Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

NBC/Peacock just slapped an ad over the first 30 seconds of Aaron Brooks Olympic debut. Just f*cking stupid.

 

Can we get past two tornado warnings in an hour's span and at least a dozen in the region over the last four hours so I can put the Olympics back on as background as I'm grinding toward deadline?

OK, thanks ...

 

Well... except they aren't anymore.

Almost every competition on the track now has a "first-round loser" phase, a secund chance to slip into the semifinals. I think it's called repechage.

 

Not the 100. It's for races from 200-1,500, including hurdles.

 

Gretzky talked about this in Nagano in 1998 how it reminded him of minor hockey tournaments where you walk around in your team jacket and eat ice cream late at night with other competitors.

 

Boxing doesn't have the profile it used to have (in the ring, anyway) but I have been streaming it every day on the CBC and it's been really good.

Two terrific gold medal fights yesterday when Erislandy Alvarez of Cuba (who looks like he'll be a good pro) beat Sofiane Ouhmia of France by split decision at 140 and Oleksandr Khyzniak of Ukraine put on a clinic in pressure fighting beating Nurbek Oralbay by split decision at light heavyweight.

 

Wow. That makes yesterday more incredible. The number of "out of the blue" moments for the U.S. is really incredible this Olympics.

 

I saw that the beach volleyball in LA will be on Santa Monica beach. Which is kind of cool given that the sport was born on that beach.

Hopefully we'll have some decent teams in four years.

 

Women's indoor volleyball has been intense. Every U.S. match seems to have gone five sets and today is no exception. The American and Brazilians are going spike-for-spike in a nailbiter for a chance to play for the gold medal.

 

Tough day for USA Wrestling. Dom Parrish got knocked out in repechage this morning. Aaron Brooks makes the semifinals and was leading 3-2 with time running out. He gave up a two point takedown while trying to stall it out and lost. Though to be fair, the Russian-turned-Bulgarian he was wrestling put him in a nasty leg turk with about 2 minutes to go and he didn't look the same after. Helen Maroulis made the semifinals and got tech'd by young Japanese star Tsugumi Sakuri.

The bright spot today was Spencer Lee who started a little slow in his first match, but looked dominant in the quarters and semis with tech falls in both. He moves to the gold medal match tomorrow.

Brooks and Maroulis will wrestle for bronze medals tomorrow, as will American-born wrestlers Darian Cruz (Puerto Rico) and Myles Amine (San Marino).

 

My 'hood.

 

France tried to give that game way, but Germany wouldn’t take it.