Monday, August 5, 2024

Once more with the GOAT.

Simone has two more shots at gold. Can she pull it off?

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• A new sport! We start with men's volleyball, and the quarterfinal matchup between the US and Brazil. I mean, we're not going to see much. The US is ahead and it's match point. I think we can predict what's going to happen. And it does! Team USA wins and advances to the semifinals.
• The double is alive! To the track we go for the final heat of the men's 200-meters where Noah Lyles, winner of last night's exciting 100-meter sprint, tonight will begin his quest for his second gold medal. He cruises to an easy victory, advancing to tomorrow’s semifinals.
• Medal ceremony! Track and field medals are presented the day after the events, so tonight Noah gets his medal for the 100-meters he won yesterday. Does he sing? Yes! He's the best. Fred Kerley is behind him on the bronze podium. Does he sing? No. Work harder, Fred!
• Julien Alfred gets some fluff, now that's she's won Saint Lucia's first ever gold medal for the women’s 100-meters. She's looking forward to going home. Does she know what changes will be there for her when she gets there? Nope! Judging by the video, she's going to be the biggest star on the island. But also judging by the video, Saint Lucia isn't a bad place to be even if you're not the biggest star on the island.
• Alfred is up in the first heat of the women's 200-meters semifinals. She wins and moves on, but American McKenzie Long finishes third, so she'll have to rely on her time to advance.
• Men's pole vaulting! Women's discus! Both are going on right now. We only get to see one athlete from each though. Back from break we get another, American Sam Kendricks, who clears 19 feet 6 inches at the pole vault. Crazy! But Sweden's Mondo Duplantis can hit that height, too, so the competition continues! Later. Not now. You think NBC’s going to show the whole thing at once?
• Back to the 200m semifinals. Gabby Thomas is in this heat. She makes the last 100 meters look easy and she cruises to the next round.
• Mondo Duplantis gets some fluff. Sweden's best pole vaulter learned his skill in… Louisiana? He was born and grew up there. Both of his parents were pole vaulters, and now are his coaches at LSU. There are some cute home videos of how he started pole vaulting as a small child using a broomstick in the living room. He goes a lot higher now. Fluff!
• Mondo vaults over the 6-meter bar. That's 19 feet 8 inches for non-metric people. A lot higher than a broomstick. Over at the women's discus, America’s Valarie Allman just threw a discus almost 70 meters. She's in first place. Lots going on at the track tonight!
• It's the last semifinal for the women's 200m. American Brittany Brown wins this semi, so she'll move on. What about McKenzie Long? Was her time good enough? Yes! We’ll see them both tomorrow.
• Simone time! The women will be up on the balance beam. Who gets the honor of finishing second to Simone? We'll find out soon enough. Suni Lee is in this event, too. Let's see what she does. OW! She looked great, then her back foot slipped and she fell, landing hard in the splits with one leg on each side of the beam, before falling off. Yikes. That probably ends her medal chances.
• Lots of women are having problems on the beam tonight. The gymnast before Suni almost fell. The gymnast after Suni did fall. It's too much for Suni to expect that everyone would fall, but weird things happen. And right as I type that, the next gymnast almost falls. Next gymnast: falls twice. What's going on?
• Simone is up! Given everyone else tonight, she probably just has to stay vertical and she'll win. AHHH! She falls off, too! It was otherwise a solid routine, but is it possible to win a medal if you fall off the beam? As I've said many times, I'm no scoring expert, but it seems unlikely. Nope. She's in fourth. Rebeca Andrade from Brazil is next. Can SHE stay on the beam? She does and only has one slight bobble. I'm thinking that’s a medal right there. Psh! Now she's in fourth, so it shows what I know. Alice D'Amato of Italy wins the balance beam for that country’s first ever gold medal in gymnastics.
• Awwwww. Gold medal American rower Justin Best was on the Today show this morning and proposed to his girlfriend live on TV in front of the Eiffel Tower. Hard to top that. In women's 3x3 basketball, the US loses the semifinal to Spain in overtime, then wins ends up winning bronze in their next game. In men's beach volleyball, Team USA was eliminated by Norway. Does Norway even have a beach? In women's beach volleyball, Team USA was eliminated by Canada. Does Canada even have a beach? Women's wrestling! USA advances. You can watch all of this here, right? Ha! No! It's on Gold Zone. Meanwhile, everyone is partying with Snoop! Kevin Durant gets pulled aside for a minute to talk about what he loves about the Olympics. He likes it all. The competition, watching the other athletes, representing his country… just make sure the US wins gold or else he might join another country. What? Too soon?
• To the women's 5,000-meter race. With a couple of laps to go, the Kenyan and Ethiopian runners are elbowing each other. Kenyans Beatrice Chebet and Faith Kipyegon finish gold and silver. Or DO they? Apparently the elbowing that was going on might be some kind of rule violation. Or not. The judges decide it isn’t, so gold and silver it is!
• Back to women’s discus for the final round. Feng Bin of China throws far, but not far enough, so Valarie Allman wins gold! Back to pole vault! Sam Kendricks misses and Mondo wins. But wait! There will be more!
• The Event of the Night is the women's floor exercise. Nothing to fall off of here, so this should be better than the balance beam. Rebeca Andrade starts first and does very well. She'll be hard to beat.
• Uh-oh. Biles looks like she hurt herself on a practice run. She landed funny, then had to get her ankle taped up. That's not a good sign.
• Simone is up! She looks good, but she went out of bounds twice. And that cost her. She's in second behind Andrade. Each penalty cost her three tenths of a point and she lost by 0.033 points. Take one of those out of bounds penalties away and she wins gold.
• Jordan Chiles! Remember her? She's back as the last competitor of the Olympics. She looked really good. To me. But what do I know? I think we've established I don't know much as far as gymnastics scoring. Nope. Jordan gets fifth. Or DOES she? There's been an inquiry place on her score. And it went up! She gets bronze! How did that work? John Roethlisburger says Jordan's coaches told the judges there was something they scored incorrectly. And the judges agreed. I still don't understand it, but yay Jordan!
• Remember Mondo Duplantis? He's already won gold, but now he wants a world record. Seems greedy, but okay. Attempt two at 6.25 meters is a failure. He has one more chance. If he makes it does he win a different medal? Like a super-gold or something? Probably not. He would just get the record. Here he goes! And he makes it! That's 20 feet, 6 inches. When Mondo was born in 1999, the record was 20 feet, 1 1/5 inches. That record lasted until 2014, when Renaud Lavillenie of France bumped it up to 20 feet 2 1/2 inches. Since then, the record has been broken eight more times, all by Mondo. Maybe he should get a super-gold medal.
• Today in Paris! Spain beats Morocco in soccer in one semi-final, while France beats Egypt in the other one. Badminton! Men's 3x3 basketball! And surfing! Finally, we're going to get to watch some surfing! We get to see two male and two female surfers. There are scores involved. How do they work? I know even less about surfing scoring than I do about gymnastics scoring. But Caroline Marks of the US wins gold! Yay!
• It's time for some Simone Biles fluff. She's in the restaurant studio with Mike and she's wearing a boot. Is it that serious? No, it's just a precaution. She enjoyed Paris more than her previous two Olympics because she didn't put as much pressure on herself. What did she think of the celebrities? Not as much as NBC thought, but she did notice them. She was also happy to have both her husband and her parents in Paris. Finally, asks Mike, if you had an oil painting above your mantle that represented your favorite moment of these games, what would it be? Well, that’s a weird question. “Snoop admiring the Mona Lisa, Mike.” That would have been a good answer. Instead she took the safe route and said her with her teammates on the podium. I guess that’s good, too. But not as good as Snoop. Fluff.
• Mike makes a little speech at the end about the GOATs, Ledecky and Biles. Blah blah blah, they’re awesome. This goes on for two minutes. I’m guessing this is some writer’s Emmy submission, so they want to make it sound important. It isn’t. Fluff!
• Medal ceremony, this time for Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. Does she sing? No, but I don't know if Brazil's national anthem even has words. I'm guessing it does because I hear people in the crowd singing. Wait! About halfway through she starts singing! Way to go Rebeca!

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Simone finishes her Olympic career (or DOES she?) with 11 Olympic medals, the most ever by an American gymnast. Will she back in 2028 for the L.A. games? She'd be 31, so that seems unlikely. But who knows? Tom Brady was a GOAT and he kept coming back. Maybe Biles will, too.

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