My Favorite Moments and Drama of the Third Day of the Olympic Games in Paris
Hello, dear Olympians! The Paris Games are in full swing, with thousands of athletes from around the world competing in 32 sports (29 of which you won’t hear about until the next Olympics). I’m riveted by competition, equally appreciative of sporting achievements and occasional heroes like Bob the Cap Catcher, who gained international recognition for jumping into a pool to get a swimming cap . Here are some highlights, lows, ongoing drama and random observations from the Paris Games.
The Seine is full of crap
Perhaps the biggest story of the 33rd Olympic Games is whether the Seine is too polluted for human safety. ” Mon Dieu !” The river is full of dead things !” This was stated by a French official (whom I made up). This is a big deal because you can’t have a swimming competition in a sewer.
Just hours before the swimming portion of the men’s triathlon was scheduled to begin Tuesday, officials were wondering whether the race would go on as planned, be delayed until later in the week or canceled altogether. It all depends on the results of water purity tests. It is hoped that E-coli levels in Paris’ waterway will drop to “safe for human consumption”, but with E-coli levels rising when it rains, the race’s future may depend on whether storms planned for later this week materialize.
A spokesman for World Triathlon, the sport’s governing body, told CBS that the swimming portion of the triathlon could be eliminated altogether. “Then it will be biathlon,” he added.
While canceling swimming might work for triathlons (although triathletes who excel in swimming will be furious), the marathon swimming events scheduled for later in the games have no fallback option.
Why Olympic Street Skateboarding is Terrible
On the third day of the Olympic Games, the finals of the street skateboarding competition took place. Japan’s Yuto Horigome took home the gold medal, while Americans Jagger Eaton and Nyjah Huston took silver and bronze. But it was very stupid and bad, because the concept of “street skateboarding competition” is fatally flawed.
Firstly, because of the Olympic doping tests. Skateboarders who like to smoke marijuana are not eligible to compete in the Olympics, which significantly narrows the pool of athletes. The first step to improving Olympic skateboarding is to stop pot testing.
But more importantly, street boarding as it is actually practiced has nothing in common with how it is “played” at the Olympics. Skaters do not compete by doing 45-second runs and scoring the two best tricks on a scale of 0 to 100 points. Skaters compete while playing SKATE.
In SKATE, a skater performs a trick, then his opponent has five attempts to repeat it or lose a point. Then they change places. This is practiced in schoolyards and random staircases all over the world, and would be a much more interesting way to determine who is the best street skateboarder. SKATE involves direct competition and has an objective result independent of the judges’ interpretation. And this comes from the sport itself , not from some Olympic governing body that made up bogus rules for Olympic street skating.
It’s a great time to get involved in women’s rugby.
Why has no one ever told me that rugby is such an amazing spectacle? All these years I thought it was something like cricket – some foreign game for people who don’t know how to play a real sport – but I was glued to every game of the US women’s rugby sevens team at this Olympics, and it Cool. Plus we tear shit up .
A couple of days ago we beat Brazil, and on the third day the US team started a war against our eternal rivals and world villains – Great Britain. People in the UK really care about rugby – they invented the game, after all – but Team USA thrashed them 17-7 and barely broke a sweat. Highlights include team captain Nia Tapper’s goal-scoring score midway through the game, Sammy Sullivan’s blatant camera heist after the game went unplayable in the second half, and literally everything Ilona Maher does, both on the field and on TikTok .
The victory takes the U.S. rugby team to the Olympic semifinals for the first time. On day four we play New Zealand. They are very good, but I have faith in the mighty US Sevens.
US Women’s Basketball: Anti/Outsiders
While the USA women’s rugby sevens team is an underdog, our Olympic women’s basketball team is not. We just crush every competitor to the point where it’s not even fun. Our victory over Japan adds a 56th game to the USA’s winning streak. The team has not lost a game since 1992. On Thursday we play against Belgium. I don’t think they have a chance.