My Favorite Moments From Day 11 of the Olympics
The Paris Olympics are in the middle part, during which athletics reigned supreme. There is no purer, simpler expression of sport than this: we see who can run the fastest, throw the farthest, and jump the highest. Medals are not determined by judges who award points for artistic interpretation; only the clock and the ruler matter.
Here are the gold medal winners in the track and field events on Day 11:
Women’s 200m : Gabrielle Thomas (USA)
Women’s 3000m steeplechase : Winfred Yawi (Bahrain)
Men’s 1500m: Cole Hawker (USA)
Men’s long jump : Miltiadis Tentoglou (Greece)
Women’s hammer throw : Camryn Rogers (Canada)
Total number of medals as of day 11
Let’s talk about medals, baby. If you’re wondering how well everyone is doing, here’s the medal tally. Spoiler: The US is number one, and it’s not even close.
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USA – 86 (24 gold, 31 silver, 31 bronze)
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China – 59 (22 gold, 21 silver, 16 bronze)
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France – 48 (13 gold, 16 silver, 19 bronze)
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Great Britain – 46 (12 gold, 15 silver, 19 bronze)
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Australia – 35 (14 gold, 12 silver, 9 bronze)
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Japan – 29 (11 gold, 6 silver, 12 bronze)
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T7. South Korea – 26 (11 gold, 8 silver, 7 bronze) T7. Italy – 26 (9 gold, 10 silver, 7 bronze)
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Netherlands – 19 (8 gold, 5 silver, 6 bronze)
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Canada – 18 (6 gold, 4 silver, 8 bronze)
On the other side of the leaderboard, eight competitors are currently tied for 69th place ( good ). The following countries have won one bronze medal at the Paris Games: Austria, Cape Verde, Egypt, Granada, Indonesia, Iran, Portugal and Slovakia.
Best sport ever kicked out of the Olympics: Distance diving
The Olympics have a long history of featuring strange and obscure sports. There were the Olympic pigeon races in 1900, singles synchronized swimming competitions in 1984, 1988 and 1992, and competitive poodle cutting in 1900 (exemplary, but still). But the greatest forgotten Olympic event we must bring back in 2028 is the course dive.
You may not know the name, but I bet you’ve gone the distance at least once. This sport involves diving into a body of water and seeing how far you can go in 60 seconds without moving at all.
It was only played at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, where American William Paul Dickey won the gold medal at 62 feet, six inches (I think I could have beaten it no problem). America took home all the distance jumping medals that year, but we were the only country that competed.
I’m guessing Dickey’s result is a world record for distance jumping, but it’s probably been broken many times by people who didn’t even know they were playing the sport. Anyway: Below is a photo of Dickey’s GOAT plunger.