Live blog. I watched 2 hours of rowing instead of the live coverage of the opening ceremonies this morning so here we go!

Overall Thoughts

It seems the media consensus is the Olympic Ceremonies were muted and dull. I’m going to take a slightly different take. They were definitely simpler than what we’ve seen from the last 2 decades and I think we need to make that ok. Fewer countries are even considering hosting the games as costs skyrocket and expectations become unrealistic. For the sake of the future of the Olympics let’s make this the standard instead of Beijing’s opening ceremonies. Got to start cutting costs somewhere.

That being said, I do think Japan got a little too in their heads for this one. I bet everything had meaning and significance but maybe make it a little more accessible to the rest of the world so we can leave the ceremonies more appreciative of your culture and approach to the games? Most of it felt like a contemporary art gallery….you kind of nod along to not look “uncultured” but immediately forget all about it because you had no idea what it was.

Cauldron Lighting

I did know about Naomi Osaka getting to light the cauldron in advance but it was still awesome to see. She is an amazing athlete while also trying to start much-needed conversations about mental health so it’s great that Japan is celebrating her for everything that she is doing right now.

Drones

This was probably the most impressive part of the ceremonies in terms of being something new and a “wow”. It took me a little while to figure out what was happening but I am excited to see the future of drone sky formations….when will we have the first proposal or the first giant middle finger ruining a day at the beach? Only time will tell.

Pictogram Dudes

This was fun and a highlight for me. Really cool concept….execution was only an 8/10 but it’s like an Ok Go video for the Olympics!

Team USA Olympic Outfits

I like them from the standpoint that I’m pretty sure I could put together that outfit from things currently in my closet. But is this the best we can do to represent USA as a country? I would like to say no, we aren’t all permanently trying to sneak aboard a yacht. Needs some pieces of flare at least.

Sue Bird & Eddy Alvarez as Flagbearers

Sue Bird is just an icon so perfect as the veteran flagbearer. I am embarrassed to say I didn’t know about Eddy until now. Short Track Speed Skating medalist and then just casually goes to an MLB career. Definitely deserves to carry that flag as well.

Now 2 Shirtless Flag Bearers

Just because….and big day for Mac from It’s Always Sunny and greasing up dudes.

Random Thoughts While I Watched Live:

• These people don’t know how to use exercise equipment properly
• This is the largest DDR game I’ve ever seen
• Is this rope portion of the ceremony a team building exercise for the staff?
• From J & L about the Japanese singer in the white rainbow dress: This is some hunger games sh*t, she looks like she is from the capital
• These ceremonies are spookier than I expected overall so far
• Carpentry has never been as exciting as this….so hot right now
• Tap dance is definitely a surprise that I would not have guessed in advance
• I feel like the song playing while the lanterns are being brought out would be good for a movie soundtrack as a character decides to chose love over career and get on the train
• Argentina is here to PARTY
• I totally get having 2 flagbearers but they should really just take turns and not try to hold it together….
• Italy’s outfits kind of look like they came from a giant twister board
• UKRAINE HAS NEON YELLOW FANNYPACKS!!!!
• Even with reduced participants in the Parade of Nations this is taking forever
• BUT I still have a life goal of being one of the people that claps for 3 hours straight along the parade of nations route

Every Olympics has a unique slate of sports where medals are given. Changes are made as different sports become more or less popular around the world (I guess Modern Pentathlon is thriving somewhere…). And in recent years, there has also been a much needed equalization of events for women to match the number available for men.

I think the brand new sports for the Tokyo Olympics are an X-TREME attempt to get younger and hip fans. And the 2 returning sports as the complete opposite. Below you will find some tidbits of info about the new sports, my takes accompanied by a classic 90s-ish movie gif & a personal excitement level.

SKATEBOARDING

Tony Hawk approves, he’s not competing but he is bringing the hype and did some tricks in the skatepark with the competitors. They will be doing ollies and flipkicks in Street and Park events and be given scores based on difficulty and execution. The Street course has more stairs and railings like a city park and the Park course is more like a funky empty pool. I get they are trying to get a younger audience but I’m just not sure this is going to achieve those goals like the Winter Games has been able to do. It does validate a sport that has a history of being seen as a menace to railings everywhere so I’m fine with it joining but just not sure this is the future of the summer games.

Royer’s Excitement for Skateboarding: 6/10

Karate

I honestly don’t know why this wasn’t a sport until now when Taekwondo and Judo seem to be going strong. Karate originated on islands that eventually became part of Japan so it is very fitting they debut at the Tokyo Games. They have a traditional 1:1 match format but then also a demonstration of skills versus a virtual opponent….kind of like the training they do in Hunger Games perhaps? I have no clue, we can find out together.

Royer’s Excitement for Karate: 6/10

Surfing

Disclosure: I just finished a memoir about a surfer so I’m possible biased at the moment but I’m pretty jazzed for this. And yes, I know everything I wrote about skateboarding could be said about surfing, and more considering they are relying on the ocean to behave. They better hope the heart of the Tafiti isn’t missing making the ocean extra sassy.

Royer’s Excitement for Surfing: 7/10

Sport Climbing

Another Disclosure: I just went rock climbing for the first time ever (thanks Jesse) so I’m jazzed for this as well. But have you watched this yet? The speed climbing event is WILD, it’s like Spiderman in real life. And there is some DRAMA with the format. In most competitions climbers compete separately in Speed, Bouldering and Lead because they are very different events requiring different skills. But for the Olympics they have to do all 3 and overall results decide a single gold, silver and bronze medal. It will be interesting to see what happens with this competition, how the sport climbing community responds and if they make it back to another Olympics based on what happens here.

Royer’s Excitement for Sport Climbing: 8/10

Softball/Baseball

This is actually a return to the games for Softball and Baseball. Their entry and exit and re-entry is a fascinating slice of Olympic history. For softball, America was one of the primary reasons it got into the Olympics in 1996….and then the primary reason it took a quick exit after 2008. We were too good and created a competitive imbalance that was bad for the Olympics. Baseball is challenged by timing, it’s in the middle of the MLB season, so the IOC has cited the lack of the best players as a reason to remove it along with softball. This is a big moment for softball as one of the only opportunities to get true global coverage and attention. My mom also loves softball so I’m hoping for a competitive and exciting tournament to give it a chance of staying in the games in the future.

Royer’s Excitement for Softball/Baseball: 9/10

In Conclusion

It’s a very interesting slate of new sports for the Olympics that I think matches the spirit and culture of Japan. Is this the start of the X-Games-ification of the Summer Olympics? Is this going to inspire me to take up skateboarding? Will Cobra Kai get 12 more seasons because of the Olympics? Only time will tell.

It’s 6:21 a.m. and I’m watching Côte d’Ivoire defeat Saudi Arabia in a soccer game. That can only mean 1 thing…..OLYMPICS TIME.

I know I’m very behind but it was hard to finally sit down and start the blog up again. The news surrounding the games hasn’t been great. There are already athletes with COVID, athletes being denied the games for stupid reasons (burritos and bongs), a Paralympic athlete being denied a personal care assistant and threats of the games being cancelled all together at any moment. I didn’t want to let myself get excited and then disappointed but duty calls. And by duty I mean the 1 person that asked me if I had moved my blog to another location because there was no 2021 coverage yet. You know who you are…thank you.

SO….here I am, suddenly caring about soccer (even though I completely ignored EURO and Copa) yelling at Aboubacar Doumbia for getting a red card in the 5th minute of stoppage time when his team have basically won.

Join me on this upcoming wild ride that will be the 2020 TOKYO OLYMPICS.

My last live blog of the games. I’m excited because I’ve got stronger chances of staying awake for these ceremonies. No promises. I’m going to let everything digest a few days and come back later this week for a wrap-up and favorite moments but solid games. I’ve had a blast but I’m beat. I need to go back to sleeping more than 5 hours a night and waking up at 5:00 to start watching live coverage.

Does anyone else get a little emotional/motivated to do more with your life when the Toyota Super Bowl ad comes on?

It begins!

-Intro had a lot of colors, was kinda fun. Took me a little while to figure out they were all on roller skates but I’m picking up on things.

-I’m really digging these Geomungos. And the light pagoda. And this 13 year old shredding the guitar. Great start.

 

I also really like this turtle surrounded by colorful confetti. I want a turtle to carry my memories into the sky.

 

The games are technically over now because the closing ceremonies are finishing up. I’ll blog those later but wanted to throw out a couple random things that you need to see that have happened in the last 48 hours or so that luckily don’t need much explanation.

A squirrel tried to make snowboarding even more exciting by incorporating daredevil feats into downhill runs. He luckily did survive but it begs the question of what would have happened if there was impact? Do they start the race over for outside interference? Would it start a squirrel war against the Olympics?

Javier Fernandez crushed his Olympic “fun skate” hamming it up and winning over the audience. Just watch it, he’s wearing short shorts and does pushups, it’s worth it.

Wacky and weird moments from the games. NBC put together a delightful little video of all the random moments they caught on film. I also found what I would probably look like on the jumbotron if I ever went to the Olympic games…

 

 

They are not only winning all the medals but also making music videos about it…

Some crazy shit happened in curling. We won our first ever gold medal after starting round robin play 2-4 and Canada didn’t medal at all. And look at our team. I would have expected them to crush the dads of elementary school kids beer drinking games but not necessarily Olympic curling. I wrote them off halfway through round robin play. But they come back strong to win 5 in a row versus the best teams in the world. Shuster has proved to be an unshakeable skip and playmaker under pressure. He was able to throw a shot rock in the 8th end to get the US 5 points and take a 10-5 lead.

The US team was really fun to watch. Matt Hamilton and Shuster were the most vocal and their back and forths, at times almost bickering, from opposite ends of the ice gave you some good insight into the game. You could also tell that Hamilton was probably trying to position himself as one of the next leaders of U.S. curling. They knew everyone had written them off so were able to play with a little abandon and took down a much younger Swedish team with stupid matching haircuts.

Curling is the drinking man’s sport of the Olympic games and I imagine they have all drank a lot of beers since their gold medal. They will be heroes on the curling rinks for quite some time.

 

Me: Hey, can you put on the Olympics

Bartender: I guess…. (starts clicking through and puts on a replay of biathlon relay)

Me: Sorry, I meant the primetime coverage of the Olympics

Bartender: (blank stare) what? what channel do you want?

Me: I’m not sure what channel it actually is but the primetime coverage where they are showing the live events.

Bartender: (increasingly impatient face) What am I searching for exactly?

All my friends: Can we at least get beers before you make the bartender hate us?

Me: Bobsled, we’ve got 3 teams!

Bartender: You want me to turn off the Celtics game for bobsled?

Me: Thanks so much. It’s going to be tough for us to win a medal but one of them liked some of my posts on Instagram so I’ve got to support.

Bartender: (I really hate you look) Can I least get you a beer after the weirdest tv request I’ve ever gotten?

Me: No thanks, I’m just having water….(jk, you know I got an IPA and nachos)

But speaking of bobsled….we are sitting 9, 20 and 21 after the first 2 runs. So could be better. I’ll save most of the bobsled talk for tonight but there weren’t massive mistakes but Codie Bascue is going to drive some perfect runs to end up on the podium. But at least we didn’t wear an anti-doping t-shirt and get caught doping….

 

Joey Mantia of the USA competed in the Men’s 1,000 meters long track speed skating this morning. He skated in the 13th out of 18th pair. He had a really good race and with one of the best times this year not at altitude. Takura Oda of Japan skated in the next pair and they had to go down to the hundreth of seconds to show Joey was still in the lead. But from there he had to slowly watch himself slip to second and third and finally Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands skated last and took gold knocking Joey off the podium (really Dutch skaters, didn’t have enough medals already? couldn’t share the wealth a little bit?).

2014 and 2018 have not been the best for US speed skaters and this would have been a really big deal for Joey and the team but unfortunately he ended up sitting in the hardest spot. So just wanted to give him a little shout-out that someone was watching your race this morning and is proud. And you can read a lot more about him here if you are interested.

And way to go Dutch skaters….smooth move assholes

Time for some ice skating! I don’t think there is much else live tonight. Do you know when there is a lot of live stuff? Saturday morning at 1:00am. I’m going to be sitting on my couch with the TV on and streaming something on my phone and wilding out. And by wilding out I’m sure I will be asleep but I’m going to give it my best.

Also, some good Olympic funnies are here.

Short Track Speedskating

How do you get into short track speedskating in the US? It’s one of those sports that you don’t casually hear about someone doing. Is it more of a west coast thing?

Just going to throw this out there, Shim Suk-Hee of Korea in the women’s race prelim is one of the first short skate speed skaters that makes passing people look easy. I feel like so many other people don’t even try it and she is it just zipping around like it’s NBD.

Can you butt slide across the finish line and still win? But also, do not piss off the Korean men’s 500 speed skaters. Did you just see how they tag teamed the Chinese skater and crushed him into 4th place? He got passed on both sides and ended up being beaten by butt slide guy.

Oh Sbit! This women’s race. I feel like the Korean racers tried to get too sneaky with tactics and knocked each other out.

Women’s Ice Skating

This sailor moon clip is fascinating. I feel like she is in her zone for anime appreciation in these eastern Asian games.

 

Not going to make it for the free skate ending, calling it now.