This is Olympic GAMES. Everyone’s favorite daily digest for all-things Olympics.
Grab bag of facts and trivia
Athlete spotlights
Medal count updates
Events to watch
Schedule for the day
The big stories from August 1:
All the Simone haters FAAFO when Simone Biles won a second AA gold medal (a feat last achieved in 1968). She has won 6 golds, 1 silver, 2 bronzes in her Olympic career and still has 3 more events to go in Paris. Not to be outshone, Suni Lee also made an impressive come back to win bronze. Suni has been battling incurable kidney diseases and, just a year ago, was unsure she’d ever be competing again. Rebecca Andrade 🇧🇷 had a fabulous competition and won silver.
Lee Keifer added to her collection of golds as USA won the Team Foil event for the first time ever.
USA Rowing Men’s Fours won gold for the first time since 1960.
Tennis is over for any Team USA individuals. But Fritz/Paul are in the Men’s Doubles Semis while teammates Krajicek/Ram have already booked a ticket to the Finals.
Team Canada women’s soccer survived their 6 point reduction due to the drone scandal and moved out of the group stage.
Team USA can’t seem to crack the code on how to win consistently at 3x3 Basketball.
US swimming keeps racking up medals. Today’s haul included Regan Smith’s 200M Fly silver, Kate Douglass’s 200M Breast Gold, the relay team’s 4x200M Free Silver. Due to her role on the 4x200M team, Katie Ledecky now holds the singular honor of most medals for a US female Olympian with 13.
Yesterday I discussed the various sports. But what exactly are some of these sports and disciplines? What’s race walking? What’s dressage? I’m going to give a brief explainer of sports/disciplines/events that were less obvious to me.
Race walking is essentially just walking very, very, very fast. They walk 20KM in about 80 minutes. The rules are relatively simple- walking only. That means you must have one part of your foot on the ground at all times.
Decathlon is ten events for men that test all the athletic disciplines: 100M sprint, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400M run, 110M hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin, 1500M run. You have to be the best all around athlete
Heptathlon is the female equivalent of the decathlon that for some reason is only 7 events: 100M hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200M sprint, long jump, javelin, 800M run.
Equestrian Jumping is evaluated via a timed obstacle course. Equestrian Dressage is best described as horse dancing. Equestrian Eventing has both jumping and dressage and a longer obstacle course.
Rhythmic Gymnastics is basically the floor exercise of artistic gymnastics but add in props and a bit more flair for the dramatic/dance side
Trampoline Gymnastics is diving but doing those flips while bouncing 25 ft in the air
Handball is kinda like soccer and basketball. Players can take three steps without dribbling and aren’t supposed to enter the scoring area unless they’ve already attempted to score, so there’s lots of jumping at the edge.
Judo is a martial art with the goal of throwing your opponent to the ground, pinning them, or forcing them into submission with a hold or choke.
Modern Pentathlon consists of five events: show jumping on a strange horse, fencing, 200M free swim, and then running and shooting with a pistol. It was invented to help train cavalry men.
Sport Climbing has three disciplines in two events: bouldering & lead and speed. Bouldering has athletes climbing 4.5m without ropes and they’re evaluated on speed and number of attempts. Lead has them climb as high as they can up a 15m wall in 6 minutes and this wall has the most complex routes. Bouldering and lead is a single event in Paris with combined scores determining the champ.
Speed climbing involves head to head races that eliminate competitors each round.
Taekwondo seems like human body fencing - you’re trying to kick or punch your opponent without getting kicked or punched.
Wrestling has two disciplines: Greco-Roman and Freestyle. Greco-Roman restricts you to just using arms/upper body to attack the upper body of your opponent. Freestyle is, well, more free. In both, the goal is to pin your opponent to the mat.
Caeleb Dressel has the Midas touch. If he gets a medal, it is gold. He started his Olympic career with 2 golds in Rio and then he won 5 golds in Tokyo (matching a record set by Mark Spitz) and has already won 1 gold in Paris. He is the reigning world record holder in the 100m butterfly, 50m free, and 100m IM.
As of the end of August 1st Olympic Day:
Events I find interesting, not necessarily all medal events or even medal events at all. If the event has already occurred, expect a potential reference during tonight’s prime time coverage.
Athletics: Various events starting at 4AM
Trampoline Gymnastics: 7:50AM Women’s Final 🏅
Sailing: 8AM Windsurfing 🏅
Soccer: 9AM USA vs Morocco Quarter-Final
Swimming: 2:30PM Men’s 50M Free, Women’s 200M Back 🏅
Cycling: 3:35PM BMX Racing 🏅
Athletics: 1:30AM 20KM Men’s Race Walking 🏅
Golf: 3AM Men’s
Rowing: 4:30AM Double Sculls Women’s 🏅, 5:30AM Men’s 🏅
The full schedule with event times can be found here. This gets a little complicated with time zone changes, so I’m leaving this as a full schedule and will focus on fun to watch favorites in the Events section with times listed in EDT.
I am loving all of these updates!