2016 Olympic Coverage

[Zach Caldwell]

I thought it might be nice if we had a place to discuss the 2016 Olympics. I am personally looking forward to watching Michael Phelps in his swimming comps. What athlete or sport are you following? Let's make this thread hot.

You can follow the schedule at https://www.rio2016.com/en/schedule-and-results

Edited August 6, 2016 by Zach Caldwell

[D'Artagnon]

I am watching for the Olympic Fencing competition. The USA lineup as not only a very diverse group of athletes from across our country, but a strong history of winning medals.  The Saber group is going to be the ones to watch, but the whole entire group is likely to do well.  I worry about the men's Epee competition only having one entrant (Jason Pryor) but there seems to be a lot of strength in the ladies side.  It should be interesting.  I know i'm kinda a fencing nut at times, but we have some serious medal possibilities in this area this time.  It's going to be an interesting battle.

http://www.usfencing.org/page/show/2513777-2016-u-s-olympic-team

[Zach Caldwell]

Michael Phelps and his teammates, just took the gold in the 4x100m. That makes 19 total gold medals for Michael Phelps and he still has a chance for a few more. This win means he now has a total of 23 medals.

Edited August 8, 2016 by Zach Caldwell

[Zach Caldwell]

SWEET. Michael Phelps now has 21 gold medals and a total of 25 medals. Love to see the guy in the water. Hope everyone is enjoying the Olympics this year.

[Zach Caldwell]

UPDATE!! Here is the current medal counts for the top three countries.

United States 12 Gold 11 Silver 10 Bronze - Total 33

China 10 Gold 6 Silver 9 Bronze - Total 25

Japan 6 Gold 1 Silver 12 Bronze - Total 19

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Zach Caldwell

[Zach Caldwell]

Here is an article about Michael Phelps with regard to winning his 22nd Gold medal and its historical significance. http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/11/sport/michael-phelps-ryan-lochte-swimming/index.html

He now has 22 Gold Medals and 26 Total medals and he has a shot for more.

[D'Artagnon]

US men's team foil went to on to win Team Bronze, after a heart wrenching semi-final match versus the Russian Federation.  They rallied back from a string of losses to bring things even in the 8th bout, but lost to the Russians in a strong series of clean hits by the Russian's anchor fencer, against the American who took silver in the individual competition just days before who looked strangely slow (perhaps sick?)

The US men regrouped and had a much smoother run in the Team event for the bronze medal against a very good Italian team, winning by 14 touches.  For those that don't understand team fencing rules, a win by that margin is like hitting five home runs every inning, and the other team only hitting 2 or three per inning at best.  It's not the best analogy, granted, but it serves the purpose.  Play goes to 5's incrementally.  so the first bout is done when one team gets 5 touches, the second bout is over when one team gets ten, and so on.  It is possible for a team to score more than 5 touches a bout, say if they were down 3 to 5 in the first bout and then went on a scoring run and picked up 7 against 2 in the second bout to make the score after two bouts 10 to 7.  They advance so for 9 bouts, rotating through three fencers, so each member of the team gets 3 "at bats" for the group effort.

I also have to say, the Russian team and the Italian team are good.  The Russians have some of the highest rated fencers in the world, and the Italian team has as one of it's members Daniel Garrozo who took Gold from American Alexander Massialas earlier this week in their gold medal round bout, 15 to 11

All in all, I'm not dissatisfied with how the foil competition ended.  The last three bouts of the semi-finals against Russia were hard fought and showed great skill and determination by both teams. 

[Zach Caldwell]

I take it the Russian fencing team did not get caught up in the whole doping scandal that wiped out a large portion of the Russian delegation?

[D'Artagnon]

As I understand the doping scandal, it mostly involved a lot of the bigger events.  Races, swim events, track and field, gymnastics, some of the team sport events..  I think most of those were the ones that were caught.  I think that some individual and team events that are part of the Olympics but are also governed by other organizations had more direct scrutiny in their doping checks, or were immune to the traditional doping regulations.  There may be layers of this that we don't see as yet.

http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/russia-doping-scandal-london-2012-olympics/index.html

Edited August 13, 2016 by D'Artagnon
added link

[Zach Caldwell]

With the Rio games about to come to a close. Here is a look at the top five in the overall medal count. This count is current as of this posting with a few competitions left before closing ceremonies tonight.

1 United States Gold 46 Silver 37 Bronze 38 Total 121

2 China Gold 26 Silver 18 Bronze 26 Total 70

3 Great Britain Gold 27 Silver 23 Bronze 17 Total 67

4 Russia Gold 19 Silver 18 Bronze 19 Total 56

5 Germany Gold 17 Silver 10 Bronze 15 Total 42