Key events
Sport climbing has been another one of my favourite events this Olympics, so I really enjoyed this story from Ewan Murray about British teenager Toby Roberts and his incredible gold medal winning effort. It features this great quote from Roberts:
I’ve always just liked to climb stuff.
I think there’s a lot to be said for sports where teenagers who just like mucking about and doing stuff are winning (see also: skateboarding, breaking) rather than the rigid programs that often steal childhoods away in sports like gymnastics and swimming. I’m sure there is a lot of intense training that goes into these newer sports, but the young athletes in them still seem to have a sense of childlike joy and a real love of just giving it a go.
And now we must move on to one of my favourite moments of Paris 2024 so far, which happened in the beach volleyball gold medal match late last night / early this morning depending on your timezone. Let me set the scene…
The imported sand was angry that day my friends. The atmosphere was seething as the Canadian and Brazilian players stormed up to the net, yelling in each other’s faces, as an official tried to get in between and send them back to their ends. They persisted, getting more and more worked up before finally retreating. The referee gave one of the Canadians a yellow card and both teams stood fuming at their respective ends. Suddenly, the opening bars of John Lennon’s Imagine filled the air and the fuming players couldn’t stop tiny smiles creeping on to their faces, before eventually succumbing to laughter and the tense atmosphere evaporated. There has not been a more perfect Olympic musical moment since the injured, last placed 50km race walker entered Stadium Australia to the tune of The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
OK, we need to talk about Raygun. This morning, Australians woke up to discover that the women’s breaking (or B-Girl) competition had been run and won, but it wasn’t the winner who was on the world’s mind, nor was it Australia’s 18 gold medallists. It was Rachel ‘Raygun’ Gunn, who everyone was talking about. This story refers to the ‘online hate’ but I don’t know that I’d describe it that way, though maybe I’d feel differently if I was on the receiving end. Ridicule might be a better word, but even that feels a bit strong. From what I’ve seen it’s been more of a gentle poking fun, which I think most Australians can appreciate.
There is no way I laugh harder for the rest of 2024 than after watching a 36 year old Australian college professor named Raygun “breakdance” against teenagers pic.twitter.com/OkN5OgqTNY
— Your Best Friend’s Black Friend (@IAmStatMatt) August 9, 2024
One normal person in the Olympics… it finally happened. And it was just like we all dreamed
— Christin (@hexprax) August 10, 2024
And speaking of medals, I’m keen to get your thoughts on this. We all know the Americans love to make the medal tally ranked on total medals rather than golds. Here in Australia we’re big fans of the status quo, as total medals would send us plummeting down the table faster than a 10m platform diver. But we’re also big fans of the ‘per capita’ argument, especially once the swimming finishes.
There’s no surer sign the Olympics are drawing to a close than Australians busting out the words ‘per capita’
— James Colley (@JamColley) August 6, 2024
But a new contender has entered the arena via Robert C Duncan, a retired astrophysicist from the University of Texas, and Andrew Parece, a strategy consultant and vice-president of Charles River Associates in Boston, Massachusetts, who have come up with the Goldilocks method.
This ranks countries according to how improbable their medal counts would be if all people in competing countries worldwide had equal propensity per capita for winning medals. Therefore, the expected number of medals a nation is expected to win scales with population size. For instance, because the US population is about 13 times larger than Australia’s, the US is expected to win 13 times more medals at the Games.
You can read all about it in Jackson Ryan’s fascinating piece and let me know what you think – the link to email me is at the top of the page.
Before we get too deep into breaking down all the action, let’s check in on the medal tally. Despite most of the ‘girt’ sports being finished, Australia has managed to hold on to third place behind the US and China, who both have a frankly ridiculous amount of medals. Japan, Great Britain and France are all in close succession and with plenty of medals still on offer, anything can happen. Well, not anything, no one is getting near the US and China, but definitely some things can happen.
Preamble
Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of the 15th official day of competition at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
What an action packed Olympics it has been so far! We have seen some truly incredible feats so far, witnessed magical and emotional moments, seen dreams realised and others shattered to pieces. Today is another big day, with lots on the agenda, beginning with the men’s marathon, which is being held at a very Australian-friendly time. We see you and we appreciate you marathon organisers.
There was plenty of excitement on day 13 and perhaps nothing lit up the internet more than Australian breaker Rachel ‘Raygun’ Gunn with a performance that sparked a million memes. We’ll come back to those a bit later on!
The women’s beach volleyball wrapped up under the gaze of the Eiffel Tower with Brazil winning a hard-fought gold medal match, while Canada took silver and somehow famously landlocked nation Switzerland won bronze? Spain added to their football dominance with gold in the men’s competition, but couldn’t add a medal in the women’s to their trophy cabinet, going down to Germany in the bronze medal match.
Imane Khelif fought back against the storm of online and real world hate she has endured with an inspirational performance to win gold for Algeria, Nafi Thiam put in a brilliant ‘jack of all trades’ performance to win the heptathlon gold for Belgium and the 4x100m relays were full of drama, with Canada winning the men’s event ahead of South Africa and Great Britain and the US taking out the women’s event with Great Britain getting silver and Germany bronze.
Today is going to be another huge day, so keep up to date with everything that’s happening by visiting our live schedule, which will give you up to date timings for all the events in your timezone.
