August 9: PARIS 2024
The Summer Olympics are back and literally bigger than ever before!
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 8:
Sam Watson reset his own world record in the sport climbing speed event, climbing the 15m wall in 4.74 seconds. The crazy thing is that because the speed event is competed in head-to-head knock out races, even though Sam set the world record and completed the course in the fastest time of all competitors, he got bronze and not gold.
US Women’s Volleyball narrowly squeezed past Brazil, 3-2, to head to the finals!
Spencer Richard Lee is headed to the finals in the men’s wrestling freestyle 57kg class.
Maggie Steffens and the rest of Team USA water polo lost a nail biter to Australia to head to the bronze medal match instead of the finals.
Tara Davis-Woodhall and Jasmine Moore ensured a USA gold/bronze sandwich on the leaderboard in the women’s long jump.
In the much anticipated men’s 200M race, Noah Lyles was not able to match Carl Lewis 100m/200m domination, settling for bronze. His teammate Kenneth Bednarak took silver. After the race, it was revealed that Noah has been dealing with COVID the last few days and somehow still managed to end up on the podium while being sick. Noah has suffered from asthma his whole life also. In contrast to his disappointment with bronze in Tokyo, Noah said he’s never been more proud of himself for what he was able to do in the 200M and I agree. So impressed by his grit and determination to fight through illness!
In yet another tight team competition, US Men’s basketball had to fight for every last point in their win against Serbia 95-91 to make it to the finals.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone did not disappoint in her 400m hurdle race. She set a new world record (which was set by her in June) and easily ran to first place and a gold medal finish. Anna Cockrell completed the 1-2 victory for Team USA.
Not to be outdone by the ladies, Grant Holloway and Daniel Roberts also went 1-2 in their hurdles race, the 110M.
Recently, my family went to a venue that had live music and my 5 year old started lying on the floor and “dancing”. My husband told him, “hey, we don’t dance on the floor, buddy” and without missing a beat my son replied, “yes, we do. It’s called break dancing.”
Now that we’ve established breaking, or break dancing, is a thing, what should we expect today? Breaking will consist of separate men’s and women’s events with 16 B-boys and 16 B-girls in each. They will use various “power moves” (numerous spinning moves in succession) and “freezes” (…freezing in place) to match the tracks the DJs lay down and win the judges’ approval. The b-boys and b-girls will compete in 1v1 battles with competitors taking turns or “throw downs”. The judges will score each b-boy/b-girl on creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity and musicality. If you’re at all intrigued, catch the breaking now because it won’t be on the schedule at the 2028 Olympics.
Also, the b-boys/b-girls have the coolest names.
B-Girl names include such fun options like 671, Syssy, Logistx, Raygun, Ami, and Anti.
The B-Boys include Shigekix, Lithe-ing, Hiro10, Phil Wizard, Dany Dann, J-Attack, Quake, and Billy, among others.
How can I not cover an athlete who goes by “Hulk”? Raven Saunders is competing in the women’s shot put. They (preferred pronoun) got silver in Tokyo and they’re hoping to improve and snag that top spot on the podium in Paris. Equally as noteworthy as Raven’s silver shot put performance was their podium stance. Saunders crossed their arms in an X shape while on the podium in Tokyo in solidarity with oppressed peoples and was investigated by the IOC for the action. The IOC prohibits demonstrations or protests at Olympic sites. Ultimately, the IOC ended their investigation as news broke about the unfortunate passing of Saunders’ mother. All eyes will be on Raven to see if they make the podium for shot put, and if so, what they might do at the medal ceremony.
As of the end of August 8th 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.
Golf: 2AM Women’s Round 3
Rhythmic Gymnastics: 3AM Group AA Qualifiers, 7:30AM Individual AA 🏅
Sport Climbing: 5:35AM Men’s Boulder & Lead 🏅
Diving: 8:00AM Women’s 3M Springboard 🏅
Water Polo: 7:35AM Men’s Semifinals USA vs Serbia
Breaking: 9:00AM B-Girls Round Robin, 2:19PM B-girls final 🏅
Basketball: 10:30AM Women’s Semifinals USA vs Australia
4x100M relay: 12:30PM Women’s Final 🏅, 12:47PM Men’s Final 🏅
Shot put: 12:37PM Women’s Final 🏅
400M: 1:00PM Women’s Final 🏅
Triple Jump: 1:13PM Men’s Final 🏅
Heptathlon: 1:25PM Women’s 800m 🏅
10KM: 1:57PM Women’s final 🏅
400M Hurdles: 2:45PM Men’s final 🏅
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 CDT.
G break dancing 😂💀