Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Here come the medals.

The US starts to make up for lost time at the track.

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• And now for something completely different! We start with Australia vs. USA in men's water polo. They were tied in regulation so they went to a shootout and the US won, advancing to the semifinal. At the velodrome, women's team pursuit track cycling had the US beating New Zealand for the gold.
• Back to Stade de France and some more track events. It will be hard to top yesterday's events, won't it? We'll see. First up is the men's 110m hurdles semifinal. Grant Holloway of the US is the favorite, but the man he lost to in Tokyo, Jamaica's Hansel Parchment, is also in this race. Parchment, we find out, was running late to the race in Tokyo. A Tokyo Olympic volunteer used her own money to pay for a cab to get him to the race on time. After he won, he tracked her down, thanked her, and then the Jamaican government offered her an all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica as thanks. That' s quite a story AND, because it all happened while racer introductions were happening, it's not fluff. Good job NBC! In the first heat, Grant is out for vengeance. He beats Parchment by two-tenths of a second. He looks like a man on a mission.
• Grant's dad, Stan, is in the stands! He's excited to see his son race in person in these Olympics, since he couldn't do that in Tokyo. He's very calm. Almost like he knows his son is the best hurdler on Earth.
• Semifinal two features American Freddie Crittenden, who qualified via the repechage. What's that? Basically, it’s a mulligan. If you didn’t qualify in one of the normal heats, you get another shot later. Freddie took advantage of the opportunity, using the extra days to let his injury heal . How does he do in his heat? He finishes second, so he qualifies for the final. Sounds like his strategy worked. Pretty smart.
• Daniel Roberts is running for Team USA in the last semifinal. He makes it, too. The final will have eight runners: three Americans, three Jamaicans, and two other racers with no chance of winning.
• Men's 3m springboard diving. There are actually two Americans in contention here. First up is Andrew Capobianco. Oof. He might not be in contention after that dive. He was in third, now he's 18th. Carson Tyler is also jumping for USA. He winds up qualifying for the finals, but Capobianco does not. Hey! Guess who's in first and second place? The Chinese. Shocker!
• Women's speed climbing! Men's handball, where France was eliminated in handball. Skateboarding! The last of four events, says Mike. How could NBC spend hours watching diving but none watching skateboarding? Meh, whatever. Gold Zone! That’s where it’s at!
• Karsten Warholm from Norway has an old coach, Leif Olav Alnes. Leif is impressed with Karsten's work ethic. He tries to keep Warholm grounded so he can get better. I don't know that I learned a lot here, but they seem to like each other. Fluff.
• Now Karsten will be racing in the first 400m hurdles semifinal. He wins his heat. America's Trevor Bassitt finishes fourth. He'll wait to see if he advances.
• Medal ceremony time! Gabby Thomas won last night, so tonight at the track she gets her medal for winning the women's 200-meters. Will she sing? She's smiling, that's a good start. But no singing. Brittany Brown from the US is on the podium for third, is she singing? Also no. But in the background you can hear the crowd singing. Yay to the crowd!
• Team USA's CJ Allen is running his 400m hurdles semifinal. He trains himself. Let's see if that was a good idea. Oh no! He was in the lead until the end, and then he ran out of gas. He got passed by two runners after the last hurdle. He'll have to rely on a good time to advance.
• Rai Benjamin, the silver medalist in Tokyo, is up next. He's trying to make up for losing to Warholm three years ago. Wow. He had such a big lead that he basically jogged the last 20 meters. I'd say he's ready. What about the other two Americans? Trevor Bassitt didn't make it. CJ Allen also didn’t make it. I guess being your own coach is like being your own lawyer. Don’t do it!
• To the field, for women's pole vault. American Katie Moon is trying to defend her Tokyo gold medal. She's in the lead after the first round.
• Next up is the women's 400m semifinals. Aaliyah Butler is the US runner in the first race. She won't be in the next one. She finishes 6th. Alexis Holmes is in the next race, trying to get an American into the final. She finishes second, so she moves on. American Kendall Ellis is in the last semifinal. She finishes fourth, so she’s out, too.
• Back to the pole vault. Katie Moon is battling Australia's Nina Kennedy. In the 2023 World Championships they shared the gold medal. Today, no one wants a tie. Nina looks angry about it.
• Americans in Paris! Sarah Hidebrandt won freestyle wrestling gold. Weightlifting is on! I love Olympic weightlifting. Hampton Morris won the first US weightlifting medal in 40 years. In men's volleyball, Team USA loses and will play for bronze. At men's beach volleyball, the US lost to Qatar and is out. Women's basketball? The US beat Nigeria and moves on to the semifinals. Lastly, in women's team golf the US is in second place. That was a lot of updates, but I’d still rather see more of the events.
• The Event of the Night is the men's 200m semifinals. First up, Kenny Bednarek. Kung Fu Kenny is fast as lightning! If you were racing against him it would be a little bit frightening. He gets first place easily. He came here to win, he tells Lewis. He'll be dangerous in the final.
• Let's watch 90 seconds of fluff about Noah. It's just a recap of what he did in the 100m the other night. So if you've been watching, you've seen all this before.
• Noah is up. He finishes second to Botswana's Letsile Tobogo. That will send him to the final, but he looks a little upset with himself. In the third semifinal, Erriyon Knighton is trying to be the third American in the final. He wins his heat. Three members of Team USA racing for gold tomorrow!
• Pole vault! Kennedy and Moon are still going at it. Kennedy makes her vault at 4.9m, but Moon misses, so she's silver and Kennedy wins gold.
• It's the men's 400m final! There are three Americans in this race, Michael Norman, Quincy Hall, and Chris Bailey. It's funny watching all of these racers come out of the tunnel for their introductions. They're all sure they're going to win. Only one of them is right! Norman is the favorite, but Kirani James of Grenada is the defending Olympic champion. They're off! Wow! Quincy Hall, who at three hundred meters looked like he was about to pull a hamstring, somehow muscles his way to a gold medal victory, passing three people in the home stretch. I don't know how he did that, but it was sure impressive.
• Now let's watch the last three laps of the men's steeplechase final. That's the best way to do it, since it's otherwise 12 laps of nobody changing position. There is an American, Kenneth Rooks, in the pack, about halfway back behind 8 or 9 other runners. As expected, Kenyans and Ethiopians are leading this race. But wait! As the final lap starts, Rooks runs by all eight of them and takes the lead! He races out in front and now everyone has to chase him. On the second-to-last hurdle, Lamecha Girma of Ethiopa takes a nasty fall and other racers have to stumble over him to keep up with Rooks. It’s a three-man race at the end, and although Rooks can’t hold on to first, his gamble paid off. He went from 9th place to silver, only the third silver medal ever for the United States in steeplechase. Way to go, Kenneth!
• Artistic swimming, formerly synchronized swimming, has Team USA in the final, going after their first medal in 20 years. Like gymnastics, I don't know how this is scored. It's interesting, but I'm not nearly as excited about it as the announcer is. After their routine, they're in first with only one team to go. That team? China. Hopefully they're not as good at this as they are at diving. Nope. They are. US gets silver.
• Steve Kornacki is back to give us more data on who will win the most gold medals. It's the US. China is in second. What's going to happen in the next few days? Steve makes some guesses. You know what? You could make some guesses, too, and they'd be just as accurate as Steve's. What a waste of time this is.
• Snooping Around Paris. He’s with Noah Lyles mother, Keisha. He watches some US women's soccer and gets to be in the booth yelling "Gooooooooooal." He liked Caeleb Dressel chilling in the ice pool. He liked the fancy spin-move in a table tennis game. He liked the Paris mascot driving around the track in a radio-controlled car. He even got into artistic swimming a little bit, describing it as “moonwalking under water” and asking “Annie are you okay?” This is all just average fluff, but Mike gets a point for showing Snoop the Canadian artistic swimming team doing their routine to his song. I’m assuming it’s a cleaned up version.
• Medal ceremony time for… figure skating? Remember in 2022 when Russia got their gold medal taken away from them because they were dirty? So today, after two years, Team USA got their gold medals for the team figure skating they won in Beijing. So, do they sing? A lot of them do! Does Steve Kornacki get to add this to the medal count?

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I don't want to jinx anything, but what is going on with the US at the track? It sure seems like they're cleaning up more than usual. Maybe it's just that the races they're winning are exciting and more memorable, but I'm enjoying it. See you tomorrow!

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