Aug
21st
Thu
21st
Olympics highlights, Day 11
Top highlight: seeing Natalie du Toit from South Africa, who is missing the lower half of her left leg, compete in the inaugural women’s 10km marathon open-water swim - amazing and inspiring.
Other notes/highlights:
- Shawn Johnson finally winning a gold medal, on the balance beam. Of all events in gymnastics - and possibly all of sports - this may amaze me more than any other: how it’s possible to do blind flips and land squarely on a 4-inch beam, I’ll never understand.
- Jonathan Horton winning silver on the high bar, after adding a hefty dose of extra difficulty to his routine. I loved this not just because of the aggressive mindset, but (even more) because it’s a strategic principle that’s so often not applied in competitions of any stripe. If you’re an underdog or behind, increase variance. In something like gymnastics, that means increasing your difficulty. In basketball, that means slowing the game to a crawl (reducing the total number of possessions) and shooting lots of 3’s. In the Amazing Race, that means choosing a different Detour than the teams ahead of you (ideally, a find-a-needle-in-a-haystack challenge). Of course, the converse applies if you’re ahead or the favorite.
- The proverbial thrill of victory for Dawn Harper coupled with the equally cliched agony of defeat for Lolo Jones after she hit the penultimate hurdle. Tangential question: why do men run the 110m hurdles, while women run the 100m hurdles? This doesn’t make sense. The heptathlon at least has historical reasons for being different from the decathlon (e.g., women pole vaulting was very rare when the heptathlon was first introduced).
- Henry Cejudo’s victory in freestyle wrestling. The match was exciting; his joy afterwards was heartwarming; and the cheesy, dramatic music they played in the venue as he celebrated his gold medal was actually really, really nice. It felt like I was watching a movie, complete with soundtrack. The venue announcers were good, too.
- A clutch, come-from-behind, 5-set win by the US women’s indoor volleyball team in the quarterfinal against Italy, continuing the US’ strong performance in team sports.
