue…