Wednesday, July 31, 2024

More swimming and gymnastics. 

There are 51 different events in the Olympic Games. Why do we only get to see two of them in prime time?  

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• Boom! We're off to women's volleyball, where the US is playing Serbia. And by off, I mean we get to see the last point where the US wins. What? You'll get to see one point and you'll enjoy it! Do not question Mike Tirico!
• Let's watch some swimming now. How about some Australia vs USA action? Torri Huske and Gretchen Walsh of the US will be racing in the women's 100-meter freestyle final against Australia's Shayna Jack and Mollie O'Callaghan. But I guess both countries should have been looking out for Sweden, as Sarah Sjoestroem, the current world record holder, beats them all to win gold. Even she seemed surprised. Huske gets silver. Remember last night when NBC explained that the outside lanes are usually the slower swimmers? Huske was in lane one and Sjoestroem was in land seven. They're not that much slower, I guess.
• It's Leon Marchand time! The Frenchman's first race is the 200-meter fly final. With 50 meters left he's behind, but he's moving up. The crowd is going nuts! Marchand wins with an Olympic record time! Rowdy says, "28.9 for the last leg! If you don't know what that means, you don't have to." I know what 28.9 means, but I don't have any idea what Rowdy means. That's a nonsense sentence. Marchand looks nonchalant about his record-setting win. Hungarian Kristof Milak, who led about 185 meters of this 200-meter race, looks crushed.
• Dive time for the women's synchronized 10-meter platform. The US team of Delaney Schnell and Jess Parratto is in 8th place. They need to pick up the pace. Hopefully Jess Parratto comes to her senses.
• Snoop is back and ready for basketball. He's pencilled himself into the lineup with LeBron, Durant, and Embiid. I think i know who the defense isn't going to cover.
• China, of course, won the diving. Delaney and Parratto tried to let some judges love them before it was too late, but it was too late. They finished sixth.
• Over to men's all-around event in gymnastics. Frederick Richard starts on the pommel horse and OOF! His hand slips off and he lands on his chest. Ouch. That looked painful. Well, it would be for me. He looked more annoyed than anything. That's probably not going to be good for his medal chances. But it's still early, and what do I know about gymnastics' scoring?
• A few minutes later, China's Zhang Boheng is on the floor exercise and lands, literally, on his head. Richard's odds just got better.
• Oof. After the first rotation, Paul Juda is in 17th place and Frederick Richard is in 23rd. Japan's Daiki Haminoto also falls off the pommel horse. Did someone grease it down?
• Ukraine's Oleg Verniaiev is training in Ukraine despite the ware because he thinks if he leaves, it sets a bad example to his fellow countrymen. Touching, but still fluff.
• Paul Juda is here, too. Let's watch him perform the vault. Oh no! He stumbled off the mat on the landing. Lots of people are falling today. Whoever can avoid falling on their face might win gold tonight.
• Leon Marchand gets a medal ceremony. Does he sing? Yes! So does the whole crowd. Nice!
• After three rotations, Juda is still 17th, but Frederick has moved up to 22nd. What's the medal for 17th? Paper?
• After four rotations, Verniaiev and his Ukrainian teammate Illia Kovtun are the leaders. The Americans are pretty much out of it, so we might as well root for them. I might have jinxed Verniaiev. As soon as I started rooting for him, he got his worst score. After five rotations, Richard is 12th, Juda is 16th, and only Kovtun of the Ukrainians is in the top 4.
• Trap shooting! Doubles tennis! Women's soccer! Men's basketball! All sports that are Gold Zoning, so you won't see them here.
• Snoop is embedding with the US basketball team. He rides their bus and train and gets all of them to autograph a basketball. Then he falls asleep on the train. Back at the restaurant studio, Mike asks Snoop his opinion on the team's attitude. He thought they were relaxed and willing to get over their egos to win gold. It was weird seeing Snoop on the bus with a bunch of athletes. I know he's a big star, but you really get a jocks-vs-musicians feel from it. You just never think there would be a situation where Snoop would NOT be the coolest person in the room.
• On the last gymnastics rotation, Illia Kovtun nails his floor exercise. Will he medal? Maybe. I guess we'll find out. Paul Juda does well on his high bar and so does Frederick Richard, but it's too late for both of them.
• Suni vs. Simone! They stare at the camera. They're so serious! Fluff.
• Paper-cut-out Rowdy Gaines talks about Katie Ledecky. She has the top 20 record times in the 1,500-meter freestyle. She also has the 800-meter record. He says she's more dominant than Usain Bolt. Experts say her 1,500-meter record won't be broken until 2054. Interesting style to this fluff, but it's still fluff.
• Katie is now the Event of the Night, the women's 1,500-meter freestyle final. It's weird that the only question here is, how much Katie will win by? Rowdy doesn't think she'll win by 20 seconds, but he doesn't think anyone will be within 5 seconds. Let's see how Rowdy does!

  Other things to watch: this event will take about 15 minutes. NBC will undoubtedly take a commercial break in the middle of this. Will it be an actual break, or will they do the picture-in-picture thing they did the other night? I'm betting a full break.

  After 750 meters, Ledecky is ahead by 4.76 seconds. Rowdy's prediction isn't looking so good. In this race the camera, which normally zooms in to show how close all the swimmers are, has to zoom out so you can still see all the swimmers trailing Katie by 10 or more meters. At 1,250 meters, she's ahead by 7.5 seconds. Now she's the only one in the camera shot. On the final stretch, she's ahead by 16 meters. The pool is only 50 meters long. She gets a new Olympic record. Anastasiia Kirpichnikova of France gets silver, finishing over 10 seconds back. The crowd cheers. Ledecky gets out of the pool and pumps her fist. Imagine being that dominant and still getting that excited about it. She's just happy to represent her country. And now she has 8 gold medals in her career. Way to go Katie!

  Also, no commercial break at all! Shows what I know.

• Leon Marchand is back for his second race, the 200-meter breaststroke final. Australia's swimmer is Zac Stubbledy-Cook. I might have to root for him just for his name. American Josh Matheny is in lane seven. Does that mean he doesn't have a chance? Normally I'd say yes, but we saw what happened earlier tonight. Let's swim! The crowd cheers every time Marchand's head pokes above the water. He wins gold again in Olympic record time. The crowd roars. Stubbledy-Cook has a cool name and a silver medal. Matheny has neither and finishes in seventh.
• Marchand gets his medal ceremony of the night, but we don't get to see that one. NBC doesn't think we need to see the French national anthem twice, but the crowd was into it.
• Jack Alexy leads the Americans into the 100-meter freestyle final. But can he beat Chlorine Daddy, Romania's David Popovici? This will go fast. China's Pan Zhanle finishes first with a world record, Australia's Kyle Chalmers is second, and Popovici finishes third. Alexy finished seventh. That was a little anti-climactic.
• Sewage update! The Seine is clean. Ish. Clean enough, anyway, for both the men's and women's triathlon. So they swim, bike, and run through the beautiful streets of Paris, finishing on the Pont Alexandre III bridge. The statues there are covered with gold, which only seems appropriate for a medal-winning race.
• Medal ceremony time! Katie gets a chance to sing. Will she? YES! From the very first note. Remember kids, real GOATs sing!

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I don't dislike gymnastics and swimming, but I do wish NBC would start showing us a little variety. Every time they give us a peek at Gold Zone I wonder why they can't give us just 20 minutes of something else. But at least they kept the fluff to a minimum, so I guess we have to take what we can get.

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