Garden Wafers

My family joked that Biles was there so she could give discreetly pass off Chiles's bronze medal to Tom Cruise and have him smuggle it back stateside before FIG got its hands on it. The Olympic flag was just a distraction for the real mission.

If I'm being very petty, I'd not only want to see clear evidence that the inquiry was submitted four seconds too late, but also evidence that every other inquiry accepted at this meet was submitted within the allotted time frame. Also, if someone submitted an inquiry that was rejected, but it turns out that the inquiry should never have been accepted in the first place - do they get their filing fee back or does FIG keep it?

Sounds like they're saying the final rankings should be based on Chiles's initial posted score and are ignoring the suggestion that everyone should be awarded a joint bronze.

It's especially easy these days because the Olympics athlete page already includes audio of the athletes pronouncing their own names (first slowly and with pronounced enunciation and the second time at normal speed).

Sure, but you also have a player like Francis Tiafoe who chose to skip the Paris Games because he "care(s) way more about the Open, being as prepared for the Open as possible". This is someone who is very explicitly stating that he'd rather focus on trying to win his maiden Slam title rather than going to the Olympics. You mentioned the 2008 Games, which Roddick skipped to prepare for the hard court season. I'm not disputing the allure of the Games (I mean, top-ranked players are still participating despite not being awarded any ranking points and Zverev is going despite never having won a Slam and already have Olympic gold under his belt) - but I don't think Tiafoe's attitude is an outlier among professional tennis players. Also, I think it's an odd claim to make that tennis players don't cry after losing Slam matches. Look at Federer in '09 after losing the Australian Open or Ons Jabeur at Wimbledon last year. It's a physically and emotionally demanding sport - of course players are going to cry after losses.

I think most professional tennis players place greater value in winning the Slams. I believe even when ranking points were awarded for the Olympics, it was still quite a bit less than the Slams or a Masters event. I get the sense that Djokovic is well-aware of the constant GOAT chatter and simply wanted to win in Paris because it would counter an argument in Nadal's favor: Rafa's gold medal in singles from Beijing '08.

At the Beijing '22 Games, NBC used the overall medal count even though switching to the gold count would have placed the USA one spot higher on the medal table. Honestly, it all seems in keeping with American attitudes towards quantity over quality. We may not necessarily have the best stuff, but we sure do have a lot of it.

The replays for the men's rugby competition are showing up for me in the Peacock app (for Android devices) and on the website if you go to All Sports -> Rugby.

Something that might be underappreciated about Nalini's backstory is just how impressive it is that she's a practicing dermatologist. Dermatology's already competitive for US medical graduates, and is only more so for international medical graduates. And it wouldn't matter if she'd completed her medical training abroad; to practice in the USA, IMGs would have to complete a residency program here before they could be licensed (I believe that changed this year when TN passed legislation waiving the post-graduate medical education requirement). Without knowing when exactly Nalini went through the Match, I went back to look at the 2005 NRMP data: that year, there were a total of 288 PGY-2 dermatology spots offered and only 7 of the 283 spots that matched went to IMGs.

I was happy with both the men's and women's gold medallists. I guess I'm just a big old softy when it comes to skips battling against injuries to finally capture Olympic glory on their fourth try (interestingly, Shuster also needed four Olympic runs before he got gold in 2018). If this trend continues, maybe Mouat will win gold in 2034 and Fujisawa in 2030.

I enjoyed watching the team event yesterday, but I thought the announces were being rather disrespectful towards the other three Americans competing with Shiffrin. It felt like they were treated as supporting characters in Mikaela's Quest to Salvage Something From These Games. Also, the one announcer kept talking about how "no one" had won a head-to-head race going down the red course, except Shiffrin did exactly that in her very first race! I had to double check the Olympics website to make sure I wasn't misremembering events.

I don't know if it's still true or not, but I believe the Danish men have a similar setup to the Swiss where the skip throws second stones and the vice-skip throws fourth stones. I'm curious if the American women might adopt a similar approach to Tirinzoni's rink. I think Kevin Martin mentioned during the Canada-USA game that Roth seemed to have a better understanding of the angles than Peterson did.

I ended up rooting for Canada after I saw video of Jennifer Jones hugging the Japanese and Brad Gushue breaking down after his semi-final loss to Sweden. Canadian curlers are just too darn likable and I can't help but be sympathetic towards them given the weight of expectations they bear. Shuster's already had his redemption arc after his disastrous 2010 showing; just making it to another medal round proved his 2018 run wasn't a complete fluke. On a side note, what exactly was going on with the Chinese women's skip? I remember in Vancouver it was a fairly big deal that Shuster was benched for one game because of how poorly he played; as far as I can tell, Han Yu was not only demoted to 3rd starting with China's 4th game but eventually completely dropped after their 6th game.

Karim Bashir. I believe he's the only world feed curling commentator who doesn't have any curling experience - and frankly, it shows. For instance, in the men's Norway-Italy game, during the 6th end he was talking about how happy the Italians would be to take one point and maintain their lead; but anyone with any passing familiarity with curling strategy would know they'd opt to blank the end rather than take a force.

I've been Team Shuster all this week because, well, I'm as guilty of boosterism as the next American - but also because I thought facing off against the USA in the final would give Nik Edin's rink the best chance of getting a gold medal. I just really want the guy to get an Olympic gold medal before his body completely poops out on him.