For all your extremely amateur coverage of the Olympics, mediocre attempts at being witty and original takes, overuse of GIFs and Memes & other random thoughts (and probably some handsome Olympians along the way).
Here is the next viral Olympic star of the games. A raw-dogging (hehe) shooter from Turkey who won silver in the mixed team competition. I was alerted to him by my Olympic correspondents from Gettysburg College, shout-out Professor Bloy’s freshman year seminar.
I found his Instagram and before we all assume he’s an assassin I want to show some other sides to Mr. Dikec.
He’s a world traveler!
He’s a craftsman!
He’s an animal lover!
And if you ever see him lurking in the shadows at night after you questioned his silver medalist partner’s honor within the past week, I’m sorry, but it’s probably already too late.
If you need a little morning pick me up/danger of crying yourself moment head over to Men’s Rowing. The US Men won the first gold medal in the 4-man boat in over 60 years.
It was a close race with a moment in the second half where it felt like New Zealand was gaining momentum but our guys found another gear and surged ahead and won in dominant fashion. They will probably show this during primetime tonight but if you go to the full replay below and head to the very end for the medal ceremony. One of the guys got a little emotional when he received his medal and then I almost got a little emotional on the train right when the conductor was asking for my ticket and I’m pretty sure he was worried about me.
Have you watched a ceremony and thought, what are the extras from Legend of Bagger Vance carrying? I wonder what super cool and rare thing is in the box they give out to winners after the medal.
It’s a poster with a diver on it. You can buy it for $37 online. I’m not saying I’m not going to buy it after the Olympics are over and everything goes on sale but really France? You didn’t want to spend more than $40 on the medalists? I know you are all about sustainability and green Olympics but maybe we didn’t need that mechanical horse running the Seine and you could have used that budget line to get the athletes something a little more unique?
The E. Coli levels went down so while it could have been fun to watch the first ever Duathlon, I’m happy the athletes got to compete in a full triathlon since that’s what they trained for and all. I didn’t wake up at 1 am to watch the women’s but saw that Cassandra Beaugrand of France won. I feel like France is having a great games. Home soil and bacteria advantage really is a thing.
I did watch the men’s race at 4:00am because I’ve adjusted my sleep schedule to French time because I’m slightly unhinged. One of my favorite parts is how after the swim they made them run up a bunch of historic stairs to get to their bikes. And not normal stairs, the awkward height and length ones that you never know how to do best.
The headlines are that Yee from the UK “dropped the hammer” to surge past Wilde from New Zealand in the very end of the run. The announcers were making it sound like Wilde winning was a done deal and what Yee did was unbelievable. But I’m going to say the announcers got distracted or they also watching the same footage as spectators could see that did make it seem like he was alone. But I’m pretty sure Yee and the third place guy both were steadily gaining ground and no one noticed. Dangers of working remote.
And in other Triathlon stories, a US athlete is making news because of his interesting approach to preparing for the dirty river swim.
He ended up 29 out of 50 but was the first American across the line so I feel like results are inconclusive if that was an effective preparation technique. Hope he gave his Olympic roommate Morgan Pearson a heads up about not washing his hands. This People Magazine article about them says there is a lot of reading going on in their room, including an adult fantasy series about dragon riding!!! Hand washing should be mandatory for sharing that book at least.
Ok, we are cleaning up on Silver and Bronze, which is great, but can we start getting some more gold medals? I am going full-on lazy spectator judging elite athletes from their couch mode here, but seriously, can some folks start winning some golds to bump us up a bit? Looking at the swimmers especially.
But I would also like to celebrate someone who is the only athlete from their country to have a medal so far. USA always has an abundance of medals with many of the individual athletes getting lost in the shuffle, but do you know who isn’t lost in the shuffle in Slovakia? Matej Beňuš. He won bronze in the Canoe Slalom. Nice work Matej.
Also, don’t mess with his Olympic squad. Can’t decide if I like their shirts or not but they definitely mean business…or party? The longer I stare the more confused I get. Maybe that’s the point, confuse the competition.
USA women’s Rugby won their first ever Olympic medal yesterday, defeating Australia for the bronze medal. I’ve got some hard-hitting questions following this game changing win.
Did Ilona Maher find love in the villa after getting a medal? Her social media is amazing, rizz is off the charts, no cap, as the kids say. She has made it very well known that she is looking for a man in the Olympics, 6’5, blue eyes, Olympic medal.
Did Jason Kelce buy all the drinks last night? I’m probably going to tell most of this story through Ilona’s social media. But seriously Jason, did you buy all the drinks last night?
Did Jason Kelce buy so many drinks that Ilona slept on a beanbag chair last night? Or did someone help her out of the beanbag chair so they could go for a chat and just talk about how much good banter they have instead of actually talking about anything.
But on a serious note, who is Michele Kang and why is she so awesome? She just gave US Women’s Rugby $4,000,000 out of nowhere to help them increase the popularity of women’s rugby in the US and help them prepare to do even better in LA28.
“In rugby, we say we’re just passing through the jersey and making the jersey better, and that’s always been my goal—to make this jersey better, not just for me but for the other girls that are going to come into the program. And I want them to dream… of being professional rugby players—professional athletes. That’s what I feel like I’m giving them.” – Ilona Maher
So congrats team. I’m excited to see what Ilona gets up to in the Olympic village now that she’s done competing.
Also, here is a link to the Gold Medal New Zealand team doing the Haka. Pink scrunchies were involved. They are going to be difficult to beat in 2028 but it will be fun to watch!
Full honesty, I expected the lower leg injury to become more of a thing so I was very pleasantly surprised that it was a pretty boring competition. There didn’t seem to be any doubt they were going to win once it was clear Simone was fine. So congratulations Simon Biles, Suni Lee and Jordan Chiles and kind of Jade Carey and sort of Hezly Rivera. I just took a deep dive and it’s interesting because the Tokyo games only allowed 4 people on the team. The former head of international gymnastics did that in an attempt to even out the competition and have less specialists in the team competition. These games it went back to 5 athletes a team and we said “F You”, we’ll only use 4 athletes and still dominate the competition. Japan also did the same thing, but that’s because one of their athletes smoked a cigarette and drank alcohol under the age of 20. Let’s calm it down a bit Japan.
But any who, congratulations athletes and especially Simone. Could have been fun to give Hezly her own Stephen with the glasses moment, but I imagine the next games will be wide open for her to have a moment in the spotlight.
With accompanying questions, I would like answered. I’m going to save swimming for tomorrow night because their medals are multiplying like Helga Hufflepuff’s cup in Gringotts.
Eaton Jagger & Huston Nyjah
Won Silver & Bronze in Skateboard Street. But what music do they listen to while skating? I hope it’s Chappel Roan because I finally know who that is after it was explained to me 3 separate times. Now I’m all in. Just like Jagger & Nyjah are all in on kick flicks and ollies? I know so little about skateboarding and full honesty, this is not the Olympics where I’ll be learning more. But still proud of you both.
Haley Batten
Won silver in mountain bike. But was also fined $565, for “failure to respect the instructions of the race organization or commissaires.” What random celebrity will be your benefactor since Jason Kelce and Flavor Flav are already taken? I would like to suggest rapper and jet-ski enthusiast Trina.
Chloé Dygert
Won bronze in Road Cycling Individual Time Trial. This one is a little tough because she was a gold medal favorite but the bad weather continued and she ended up getting bronze after a bad fall. She’s got more races to go though and more opportunities to win gold. So Chloé, are you going to brush your shoulders off and kick some ass in your next Olympic race?
Lee Kiefer & Lauren Scruggs
Won gold & silver in Women’s Individual Foil. I don’t think anyone predicted the gold medal match would be two Americans and a Canadian winning bronze making it a North American exclusive podium. Not trying to start a fencing civil war, but do your coaches prepare you to face your teammates and exploit their weaknesses that you probably know better than anyone? Kind of like a Hunger Games situation, you are going to work together until you have to face each other and then you just need to find a rock with eyes and you’ve got an easy win.
Nick Itkin
Won bronze in Men’s Individual Foil, his second Olympic bronze medal. Why do you aggressively bend your foil downwards between every point? Is it because many of your attacks are downwards so it theoretically will reach them faster? Or is it just an intimidation factor, like I’m going to bend you backward if you get too close? Either way, it seemed to work. Nice work Nick.
Medal Table Check-In
And for a quick medal table overview. We are currently in the odd phase early in the games where we have the most medals but not that many gold (YET), so we are deceptively low on the table. Do we only have 3 gold so far? Yes. But we also have 9 bronze medals. And C’s get Degrees.
The internet is full steam ahead for these Olympics and it feels like everyone is doing so many amazing Olympic jokes and commentary so I want to acknowledge that I am not really getting anything original out there.
But, I am so happy that I am not alone in thinking that the Google AI commercial about getting the interweb to write a fan letter was absolute garbage.
Don’t waste one of the best athlete’s time with your garbage letters written by a computer program that only speaks in 0s and 1s. Or at least don’t make us watch it 10 times in a row during the primetime coverage on the Peacock App. It’s been that commercial and the one with Athing Mu that makes it seem like she made it to the Olympics…awkward. What do the kids call it now, chuegy? Did I use it right?
Until AI learns to write a fan letter like Mac writes one to Chase Utley I don’t want to hear it Google. Let kids write letters that are semi-incoherent, follow no logical order and are filled with stickers and glitter, just like I still do today. I think Sydney would like that more.
Royer's Olympic Blog 