Awe-inspiring
I am loving the Olympics so far. I’m completely immersed in it. Swimming, gymnastics, tennis, rowing, women’s rugby, BMX, that crazy canoe race, whatever is on I am glued to it.
GB have had an incredible opening few days with our best ever medal haul at this stage, which could even have been bettered if it wasn’t for many 4th place finishes.
The swimming has been brilliant, despite a ‘slow pool’ due to the lack of depth, but that hasn’t stopped Leon Marchand, what an absolute legend he is going to be by the end of this.
Katie Ledecky continued to swim to greatness tonight in the 1,500m free, and there was no talk of a slow time in the 100m men’s free as Pan Zhanle obliterated his world record. No one wins a 100m free by a whole body length I can tell you.
In our house we have been paying particular attention to 17-year Canadian swimmer Summer McIntosh, who trains with our daughter here in Sarasota. She won a silver in the 200m free, and then won gold in the 400m individual medley (IM) and has two more events (200m butterfly and 200m IM) coming up later this week.
Florida is a hot-bed of swimmers with plenty of others to support including Sarasota’s Emma Weyant who won bronze behind MacIntosh in the 400m IM.
Mind you I am cheering on every Brit in their red cap. Peaty had me with tears in my eyes and then the men’s 4 x 200m free relay team were just absolutely awesome. Absolute scenes what with Murray and Evans coming from behind again at almost the same time on Tuesday night to extend the playing career of Andy Murray a little bit longer.
Simone Biles, the boy from Lewisham Alex Yee, the South Sudan basketball team, Cindy Ngamba, the refugee boxer, Tom Daley and what about Kent’s Nathan Hales, who surely has to be related to Derek. The dedication and brilliance of these athletes in every sport is so awe-inspiring.
Meanwhile back in America, the old USA are struggling a bit, they even contrived to knock Nadal and Alcaraz out of the tennis doubles. How dare they!
Of course America famously shows the medal table differently to everyone else on the planet so they still top it, at least as far as they are concerned.
Bed now, as the Athletics starts tomorrow with the men’s 20km walk. I’ll be watching it.
One of the most fantastic things I have ever seen was the bike ride by Bidot, what a performance, absolutely brilliant, Bill Skudder
Shame about the boxing. Allowing an Algerian man to beat the shit out of a woman.
Too right, Daggs.
Poor girl destroyed and the Algerian man prancing around like he’s achieved something. Makes me sick. All of it.
There is a Charlton connection – Alice Kinsella, daughter of Mark, is on the gymnastics team. They were one of the fourth place finishes in the women’s artistic gymnastics event. They were in contention for a medal until the last couple of events which saw them just lose a few points to their rivals.
Team GB 🇬🇧 should adopt the US-style medal table!
Haha. They should. I have 😄