Yet More 2016 Miscellaneous Olympic Musings

You take your victories where you find them . . ..

Much has been made of the U.S. women's gymnastics team at the 2016 Olympics, and deservedly so, but their male counterparts haven't been doing as well.  But while teh girls ruled, the boys didn't exactly drool; the men's team's Danell Leyva, known for his lucky towel, had luck on the bars.  He won silver medals in both the horizontal and parallel bars.  Glad to see he didn't throw in the towel. :-)

Also, track runner Jenny Simpson won a bronze in the 1500-meter race - the first medal for an American woman in the so-called metric mile.  (Evan Jager won the silver in the men's 3000-meter steeplechase - and the two athletes raced with an elastic hair band they shared between them. Apparently it brought the two of them good luck.

Okay, now that the American women dominate in regular gymnastics, they have to work on rhythmic gymnastics - floor exercises with balls and streamers.  The Russians own that sport!  (But the Russians don't own track and field anymore; as noted here, sixty-seven Russian track and field atheltes - 67 was the final count - were banned from competing in Rio due to doping. How many Russian track and field athletes were able to compete?  Only one - long jumper Darya Klishina.)

And if American women can run the metric mile in the Olympics, certainly American women can swim the metric mile in the Olympics.  They've set records in the 1500-meter freestyle swim elsewhere.  Come on, IOC, show some gumption! Add the women's 1500-meter freestyle swim already!

Get rid of synchronized swimming to fit it in, if you have to.  (Okay, I couldn't resist . . .)

And would you believe that Kerri Walsh-Jennings and April Ross got knocked out of gold medal contention in beach volleyball?  It actually shouldn't have surprised anyone; the Brazilian pair who beat them were more favored due to their standings.  Well, you can't win 'em all . . . but the dynamic American duo did win the bronze against another Brazilian pair! :-D

Brokaw Beached

The new American beach volleyball team of Kerri Walsh-Jennings and April Ross are hitting the sand running at the 2016 Olympics, dominating the court and putting away their first rivals, a duo from Australia.  (Australia, meanwhile, scored a gold medal in the women's 4x100 freestyle swimming relay, with the Americans taking silver, though Dana Vollmer and anchor Katie Ledecky put up a good fight against the Aussies.)  Walsh-Jennings may be without Misty May-Treanor, but she hasn't lost a step in her new partnership with Ross. 

So far, the person who's gotten tripped up the most in beach volleyball is NBC anchor emeritus Tom Brokaw (below).  Right after a live women's beach volleyball match between duos from Switzerland and China ended with the Chinese pair winning, a report from Brokaw about the Amazon River (you knew it was going to happen) started to run. It then was pre-empted when a challenge to the Chinese was accepted and the two pairs had to play again for a match point.  (The Chinese still won.)  Brokaw's report then aired in its entirety, and Bob Costas had to apologize for it.  Because you don't just pre-empt Tom Brokaw.

Speaking of Costas, he reported for those that didn't hear it that Virginia Thrasher won America's first gold medal in air rifle, with two Chinese competitors taking "silver and gold."  Something missing there, isn't there?  A medal of another color, perhaps?  And two gold medals were awarded in the ten-meter air rifle competition?  No, there was no tie or anything like that; it was one gold.  Costas did not correct himself.  Bob, you're slipping.