Actually, it was another gymnast that replaced (covered for) biles. Suni Lee was going to be there competing whether Simone was there or not. And there was always the possibility that she could defeat Biles had Biles competed.
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US Mixed 4X400 relay team, which won the heat by a large margin, is DQ’d in the first round because they passed outside the zone.
After appealing that the official placed them in the wrong spot, their appeal was granted and they are back in it. I feel bad for the girl who spent a while thinking she screwed up.
Video of the race. Interesting strategy by the Nigerians ankering with a woman. She started nearly 100M ahead of #2 USA ended up in last place. Most teams went MWWM, Nigeria went MWMW.
To the first part, you must not know much about the sport. No one can come close to her, or likely will for quite a while, even with this choice.
To the 2nd part, I have heard that a part of it is the pressure she consistently felt to continue to push herself further. Honestly, she was basically just competing against herself at this point. She could have chosen to stopped trying to improve, continue to win golds, and this might not have happened. Instead she continued to push her limits and improve because she felt she needed to.
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Her score wasn’t needed for the gold.
I wonder if Biles might have a mild case of covid. That could mess up her balance or sense of place.
They test athletes daily so I think she would have shown positive if so
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I suspect she has what she said, the twisties (as gymnasts call it). The yips in other sports. Something has her w a mental block keeping her from performing physical tasks she has been able to do before. It may go away. It may not.
When a golfer has the yips he or she misses easy putts. Scores get worse. For gymnasts they are put in real peril.
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aka focal dystonia for musicians, it’s career ending most of the time
That makes sense. Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauh inability to grow to 1st base and Rick Ankiel forgetting how to throw a strike come to mind in baseball.
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No source material, but I heard she has ADHD and the meds she use are banned in these Olympics. I could Google, but that’s what GoA is for.
She does have ADHD but her meds are not banned as long as she applies for the waiver, which she did in Rio. Simone Biles' ADHD medication is banned in Japan, but a Tokyo 2020 exemption allowed them for athletes
So while it’s impossible to determine what has caused Biles’ case of "the twisties a lack of medication is almost certainly not to blame
I don’t know why everyone has a hard time accepting it’s a case of the twisties/yips. Maybe non sports people haven’t heard of such a concept before?
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Survivorship bias I suppose
The fans don’t see the countless fractures and injuries of the people who aren’t in the games but tried to get there
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Given the US media penchant for ranking the country medal count by total medals (whereas all the other parts of the world rank by gold, then silver, then bronze), I propose that the aim should be to finish third in every event. Any gold or silver medal is a result of spending too much on a sport.
Looking at the medal table, full marks go to Kazakhstan and Mexico with 3 bronzes each, Azerbaijan and Egypt with 2 bronzes and several countries with a single bronze.
Encouragement award goes to Ukraine who have 1 silver and 5 bronzes (the silver was in the 1500m mens swimming where he overtook the German in the last couple of strokes. They should cut his funding for the next Olympics).
The “Six is the perfect exam score” theory?
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It’s certainly from the same school of thought.
Is it just me, or is swimming vastly overrepresented because of the different strokes? I get the different distances, they have different athletic thresholds. It just seems like “the most decorated Olympian ever” is always going to come from swimming, because they can do like 4 different strokes at 4 different distances and win lots of cheddar. You don’t see Rugby players playing 7-minute half games and 14-minute half games and 30-minute half games and games where they tie their dominant hand behind their back. Archery doesn’t have “standard stance” and “goofy stance” and “kneeling down”. If they did, maybe we would have more multiple-medal winners from other sports.
I guess I’m just over the hype. I’d much rather watch the competitions than the personal interest stories.
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Also, I am extremely interested in an all-access streaming pass where I could watch any event live or on a replay. I’d pay something like a hundred bucks to get that for the upcoming winter Olympics. I don’t have cable, so I can only get the NBC over-air broadcast, and that just doesn’t seem comprehensive enough. So signed up for Peacock - and while it’s only a few bucks a month, I’m not getting what I was hoping for. I guarantee that if NBC did that, they’d get vastly more revenue from people like me who are paying them directly, rather than the intermediaries of advertisers buying generic “exposure” slots and hoping for audience.
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Yeah, there are a lot of swimming events. And I think they added a new one this year. Mixed relays, or something.
there’s a ton of events
road cycling has just 2, the road race and the time trial
In theory you could make it as complicated as swimming with different events, distances, relays, etc. The swimming lobby obviously did a better job at convincing the IOC to hold more events.
Sharing a gold: WTF!