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).
Just a quick shout-out to Salt Lake City for getting the Winter Olympics in 2034. I’ve been there, twice! They really love the Olympics with some great public monuments, a fun museum and an Olympic sports park that is multi-seasonal! And I don’t care if there were technically no other cities in the running, we needed a win today. Time to start cutting out at least 1 family-sized tub of Hummus a month to save for the Olympics.
The original all natural float tank…plus 10,000 bugs
And I have to give one of my all-time favorite winter Olympic athletes, Chris Mazdzer a shout-out for getting up at 3am to celebrate in the streets of Salt Lake City.
Not the best opening day for the USA. But since the opening ceremonies aren’t until Friday and this is pool play let’s just pretend that Saturday is the real first day of competition.
Men’s Rugby Sevens
The official Skies Out, Thighs Out team tied France 7-7 and then lost to Fiji 38-12 later in the day. They have to beat Uruguay tomorrow to have any chance of advancing. But apparently Fiji is as good at Rugby Sevens as Maui is at saying You’re Welcome unsolicited, so no real surprises today. I think the USA was just happy to be here but really planning for growth leading up to LA2028.
Fun fact, one of our best players, Perry Baker, once played for the Philadelphia Eagles!
Men’s Football
Not the Eagles kind of football, the Ted Lasso kind. But nothing good to report here either. We lost 0-3 to France. The host team usually has a little bit of a boost from the crowd and in this case, the smell of croissants and brie. But since this was the US men’s first Olympic match in 16 years we could have used a little bit more of a morale boost. But onward and upward to New Zealand on July 27!
Talk of the Town – Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan got their first ever Olympic goal in Men’s Football. But their fans were the talk of the town going wild and having a grand old time. Check out this dude’s square hat. Is that a future fashion trend? Only time will tell.
We are back! I’m sorry there has been no pre-Olympic coverage, but I’m watching football right now and the blog is back in action. Much, much more to come.
Where do they find the children to be the “snowflake kids”? Are they high ranking officials kids? The kids with the highest grades in Beijing? Either way I’m assuming they were pulled out of school for at least a month to practice 12 hours a day to make it perfect as possible.
Do you think Elena Meyers Taylor was excited to be next to the oiled up shirtless guy or was more thinking “some of us won multiple medals and aren’t here for thirst tweets so…please don’t get body grease on my jacket, and if your toes fall off from frostbite (or your wiener) please keep that away from me as well”.
(Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
I’m laughing out loud at the announcer and all the dancers trying to get the athletes to take their seats and making almost no progress. Good to know if I have to interview to become one of them, I’ll be sure to highlight my crowd control experience. “Yes, I’m very good at waving my hands in a non threatening way and bounching towards drunk athletes to get them to gradually make their way to their seats.”
Was the mayor of Beijing supposed to stand ridiculously far away? Did he just want to have a dramatic hand-off of the flag? I kind of hope he’s one of those people that actually loves social distancing and is using COVID as an excuse to skip social functions and watercooler talk at work.
The two kids hugging the globe…no way they aren’t going to get bullied for that. I wish they went rogue and started battling with the ball for who could get it to one side of the arena first. Start a little friendly rivalry between Milan and Cortina.
Overall, solid closing games. They are usually much tamer and boring than the opening ceremonies and they definitely didn’t break the mold with this one.
Norway was overall as dominant as expected. 14 medals in Biathlon! It’s basically USA’s version of Swimming and Track from the Summer Games.
Russia was second, as everyone predicted, not many golds which I can’t say I’m too upset about. 11 medals from cross country skiing, but only four from Biathlo. It’s an interesting division between these two countries in terms of sport dominance.
Germany dominated the sledding sports with 7 bobsled, 6 luge and 3 skeleton. I got the number of overall medals correct in this prediction!
Canada ended up getting 1 more overall medal than the America BUT we had 8 golds and they only had 4 so….
USA came in 5th for total medals, very respectable. Freestyle Skiing was our dominant sport with 8 medals and snowboarding with 4. The X-Games style sports have been more of our jam lately. If there had been 1 more gold I would have predicted this one perfectly. 2 more medals than 2018 so hopefully we are trending back towards getting higher up on the medal count in future years!
This has surpassed doping to many more issues within figure skating, the treatment of minors in sport, the International Olympic Committee, the Olympics in general and of course, Russia’s approach to athletes and sports.
And no one is winning here. In fact, everyone is losing very badly at a time when no one can afford to.
I’m not going to pretend I have any enlightened ideas on how to fix any of the problems. I do think the IOC needs to fully accept Russia has no intentions of changing and make some decisions to help save the integrity of the games.
Because I do worry the games are in trouble overall. Viewership is way down and fewer cities and countries, that aren’t trying to use the games for propaganda, are even expressing interest in hosting. The biggest news stories from the Olympics can’t be about child abuse, doping and human rights if there is any hope of keeping this amazing tradition alive.
Having two COVID games within the same 12 months, both in an opposite time zone is rough and probably negatively influences the public perception of the Olympics more than we even realize. But I’m still optimistic that Paris in 2024 can be a bit of a reset for the Olympics.
Let’s make the focus of the games about the world coming together to celebrate the best athletes competing for glory and inspiring people of all ages to get out there and find their athletic passion, whether it’s a 34-year-old guy in Boston joining a curling league or a 4-year-old girl seeing Erin Jackson and realizing the winter Olympics can also be for her.
Also, scrapbooking, the games should always involve some form of scrapbooking.
The Games are at 4/5 rings right now….let’s get back to 5/5
I’ve tried to keep up with posting about all the US medalists but there are just sooo many it’s sometimes hard to keep up, a good problem to have I guess. So anyone that I haven’t devoted any/enough time to before will now get a haiku.
The US Men are facing Great Britain in the Semifinals RIGHT NOW. During round robin play Great Britain ended 8-1 and we barely finished fourth with a record of 5-4. We need some John Shuster magic circa 2018 to really kick in right now. We are up 4-3 after 4 ends. A lot of curling left but Do Your Thang USA Curling.
Update: End of the 7th, USA trailing 4-5 but they have hammer in the 8th
This has been a very close and exciting match. Lots of aggressive sweeping. There are also some people in the stands getting ROWDY. I need to start learning some Curling Cheers. Since the arena is almost empty and both semifinals are happening at once I think the twenty people in the stands are taking polite turns cheering on their country. It’s peak curling.
Update: We Lost. It was a great match but we couldn’t pull the upset. On to the Bronze Medal Match tomorrow at 1:00am because who needs sleep?
Do you need a hint? He’s 6’5 and is competing in 5 separate events during these Olympics.
Last chance & hint. Canada has only won 3 medals EVER in the sport that he competes in.
It’s BIATHLON. The perfect event to put those luscious locks into a ponytail and control it with a headband.
Canada has surprisingly only won 3 medals in Biathlon, all by Myriam Bedard in 1992 and 1994. Jules was part of the Men’s 4×7.5KM Relay yesterday that placed 6th, the highest ever placing by the Canadien Men. Congrats Jules and thanks for playing another round of GUESS THE EVENT BY HAIR.
I’ve been a very bad hockey fan. Just like Joey Mantia got cocky in skipping the semifinals, I got cocky and thought I could wait longer and fully devote some time to the Men’s Hockey Team after last night’s game, which seemed like a safe bet based on how well we were playing in pool play.
But…I was wrong and I feel bad because I was fully passed out in front of the tv as they heartbreakingly lost in a shootout. I woke up for a hot second in the 3rd period and thought we had it in the bag so just closed my eyes again.
So tonight, I’m going to attempt to stay awake for the Women’s Gold Medal Game and live blog it for accountability. I’ll put myself in the penalty box until then.
CONFESSION #2: There is almost zero chance I stay awake the whole time since 11pm – 2am is the only time of day I can actually sleep deeply. If this game was at 4:00am I would be wide awake and stoked.
THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE
I fell asleep. Missed most of the game. USA lost. I’ll take the blame. This is one of those Olympic situations where Silver is not going to make these games fulfilling for any of the athletes on the Women’s team. They wanted to repeat Gold and they definitely have the talent, just couldn’t bring it all together in the gold medal game.
One thing is for sure, the rivalry is stronger than ever and I’m sure the Women’s team will be coming back in 2026 with a stronger desire than ever to bring home the gold.
Royer's Olympic Blog 