Bobbing for Medals

We watch the Olympics all day so that you don't have to.

It's hard to overstate how amazing Katie Ledecky's achievement was yesterday.  Yes, it's disappointing that she finished out of the medals in the 200-meter race.  However, that she was a close contender in the shortest sprint race and then not only won the longest 1500-meter race is remarkable enough - but that she swam both in the same day only one hour apart (!!) is utterly stunning.  This is like if 100-meter Olympic Gold medalist Usain Bolt not only also ran in the 1500-meter race, which is near-unthinkable, but almost won - and even more, did so just 60 minutes after he had sprinted in the 100-meter dash and had a chance to cool down.  As I wrote the other day, Ledecky often won all four races she competed in, but it's the long distance 800-meter and 1500-meter races that she was untouchable at.

The U.S. women's soccer team played a lackluster 0-0 tie against Australia, but it was at least understandable in that they knew if they just protected themselves and tied they would make it through the qualifying round and into the knock-out round.  I've thought that Julie Foudy has done a very good job as an analyst on the broadcast, not falling into the problem I've written about where former athletes doing commentary become cheerleaders for their friends.  It's all the more impressive since she's such an important part of recent women's soccer and is probably very close to many of them.  But she was critical of the play, settling for a safe tie, though she did acknowledge she understood.

A lot was made of Brazilian surfer Italo Ferreira breaking his board on a huge wave, but coming back to win the Gold medal on a spare board by noting how he learned to surf on the lid of his father's fishing bin.  This is nice story about how he learned, but unless his replacement board was the lid of a fishing bin, it's completely meaningless to how he won.  In fact, his coach got him an identical surfboard to what he'd been using.  Also worth mentioning, though, is that this was the first-ever men's Gold medal awarded in surfing.  And American Carissa Moore won the first-ever Gold medal for a woman.  Here's video, though, of that massive wave breaking his board.

​Yesterday, I mentioned that it was surprising, but nice to see Shepard Smith as the in-studio host on CNBC during his news show’s time slot.  Though I added that he didn’t do all that much, just introduce an event at the top and send it to the on-site announcers.  He’s still doing that (which remains good to see), but because they have a lot more events today that’s given him even more to do, and he’s been hosting a bit more.  Very nice.
 
Sorry to see the U.S. women’s softball team lose in the Gold medal game to Japan.  The Japanese team is the defending Olympic champs, and the U.S. team got great pitching in all their games, but very little hitting, and that caught up with them in the finals, losing 2-0.  Unfortunately, baseball and women’s softball won’t be in the Paris Olympics in 2024 – though I’m sure skateboarding will be.  And rhythmic gymnastics.  And trampoline.  However, it’s expected to return in 2028 when the Olympics return to Los Angeles.  Though the Canadian team has just appealed to the IOC to reverse its decision and include softball in 2024.  The IOC tends to move with the speed,  compassion and good sense of a glacier, but we'll see.
 
One of the more surprising finishes, for several reasons, was the Men’s 2000 meter 4x, a race that Great Britain had won the past five Olympics.  But not only did they not win the race this year, and Australia did (last Olympics Silver medalists), but the British 4-man team didn’t even finish in the medals – but what made that even more odd was one of the reasons how they lost:  in the last 500 meters, trying to make up the distance, they got so out of sync that they began rowing out of their lane (something I’ve never seen before) and almost crashed into the Italian team before righting themselves.
 
The other day, I wrote about the IOC “ban” of Russia for a major transgression, but I think it deserves more explanation, since I was only making a quip about how name they created for athletes being ROC (for Russian Olympic Committee), when it should be Russian Olympic Team, but that would be “ROT.”  For the IOC to ban a country, you know the offense had to be massive and blatant.  And it was.  Russia put up a building next to the drug testing center – and from there, they were able to cut a all in the center next door.  And every night, they would sneak in and exchange the doping results for Russians with clean ones.  Yet even at that, the IOC created a massive loophole that not only allowed Russian athletes to compete, but do so while using a name with “Russia” in it, and with “anthem” music by Tchaikovsky, a Russian composer.  I know the explanation had to do with not wanting to punish the innocent athletes – but that defeats the purpose of punishing the country.  And I’m sure the IOC has no idea how innocent all those athletes were.  Maybe some were innocent, though maybe some or most knew full well what was going on.
 
While I sort of like the new 3x3 basketball competition, since it’s very fast-paced and sort of like pick-up street basketball, I’m not quite sure why it exists as an Olympic sport.  After all, they have basketball.  And at its core, it’s played like basketball is played. The rules are different, but the skill to play it is 100% pure basketball.  The best I can figure is that since pros now play basketball in the Olympics, this lets amateurs play.  And I think that’s nice – except I don’t think it’s a good-enough reason for it to exist as an Olympic sport.  If you don’t like professionals playing, don’t have them.  And if you’re okay with it, fine, then that’s who plays.  And it’s not like, “Well, okay, pros play in basketball, so we’ll have the best amateur college players in the 3x3 competition” – since that’s not what’s happening.  As far as I can tell, these are people who play 3x3 basketball during the year, not The Best Amateur College Players.   In fact, for all I know, they’re all professional.
 
More to come…