5 August - Day 10 - Paris Summer Olympic Games
What's in the box? That is the question everyone has been asking. When you receive a medal in Paris you also get a box. I thought at first it was a "forever rose" but I found out, it is a copy of a poster created just for the Paris games by a French artist Ugo Gattoni. He created one for the Olympics and one for the Paralympic games that are meant to compliment each other. It's really cool! I could spend hours looking at everything that he packed into this image!
Monday was a surprising day. Lots going on with unusual results. Let's get into it.
Mixed Triathlon Team Relay: This is a cool event. Each Team has 4 members: 2 women, 2 men. The order is set to man/woman/man/woman. Each team member swims, bikes, and runs a small triathlon and then passes off to their next team member with a touch. Team USA is the defending Silver medalist here. While we didn't do great in the individual event, we were impressive in the Team event! Rider started us off and put us in 10th. Spivey took the second leg and moved us up to 6th place. Pearson was able to improve on that by one and handed off to our anchor, Taylor Knibb. Knibb was in 3rd after the swim! Knibb is the one who gave up her spot in the Cycling Road Race to Faulkner so that she could concentrate on the Triathlon. Then she had a disappointing individual triathlon day. She was determined to make up on that! She jumped on the bike and was in first place by the end. At the transfer, she came out in 3rd and sprinted to catch up to the leaders: Germany and Great Britain. She stuck with them until the finish line where Germany sprinted faster and won Gold. Team USA and Team GB crossed the line at the same time, requiring a photo-finish! The announcers called it for Team GB and then the coverage moved to another event! I didn't find out until the medal ceremony that Team USA had won the Silver! The announcers really need to be more careful about "calling it" before the official results are in! Way to go Team USA!
Women's Platform Diving: Team USAs Schnell made it through the preliminary rounds but was cut in the semifinals. Team USAs Wright didn't make it through the prelims. Finals are on Tuesday.
Women's 3x3 Basketball:
Women's Wrestling: Amit Elor wrestles for Team USA in the 68kg weight class. Now I don't know much about wrestling and frankly, I find it a bit boring to watch most of the time but not Amit! She pulled the toughest seed in her opening match...the World Champion from Turkey and she absolutely dominated! She is constantly moving and loves to make her opponent step out which earns her 1 point. She does this again and again and before you know it she's scored 3 points which completely shakes her opponents! Then she does these leg take downs, where she wraps up her opponent's legs and rolls and rolls. Every time she rolls them over, she gets 2 points. In her last round, she rolled her opponent 5 times in a row, earning 10 points and sending her to the Gold Medal round. That should be contested on Tuesday. She is amazing!
Artistic Swimming: Previously known as Synchronized Swimming, the Team competition has three rounds: Technical, Free, and a new round called Acrobatic. New also this year, each team can have up to 2 male swimmers on their team! We had two male members over the last year but they did not come with the team to the Olympics. One of those male team members has bee swimming with Cirque de Soleil for years and Team USA actually worked with them to create this year's routine....Michal Jackson. The outfits, music (Smooth Criminal), and the upside-down moonwalk were all really cool! Team USA leaves the Technical round in 7th. China, Spain, and Italy are in the lead. I really enjoyed the Spanish and Italian routines a lot!
Indoor Cycling: Women's Team Sprint - This is a lot like the long track speed skating event where you have 3 skaters that face against 3 skaters for another team and you try to beat them on time or pass them. Well...this is on bikes instead of skates. Team USA did not make it into the finals here. Team GB proved to be the fastest and took the Gold. New Zealand took the Silver. Germany the Bronze.
Sport Climbing: Women's Speed climbing started qualifiers. In Speed Climbing, athletes go head to head with one other climber. First one to the top wins. Qualifiers are very time dependent as the last few spots are filled with the losing climbers that have the best times. Hunt (gosh...I think that's what I wrote!) and Kelly both speed up the wall for Team USA. Hunt qualified but Kelly did not make the cut.
Skeet - Mixed Team Event: Team USA made it to the Gold medal round and faced off against Italy. Hancock & Smith shot well but not as well as they did in the individual rounds and Team Italy did only missed one shot! Italy takes the Gold. Team USA takes the Silver. Team China takes the Bronze.
Honorable Mention - Men's Singles Badminton: The Gold medalist is Axelsen from Denmark and he is quite a character! He really charges up the crowd and even the King of Denmark came to see his Gold medal match. In a field that is filled with folks from Asia, he is the anomaly. That didn't stop him in Paris. He won Gold again on Monday and it was a great match! Congrats!
Women's 3x3 Basketball: Team USA lost to Spain which sent them to the Bronze medal match against Canada. Team USA and soundly beat Team Canada and won the Bronze.
Men's Water Polo: Team USA beat Croatia 14-11 and stay alive!
Beach Volleyball: We've entered the Elimination rounds! Team USAs Evans & Budinger got a tough seed facing off against the reigning Gold medalist, Team Norway. They fought hard but could beat Team Norway and have been eliminated. Team USA's other men's team, Partain & Benesh faced off against Team Italy and pulled out a win! They continue on. On the Women's side, Kloth & Nuss faced off against Team Canada and the Canadians proved to be too tough. Canada moves on and Kloth & Nuss are out.
Men's Indoor Volleyball: This was my favorite event of the day! These guys are soooo good and so much fun to watch! We are into the elimination rounds now. Team USA faced off against a really scrappy Brazilian team but pulled out a victory in 4 sets. USA 3 Brazil 1. Team USA moves onto the next round! Way to go, guys!
Track & Field:
Qualifiers:
Men's 400 Hurdles: Benjamin and Allen made it through but Bassitt had to go to the repechage on Tuesday morning. He made it through.
Men's Discus: Team USA had three athletes in the mix. Mattis and Brown made it through but Evans did not make the cut.
Women's Pole Vault: Northern Ohio's own Katie Moon made it through to the finals but Williams and King did not make the cut.
Women's 400 M: Butler and Holmes made it through but Ellis had to to to the repechage on Tuesday morning. She made it through
Men's Steeplechase: Rooks is the only one of our three athletes to make it through to the next round. I don't think they have the repechage for this race as it is very long.
Men's 200 M: Bendarek, Lyles, and Knighton all made it through to the semifinals
Semifinals:
Women's 200 M: Long, Thomas, and Brown all made it through to the next round.
Finals:
Women's 5000M: Team USA's Morgan, Cranny, and Switzer all tried their best but couldn't keep up with the Kenyans. Kenya came across the line in first and second with the Netherlands taking 3rd place. There was a little controversy here as an Ethiopian runner did some bumping with the Gold medal winning Kenyan in the race. In the replay, it looked like Ethiopia was being a real jerk and Kenya just pushed back a little but the committee was all ready to take away her medal and award the Bronze to Italy. A protest was filed and the committee came back with no change in the original results but that Kenyan runner has a yellow card and must be on her best behavior for the rest of the races she participates in.
Women's 800 M - Team GB led from the front and did not give it up! They win Gold. Ethiopia wins Silver. Kenya wins Bronze.
Women's Discus: Team USAs Val Allman had the best throws of the tourney from the get-go! She brings home gold for the USA! China took Silver. Croatia took Bronze
Men's Pole Vault: The story of the night was Mondo Duplantis from Team Sweden. He is the defending Gold medalist and knew coming in that he wanted to try for the World Record. Team USA's Sam Kendrick was the our only athlete to make it to the finals and Sam was just so happy to be there! He was vaulting well and likes to take lots of runs to get a good feel before it comes down to the final rounds. Mondo...he waited but when he did finally take a run at 5.90 M he got soooooo high, I just knew he was going to jump a really great height.
And.....he did! He had them raise the bar to an even 20 feet (6.10 M). I jumps for LSU so I guess we corrupted him into thinking in imperial measurements instead of metric! LOL! Anyway, he missed it on his first attempt but was able to tackle the feat in his second jump! All the while, Sam Kendrick cheered him on as did the entire arena! Duplanits won Gold with a new World Record! Sam took Silver for Team USA, and Greece won the Bronze
Gymnastics Event Finals: So the top 8 gymnasts on each event on QUALIFIER DAY make it through to the event finals. We didn't excel on qualifier day for the men, so our guys didn't make it to any of the event finals except for Pommel Horse. This is how we could win a medal but none of our guys are showing up in these finals (except pommel horse).
Men's Parallel Bars: The Ukrainian Kovtun threw down the gauntlet from the beginning. It was a fantastic routine and really slow and controlled so you could see each move. Japan tried to answer but Oka didn't have high enough difficulty. China's Zou was up to the task though and won the Gold. Ukraine won Silver. Japan won third.
Women's Beam: We should have had the Beam sage-smudged before competition! In fact, the entire arena would have been ideal! The Beam event final proved to be a mistake-prone mess. The 2016 Olympics had similar issues with Beam. We aren't just talking wobbles. We are talking falls....and BAD ones. Suni had the worst fall on her triple acrobatic pass, falling and straddling (OUCH!) the beam. Others fell multiple times. Simone fell. I think only 3 gymnasts didn't fall off today. It was a nightmare. In the end, it was the people with the highest start values and least amount of mistakes that grabbed up the medals: Italy's D'Amato won the Gold. China's Zhou won the Silver. Italy's Esposito won the Bronze. Yeah...Team USA didn't win any medal.
Men's High Bar: Men's High Bar has similar issues to the Women's Beam. Guys were falling off in their release moves and at least 5 of the guys dismounted with such power that they did this wolf-leap forward off the mat! Japan's Oka edged out a wonderful routine from Columbia's Barajas for the Gold. Barajas had my favorite routine of the night! He won Silver. China' Zhang & Taiwan's Tang tied for the Bronze.
Women's Floor: Simone nearly took out her coach in warming up and tweaked that calf injury again. They taped her up (luckily she was nearly last in the rotation) and she was able to go one. Brazil's Andrade put on a show and was leading before Simone took the floor. Simone was amazing BUT she went WAYYYYYY out of bounds on two of her passes which caused her to move into second. Romania's Barbosu had a nice routine and was in third place when Jordan took the floor and entertained us all! It was a really nice routine AND she stayed in bounds!
Once again, the announcers called it wrong. Jordan's scores hadn't been posted and they had already awarded the Bronze to Barbosu. Team USAs coaches noticed that the judges didn't have one of Jordan's skills ( a leap ) ranked high enough and filed a protest. The judges reviewed the leap and agreed, increasing Jordan's start value by 0.1 points and giving her enough to win Bronze. I felt really bad for Barbosu, who was already up on the floor in her award sweats and just unfurling the Romanian flag when Jordan's results were posted. It must have been horrible for her.
I noticed that the coaches and event workers were really hurrying the gymnasts to get their gear on and together to get things awarded. I think this contributed to the confusion on the scoring. I'm not sure why they were in such a hurry. After all, the floor event final was the last one. I can only assume that with Rhythmic Gymnastics about to start that they needed the arena to change out things or allow the athletes to practice.
Gold to Brazil's Andrade. Silver to Simone. Bronze to Jordan. Rebecca Andrade has competed in Simone's shadow for quite some time so it was really nice of Simone and Jordan to "bow down" when she took the top of the podium.
Overall, the Gymnastics competition was good! We won medals and actually got to see Simone compete without the twisties! It was nice to see her smile. There were some strange things but that's life.
Comments
Post a Comment