Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

I once stayed up until 4 am watching flat-water canoe races at the Sydney Games. Not the medal round, but heat races. I have watched hours and hours of race walking, team handball, fencing, weightlifting, table tennis and other random sports. I will not watch a single minute of Olympic golf.

 

Wow, didn't see this coming. No. 1-ranked Iga Swiatek out in the semis of women's singles, beaten by Zheng Qinwen of China in straight sets. Not that Zheng is a nobody -- she's a top 10 player (No. 8, to be specific). But Swiatek is a killer on clay, especially at Roland Garros, where she's won four of the past five French Opens.

Zheng will play the winner of Vekic-Schmiedlova for the gold, and Swiatek gets the loser for bronze.

 

Also played in California jucos. And here in Santa Cruz County, when the high school girls teams lost their indoor season during the covid year, they played a beach volleyball season in the spring, taking advantage of, among other venues, the setup just north of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. And it has continued.

 

Beach volleyball is a CIF sanctioned varsity sport in at least southern california.

Men's beach volleyball (AVP tour) was big as far back as the 80's. I am pretty sure they had a national tv contract in the summer.

 

I know nothing about gymnastics. What happened to the eastern european powers?

 

Other tennis news: Rafa Nadal's run is over. He and Alcaraz got beat in straight sets in the quarters yesterday by the American team of Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram. Today, Krajicek and Ram locked up a medal with a semifinal win and will play for the gold Saturday.

The U.S. has the two highest-seeded teams left in the men's doubles draw, with Krajicek-Ram at No. 4 and Taylor Fritz-Tommy Paul at 3. Fritz and Paul will play their quarterfinal match later today against Britain's Andy Murray (in his final Olympics) and Daniel Evans.

In men's singles, there's an Italian in the semis, but it's not No. 1 Jannik Sinner. It's Lorenzo Musetti, currently No. 16 and on the rise, who took out No. 4 Zverev today 7-5, 7-5. He'll face the winner of Djokovic-Tsitsipas in the semis. Djoker still hasn't won a tournament this year and has never won Olympic gold, but he's blown through his first three matches pretty easily, so maybe this is finally his time. On the other hand, Alcaraz looms in the lower half of the draw.

 

The Soviet bloc collapsed?

 

And Russia and Belarus are serving game misconducts.

 

And drug tests got better.

 

The culture wars around the Olympics are heating up now.

Boxer facing gender questions wins as foe quits

(People really think Algeria sent a trans athlete to the Olympics? Algeria? Really!?!)

 

Yep, Sinjin Smith and Karch Kiraly were the dominant team when I started following it. And who can forget the 1990 classic “Side Out” starring C Thomas Howell and Peter Horton - along with every AVP pro alive at the time!?!

 

More likely it's a Caster Semenya-type situation.