Catch up on all of the #Olympic events at #Rio2016 - medal count and more: https://t.co/i4kONSx5Le pic.twitter.com/pDASIhtCD9— Reuters Sports (@ReutersSports) August 16, 2016
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
XXXI Olympic Summer Games, Rio 2016 (Day 11)
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The USA takes the gold and the silver in men's triple jump, which is one of my very favorite events.
ReplyDelete1983 KHSAA Class A boys' triple jump:
ReplyDelete1. Bobby (Joe) Woods, West Paducah Heath (!)
2. Dennis Kirk, Tompkinsville
3. Jamie Moore, Oneida
4. Allen Damian, Bardstown
5. Keith Martin, Madison
Only state title won while I was there.
DeleteHe and his brother, Jeff, were my neighbors. I played football with him many times. As you might imagine, I never once ran him down from behind for a touchdown-saving tackle.
DeleteAlso this morning, Shakur Stevenson, a 19-year-old from Newark, New Jersey, beat a guy from Mongolia to advance to Thursday semifinals in men's bantam 56kg boxing. He'll face a Russian. London 2012 medal winners in this event were Great Britain, Ireland, Cuba and Japan.
ReplyDeleteThat's another medal!
DeleteMedal Count:
ReplyDelete1. USA: 27 + 24 + 26 = 77
2. CHN: 15 + 14 + 18 = 47
3. GBR: 16 + 17 + 8 = 41
4. RUS: 11 + 12 + 13 = 36
Here’s the stuff I’m most interested in the rest of the day ...
ReplyDeleteNoon Central: Team USA vs. Japan in a women’s indoor volleyball quarterfinal. The Netherlands already beat South Korea today. The other quarterfinal matches are Brazil vs. China and Russia vs. Serbia. The 2012 medalists were Brazil, Team USA and Japan.
12:35 p.m.: Men’s finn (dinghy) sailing. Giles Scott enters today’s final race in the event series with such a big lead that he has already clinched a repeat gold for Great Britain. But Caleb Paine of Team USA is in fifth going into today’s race, so maybe he can steal Denmark’s silver or France’s bronze. Also, I just like watching the sailing. It’s nice and quiet.
3:05 p.m.: Women’s omnium track cycling. Sarah Hammer of Team USA is third through four of six races, and she won silver at London. The 2012 gold-winner, Laura Trott of Great Britain, leads the Rio competition.
4:45 p.m.: Team USA vs. Japan in a women’s basketball quarterfinal. Serbia just beat Australia, 73-71, and that had to be an upset. The 2012 medalists were the United States, France and Australia. Other quarters today are France vs. Canada and Spain vs. Turkey.
Bob Costas Tape Delays: Women’s floor and men’s parallel bars and horizontal bar in gymnastics and men’s 3m springboard diving. Rock on, Simone Biles, Kristin Ipsen, Michael Hixon, Danell Leyva, Sam Mikulak and Aly Raisman (or, as I call them, Simone, Kristin, Michael, Danell, Sam and Aly).
Bob Costas Live, 9:59 p.m.: Team USA vs. Brazil in a women’s beach volleyball semifinal. The other semi pits Brazil and Germany. The 2012 medal winners were the United States (both gold and silver) and Brazil.
The men are swinging away on the parallel bars, in preparation for Bob Costas's big show tonight.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, the USA has exactly three gold medals in sports where the winner is decided by judging. Those three medals are team women's gymnastics, individual women's gymnastics, and women's vault.
ReplyDeleteEveryone criticized Hope Solo for her complaint that Sweden's women's soccer team are a bunch of cowards who weren't as good as the United States. In other news, with almost 80 minutes gone in their semi-final against Brazil, Sweden is locked in a 0-0 tie -- mainly because Sweden has played the whole game in a defensive shell.
ReplyDeleteNot me. I didn't criticize Hope Solo. Nor did I criticize (Evansville's!) Lilly King.
DeleteI didn't criticize Hope Solo either.
DeleteBy the way, here were the final standings in Pool B of men's basketball:
ReplyDelete1. CRO: 3-2 (8 points) (went 2-1 against other teams that went 3-2; beat Spain 72-70)
2. ESP: 3-2 (8) (went 2-1 against other teams that went 3-2; lost to Croatia)
3. LTU: 3-2 (8) (went 1-2 against other teams that went 3-2; beat Argentina 81-73)
4. ARG: 3-2 (8) (went 1-2 against other teams that went 3-2; lost to Lithuania)
5. BRA: 2-3 (7)
6. NGR: 1-4 (6)
The difference between Argentina and Brazil was that Argentina beat Brazil in double overtime. This was quite a pool.
So that sets up a fascinating collection of quarter-final matches in the men's hoops:
ReplyDeleteAUS v. LTU (Two green and gold teams!)
CRO v. SRB (Two rivals from Yugoslavia!)
ESP v. FRA (Two rivals from Western Europe)
USA v. ARG (The last team to beat the USA at the Olympics!)
If the USA can make it past Argentina, the semi-final against either France or Spain will be brutal.
I love "Sailing" by Christopher Cross. I love it!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the link on that Christopher Cross song is the video of him in the Earl Campbell jersey.
DeleteYou may not think that Brazil and Sweden have a history in soccer, but they played for the championship in the 1958 World Cup.
ReplyDeleteIn men’s finn (dinghy) sailing, 25-year-old Caleb Oliver Paine of San Diego, California, and the Mission Bay, Southwestern and St. Francis yacht clubs, has won the final race in the series! This combined with Croatia's last-place finish vaults Team USA from fifth into third and a bronze medal!
ReplyDeleteGreat Britain and Slovenia win gold and silver, respectively.
The Twitter desk is now following Caleb Oliver Paine. He's a big music fan.
DeleteIn women's volleyball, Team USA beats Japan in three hard-fought sets. A very solid performance against a game Japanese squad.
ReplyDeleteAnd, in straight sets, Team USA takes out Japan in the women's volleyball quarterfinals. It has been a happy extended Olympic lunch break for Team USA backers.
ReplyDeleteI could see myself becoming a sailing follower.
ReplyDeleteOne of the nice things about the Summer Olympics is that it helps you understand the ranking order of sports. There are lots and lots of interesting sports in the Olympics -- and none of them really compare to baseball, basketball, and football, in terms of being a fan. Even golf and tennis really stand out against the backdrop of the other Olympic sports.
DeleteAnd we have a result in the women's floor exercise! Who won? Who lost? You'll have to wait for Bob Costas and his amazing tape machine!
ReplyDeleteRight now, there's a whole stadium full of Brazilians who agree with Hope Solo. With only five minutes left before penalty kicks, Brazil and Sweden are still tied at zero. Brazil has a free kick that will probably be their last chance to score.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's the kick -- stopped by the goalkeeper. Just a few more minutes until penalties.
DeletePenalties it is!
ReplyDeleteActually, I would be fine with us pulling out of soccer and throwing all of that money at rugby sevens, handball and curling.
DeleteI wouldn't put any more money into curling -- Steinbrenner's money wouldn't be enough to help us there.
DeleteArgh! I just had a CNN desktop alert spoil one of the tape-delay results I'm planning to watch on Bob Costas tonight.
ReplyDeleteAt least, it was a happy spoiler!
That was going to be a hard result to avoid.
DeleteMore sailing medals: In the "Nacra 17" mixed-doubles event, the Argentina male and female sailors prevail for gold. It's an all-A medals podium, in fact: Argentina gold, Australia silver and Austria bronze.
ReplyDeleteAnd Sweden has done it again. They beat Brazil -- which pretty much had the ball the whole game, and was the only team that actually tried to score in regulation -- 4-3 on penalties.
ReplyDeleteHave a stupid rule, get a stupid result.
In the group stages, by the way, Brazil beat Sweden 5-1. But in that game, Brazil scored early, and forced Sweden out of its shell.
DeleteNow we have the men's horizontal bar, which is my favorite event in men's gymnastics.
ReplyDeleteIn the other semi-final of women's football, Germany is rolling over Canada, 2-0 after 77 minutes.
ReplyDeleteThrough five of the six omnium races, London 2012 silver-medalist Sarah Hammer of Temecula, California, had moved into a tie for second with Belgian Jolien D'Hoore. Great Britain's Laura Trott, the 2012 gold medalist, extended her lead for first place, and Australian Annette Edmonson, the bronze medalist, narrowed the gap between T2 and her fourth place.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's over. When the lead racers got to the last lap, Hammer made a mad dash for the lead, but Trott was able to overtake her before the final turn and punctuate her gold-medal performance with a final-race win. Hammer then held off another competitor, and it earned her the silver medal alone in the women's omnium. The Belgian rider took bronze.
DeleteTrack cycling is a great-looking sport. It conveys all of the futuristic coolness of Rollerball, and all of the happy riders being nice to each other dispels any of the dystopian junk in that movie.
One of the things I really like about this USA Olympic team is that they seem to grind out a lot of good results, even when a gold medal is hopelessly out of reach.
DeleteWe've really only got three truly great Olympians: Phelps, Simone Biles, and Katie Ledecky. There isn't any sport, other than swimming and maybe basketball, where we have the best team. And yet we have 83 medals, mostly because we just keep on picking up medals here and there. I really like that.
Excellent observation. Matt Kuchar charging at the end to get bronze in men's golf ... Venus Williams coming back to win mixed-doubles silver after losing in singles and doubles ... Simone Manuel coming back from the pack at the turn to win to win the 100m free ... Caleb Paine today winning the last sailing race in a series to eke out bronze in an event where the gold had already been determined ... Justin Gatlin getting silver Sunday night in the 100m dash when everybody hates him and loves Usain Bolt ... there are many, many examples.
DeleteIn the group stages, Canada beat Germany 2-1. But today, Germany rolled 2-0, and they will play Sweden for the gold.
ReplyDeleteMedal Count:
ReplyDelete1. USA: 83
2. CHN: 48
3. GBR: 47
This is already one of the great British sporting performances of all time.
After one quarter in the women's basketball quarter-finals:
ReplyDeleteUSA 30 - 23 JPN
Medal Count:
ReplyDelete1. USA: 83
2. GBR: 49
3. CHN: 48
Wow. Just wow.
Here is a brief list of Diana Taurasi's accomplishments:
ReplyDelete1. She won three consecutive NCAA Tournament titles at UConn.
2. She has won three WNBA titles
3. She has won six Euroleague championships
4. She has won five Russian National League championships.
5. She has won a Turkish National League championship
6. She has won three Olympic gold medals.
7. She has won two FIBA World Championships.
Yup, she's amazing. When Tennessee started to fade a bit, just as Connecticut got Diana Tarausi, something changed with Geno Auriemma. I think he might've been honestly disappointed that no other program joined UConn in forming a new lead group. And so he just decided to double down and firebomb the whole sport. Other coaches might've decided to start to take it a little easy and not do stuff like coach another U.S. Olympic gold-medal winner (and give some other coach the opportunity to boost her or his recruiting creds). But not Geno. Either he's going to keel over, or somebody's going to have to do the hard work of coming to get him (like he had to do with Pat). But he's not coming back to the field. Wikipedia: "Since achieving its first #1 ranking in the 1994–95 season, UConn under Auriemma is 186-10 when playing as the nation's #1 team."
DeleteBut none of that matters to Japan right now. With 2:20 left before halftime:
ReplyDeleteUSA 46 - 42 JPN
At the half:
ReplyDeleteUSA 56 - 46 JPN
USA finishes the half on an 8-0 run.
DeleteAnd then the USA plays a great third quarter. After three:
ReplyDeleteUSA 81 - 59 JPN
Taurasi is 2-3 from 2-point range and 5-7 from 3-point range. She has 19 points to lead all scorers.
Final score:
ReplyDeleteUSA 110 - 64 JPN
Great job!
Yeah, that was great. I flipped it on, and Japan was still close in the third quarter, and I don't remember seeing Japan hit a shot or Team USA miss one the whole time I was watching.
DeleteNBC's weightlifting color commentator, Shane Hamman of Oklahoma City, is fantastic.
ReplyDelete"He's got the clean, and he got it easy! ... And he's got the jerk! ... And there's a new world record! WOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!"
ReplyDeleteThat's what I'm looking for in a weightlifting commentator.
In the men's +105kg weightlifting, super-heavyweight class, 22-year-old Georgian Lasha Talakhadze just set a new Olympic and world record with 473kg total of his best snatch and clean & jerk lifts. His last lift was 258kg. That's more than 567 pounds, and that's, like, seven dishwashers all piled together.
ReplyDeleteIt's a 4 in the morning in Tbilisi, but I'll bet their whooping it up somewhere in town. Not only did Lasha Talakhadze win super-heavyweight gold, his 31-year-old Georgian teammate, Irakli Turmanidze, won bronze. Armenia got the silver.
I'm so nervous about the 10 p.m. beach-volleyball match!
ReplyDeleteRIGHT THERE! RIGHT THERE!
ReplyDeleteTo Go Heath's excellent point earlier, 29-year-old Jenny Simpson of Webster City, Iowa, is significantly off the pace of the leaders in the women's 1500m run--an event in which Team USA had never medaled. But in the final turn and stretch run, Simpson passes two racers to move into bronze-medal position (and was, in fact, closing fast on the second-place finisher). Good for Jenny Simpson! Gold and silver go to Kenya and Ethiopia.
ReplyDeleteYes, this was a good example of the grind-it-out spirit of our team.
DeleteYes, this was a good example of the grind-it-out spirit of our team.
DeleteThis is fun to play with.
ReplyDeleteDanell Johan Leyva, 24-year-old born in Tel Aviv and now of Miami, silvers in both men's parallel bars and men's horizontal bar! Team USA medaled in neither of these events in London. Huge.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia: "His stepfather and coach, Yin Alvarez (famous for his sideline theatrics during Danell's routines) and mother, Maria Gonzalez (his biological father, Johann Leyva, lives in Spain), were both members of Cuba's national gymnastics team. Gonzalez and Leyva defected to Miami when Leyva was a year old.[2] Alvarez defected by swimming across the Rio Grande to the United States while his team was competing in Mexico. Together, Alvarez and Gonzalez opened a gym in Miami several years later, and they married in 2001."
OK, there you go ... Simone Biles, hurrah!
ReplyDeleteSo, Aly, Danell and Simone came through with big-time Bob Costas tape-delay hardware last night, but then Team USA sustained a heartbreaking live loss in the beach-volleyball arena late. My wife and I watched every point, and Brazil was just plain better last night. I will have to decide whether I'm rooting for the home team or my home girls in the Brazil-Germany gold-medal final. Meanwhile, I'm hopeful April and Keri can rally for the bronze vs. lesser Brazil.
ReplyDelete