Tuesday, July 27, 2021

XXXIII Olympic Summer Games, Tokyo 2020 (Day 5)

Previous reports:

51 comments:

  1. Tonight I have the Yankees at the Devil Rays. 0-0 in the top of the 4th.

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  2. This season has been extremely disappointing for the Yankees, who are 51-47 and 9 1/2 games behind the BoSox in the AL East.

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  3. The Devil Rays, on the other hand, are 60-40 and only 1 1/2 games out. They are in a strong position to win the division or get a wild card.

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  4. The AL appears to be headed toward a showdown that will feature the Red Sox, White Sox, Astros, and (probably) the Devil Rays.

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  5. The NL, on the other hand, will probably be decided by a one-game playoff between the Padres and Dodgers, and an NLCS featuring the winner of that game against the Giants.

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  6. I'm looking forward to the playoffs because I really hate that ghost runner rule. I hope every playoff game goes 15 innings.

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  7. This point is worthy of a separate entry, but do yourself a favor and watch Michael Cleveland play the fiddle on YouTube.

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  8. The Yankees win 4-3, which is good news for the Red Sox.

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  9. I think I would love to play water polo (and handball).

    There’s 45 seconds to go in a tape-delay women’s match on USA Network. Hungary is leading Team USA, 10-9, and the teams are coming out of a timeout.

    The Rio 2016 medalists were Team USA gold and Italy silver. They gave the bronze to Russia, which cheated in the Olympics.

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  10. No dice. First loss for Team USA in the last three Olympic Summer Games.

    Quarterfinals start Tuesday--Team USA has already qualified.

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  11. It's about 20 minutes until midnight in Tokyo, so I guess we're done with live competition for today.

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  12. Oh, good! Team USA won the 3x3 women's basketball. That's exciting. China won bronze. Latvia won the men’s tournament, and Serbia won bronze.

    The Team USA women are …

    — Stefanie Dotson, a 29-year-old from Port Jervis, New York, who played at Connectictut and now plays for the Chicago Sky of the WNBA;

    — Allisha Gray, a 26-year-old from Greenwood, South Carolina, who played at both North Carolina and South Carolina and now plays for the Dallas Wings;

    — Kelsey Plum, a 26-year-old from Poway, California, who played at Washington and now plays for the Las Vegas Aces, and

    — Jackie Young, a 23-year-old from Princeton, Indiana, who played at Notre Dame and now also plays for the Aces.

    Dotson was 4 when the WNBA came about in 1996; Gray, 2, and Plum 1. There’s been an WNBA throughout Young’s life. That makes me happy.

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    1. Hey, that was Latvia's first medal of Tokyo 2020!

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  13. The big news of the Olympics yesterday, of course, was Simone Biles. Having been on the periphery of this story the last few weeks, the only thing I would have to say about yesterday's news is that no one should ever feel pressured to do anything in gymnastics for anyone else's sake.

    Certainly not mine. I appreciate all of the joy Simone Biles has brought me. She owes me nothing.

    Also, over the course of about five years when I wasn't much older than Simone Biles, I saw a psychotherapist regularly, adjusted diet and exercise and immersed myself in Christian-church life. Those were three super additions to my great family and circles of friends in terms of my mental health and happiness. I encourage anyone to build up as many of those assets around themselves as possible--and if one isn't working at a given moment, to keep on trying new versions (and/or going back and re-investing in old versions) until you start percolating. God loves you, and God is bigger than any of us could possibly imagine and always doing new, great things.

    And--one last gymnastics point--I was thrilled to learn that Team USA won the silver in the team gymnastics competition yesterday. Great Britain won bronze. The members of the U.S. team are Biles, 24, of Columbus, Ohio; Jordan Chiles, 20, of Tualatin, Oregon; Sunisa Lee, 18, of South Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Grace McCallum, 18, of Cambridge, Minnesota.

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  14. Here is the current medal count according to 538:

    1. United States: 31 medals (11,11,9): 6 fewer than expected
    2. China: 27 medals (12,6,9): 2 more than expected
    3. Russia: 23 (7, 10, 6): plus 10
    4. Japan: 22 (13,4,5): minus 5
    5. Australia: 16 (6,1,9): plus 3

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  15. Now we have on USA Network a 1/16 matchup in women's archery. India's Deepika Kumari is the 1; Team USA's Jennifer Mucino-Fernandez is the 16. Mucino-Fernandez got the first set and leads the second, but Kumari just shot a 10 ...

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  16. And another ... now tied at two sets apiece ...

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  17. I'm currently watching Team Handball, which I like a great deal, but which is dramatically worse than basketball. When you watch sports like Team Handball and Water Polo, you see what a brilliant idea it was to make the goal in basketball into a hoop rather than a goal. In basketball, you can score from the corner, which significantly opens up the whole playing field.

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  18. Mucino-Fernandez is an 18-year-old from Massachusetts who learned archery while living in Mexico for a while, the USA Network person says.

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  19. Kumari opens the third set with her third consecutive 10 ...

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  20. And Kumari takes the third set. So somehow--why don't I actually learn how these sports score--Kumari leads 4 points to 2, and it's first to 6 wins.

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  21. When Roone Arledge did the Olympics, he spent a lot of time teaching viewers how the different sports worked. I can remember long segments on the old compulsory figures in figure skating. NBC has never done anything like that. They just send you to a venue with a couple of Australians on the mike, and expect you to figure it out.

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    1. Yeah, NBC tends to do about 45 seconds on that at the beginning of a broadcast, maybe with a graphic or two at the bottom of the screen, but then they just dribble in a little here and there in the commentary. They pretty quickly start talking to us about the top competitors as though we should know who they are and how stuff like the sport's world rankings and world championships work.

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  22. Now I'm watching a badminton match. I think that if I could have been an Olympian in anything, I would have picked badminton. Unfortunately, badminton didn't become an Olympic sport until 1992, which was too late for me to start training. But of all the sports in the Olympics, badminton is by far my favorite one to play.

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  23. I actually went to a curling lesson one time when we were in North Carolina.

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  24. It was me and about 30 other guys who thought they could do better than John Shuster. Then it turned out that it hurts your knees to learn how to shoosh one of those heavy rocks down the ice, and, so, (probably) all of us gave up. And then John Shuster just kept on keeping on and eventually won the gold medal.

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    1. I really want a movie -- a serious, Oscar-quality movie -- about John Shuster.

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  25. When I was a kid, I really loved badminton. Under the right circumstances, I really could have played several hours/day.

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  26. And we go down to Setagaya-ku
    And at Setagaya-ku they'll ride
    Oh, down to Setagaya-ku
    they'll ride

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  27. Well maybe you'll be out there on that road somewhere
    On some horse traveling along
    In the athletes village, there'll be a radio playing
    And you'll hear me sing this song
    Well if you do, you'll know I'm thinking of you
    And the 78.416 you scored in individual dressage
    That won't be good enough for a medal today
    But just remember "You won silver in team dressage yesterday. Good job, Schut-Kery, Sabine"

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  28. Well, tell them this is their last chance to get to the top of the dressage stand(ing)s
    Because Jessica von Bredow-Werndl just just scored a big 84.379
    And she rode TSF Dalera, and she didn't crash; the Lord had mercy
    And your horse, if it's a dud, you'll never catch this rider from Germany
    Well, hold on tight, stay up all night, 'cause we've got four or five more riders
    And by the time we meet the Tokyo morning light, we'll know who holds the medals in their arms

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  29. Isabell, "Queen of Equestrian," it's not too late for dreamin'
    You haven't won individual gold for 25 years, could Bella Rosa 2 be redeeming?
    Werth, my queen, your strong horse is reviving
    No, you're not going to quite make it; your German teammate is rising

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  30. Riding now is Charlotte Dujardin
    Penultimate competitor in individual dressage
    Riding now is Charlotte Dujardin
    Looking for a spot on that medals podium
    She flew in from London City
    Where the horses are few once you get outside Hyde Park
    Riding now is Charlotte Dujardin
    She won the last gold medals in Olympics dressage
    She didn't come 6,000 miles to drop
    She got Tom Hunt music blasting in Equestrian Park, singing,
    "Sha la la, sha la la la la
    "Sha la la la, la la la
    "Sha la la, sha la la la la
    "Sha la la la, la la la"


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  31. Tape-delay NBC Sports Network women's individual dressage love:

    -- Jessica von Bredow-Werndl, Germany, gold
    -- Isabell Werth, Germany, silver
    -- Charlotte Dujardin, Great Britain, bronze

    Top Team USA performer was 52-year-old Sabine Schut-Kery, originally of Germany and now of Thousand Oaks, California, who finished fifth.

    Jessica Rae Springsteen, a 29-year-old from Los Angeles, is scheduled to compete next week as part of the Team USA jumping squad.

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  32. The bronze-medal game in men's rugby is down to about 30 seconds, and Argentina is leading Great Britain, 17-12. And they're starting to fight a little ...

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  33. This is a tape-delay deal on NBC Sports Network.

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  34. It's over. Argentina wins. I think that's an upset.

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  35. Yes, is. Great Britain was the silver medalist in men’s rugby sevens at Rio 2016 (Fiji won gold; South Africa, bronze.) That was the first rugby of any form had been played at the Olymics since 1924.

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  36. I'm fine with pato's never having achieved an Olympic pictogram.

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  37. But now back to rugby sevens at Tokyo 2020, where defending gold-medalist Fiji is about to face traditional-power New Zealand in the final on NBC Sports Network tape delay ...

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  38. "Every TV in Fiji is tuning into this," says the color commentator. "The island has stopped to watch this match."

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  39. It's 12-5, Fiji, with 2:30 to go in the first half ...

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  40. A player for Fiji whose nickname is "The Marvelous Mustache" dashes around right end and stretches the defending champs' lead to 19-5. Forty-five seconds to go in the half ...

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