BADMINTON
Women’s Singles competition continued today at Riocentro. Canada’s Michelle Li faced World #10 Sindhu Pusarla from India. After splitting the first two games, Pusarla worked up a large lead and only briefly let Li back into the match before taking the final game 21-17. Li will have to await the final group standings to move on.
DIVING:
Women’s 3m Springboard – Today was another day for China to again assert their dominance in diving. Canada’s Jennifer Abel, favoured to podium, traded positions with Italy’s Cagnotto through the 5 Rounds. Abel was third place heading into the final round, but the combination of Cagnotto ripping her dive, and Abel having an ever so slight falter left Abel in 4th place, and Cagnotto with the Bronze. China’s Shi Tingmao showed what diving near-perfection looks like and won the Gold medal over teammate He Zi in Silver medal position. He Zi may have ‘only’ won the silver medal, but her real prize for the day was received immediately after the medal ceremony: a marriage proposal from fellow Team China diving counterpart, Qin Kai! (He previously won a bronze in the Men’s 3m Springboard). See it HERE!
This is the second marriage proposal of the Rio Games with the first being on the Women’s Sevens Rugby pitch after Brazil’s final game where volunteer Marjorie Enya proposed to long time girlfriend and member of Team Brazil, Isadora Cerullo.
Check it out HERE and HERE!
In other news, the pool is still green and apparently it’s because a worker dumped in Hydrogen Peroxide, neutralized the Chlorine, leaving nothing to combat the algae…but still, how did that much algae develop in the the pool so quickly?
GOLF:
Golf has made its return to the Olympics and the first Olympic Golf medal awarded in over 100 years was to GBR’s Justin Rose. Sweden’s Henrik Stenson won Silver and USA’s Matt Kuchar won Bronze.
Women’s individual stroke play starts on the 17th.
TENNIS:
Bronze Medal Match – ATP 7th ranked Kei Nishikori (the only Japanese player to ever be ranked inside the top 10) gave Nadal a workout, defeating him 6-2, 7-6, 6-3.
Gold Medal Match – Del Potro was looking for yet another upset while Andy Murray was looking to become back to back Olympic champion AND Wimbledon champ in the same year. Del Potro looked quite tired, but somehow kept it close. Murray and Del Potro kept breaking each other’s serves, but often could not win their own service games. #2 in the world, Murray figured something out over the >4 hour match as Del Potro conceded defeat by hitting a final ball into the net. Murray has become the first player ever to win back to back Olympic tennis titles
BEACH VOLLEYBALL
Women’s Quarters today:
Canadian duo Bansley and Pavan took on World #1 Germany (Ludwig and Walkenhorst). The German takedown was calculated with a match win in straight sets 21-14, 21-14. That’s it for Canadian Beach.
The other exciting match of the day was between Brazil’s (Rocha and Franca Maestrini) vs. Swiss Heidrich and Zumkehr. The only thing separating these two teams was a net. The sets were extremely close with the second set going on for 30 min (total game time 70 minutes). A questionable call by the ump in favour of Switzerland in the 3rd set looked like it might cost Brazil, but they maintained their composure and put the game away (12-23, 27-25, 15-13).
TRACK AND FIELD
Women’s Marathon
Today marked the prestigious marathon competition for women. It proved to be a huge day. Kenya was incredibly delighted as Jemima Jelagat Sumgong became the first Kenyan woman to win an Olympic marathon and also became the country’s first female gold medallist! Her coach could not contain his excitement and exclaimed how proud Kenya would be.
Other notables:
- It was the first time in 20 years that Canadian women participated in the marathon. Lanni Marchant placed 24th and Krista Duchene placed 35th
- Estonia sent identical triplets (two of the Luik sisters finished 97 and 114, the other DNF )
- Germany had a set of near identical twins (the Hahner sisters finished 81 and 82, 1 second apart – I’m sure they tried to cross together, and Sister #1, Anna, got her chip foot forward first)
400m Men’s Final – The rivalry was between USA’s Lashawn Merritt and Grenada’s Kirani James, however it was South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk who ran blind in lane 9 and ended up breaking Michael Johnson’s 1999 World Record with a time of 43.03.
Van Niekerk is the first runner to break 10 seconds in the 100m, 20 seconds in the 200m and 44 seconds for the 400m.
Kirani James took silver and Lashawn Merritt took the bronze, each of them posting a Season’s Best. Cedenio (4th) of Trinidad and Tobago and Khamis (6th) of Bahrain each posted a National Record and 5th place Sibanda of Botswana managed a Season’s Best.
100m Men’s Final
The much anticipated David and Goliath matchup between 6’5” Usain Bolt and 5’9” Canadian Andre De Grasse was an exciting semifinal itself. But, let’s be real here, it’s not a David and Goliath relationship. It’s clear there’s a brotherhood between these two.
Andre and Bolt earned direct qualification into the final by posting a PB and SB respectively. USA’s Justin Gatlin also won his heat to earn a spot in the final, along with Usain’s teammate Yohan Blake who came 2nd in the heat.
On to the actual final:
It’s hard to imagine that everything can be over in less than 10s. Over here, I was just hoping that the cable box didn’t do its daily reset and we’d have to practice our stair-flight-sprint up to the second TV, outside the Olympic Den (i.e. basement).
Good news – the cable box stayed on and we saw the whole thing! Everything from Gatlin’s booed entry, to Bolt’s thunderous cheerful reception, to Gatlin’s quick start out of the blocks, his slow down, Bolt catching up, then breaking away, De Grasse seemingly in 5th or 6th place, then exploding ahead to his top speed, wondering if he was going to overtake Gatlin in the last milliseconds…*gasp!*
…It would be Bolt making history, 3-peating back-to-back-to-back as an Olympic 100m champion and breaking his Season’s Best (that he just set an hour ago in the semis) with a time of 9.81. Gatlin ran 9.89 for Silver and De Grasse broke his PB (again, that he just set in the semis) with 9.91 to earn Bronze (his first medal at his first Olympics).
Other amazing feats surrounding the 100m final:
- As Bolt kept running the bend in celebration, a cameraman sprinted backwards to keep bolt in his viewfinder, then pivoted with perfection to run forwards to keep up with the world’s fastest man.
- Donovan Bailey’s reaction during the race
- Bolt photobombing the Women’s Heptathlon podium; selfies galore with Brianne Theisen Eaton, Ennis-Hill (GBR) and Gold Medalist Thiam of Belgium!
We’ll see many of these guys in the Men’s 200m on Tuesday and Men’s 4×100 on Thursday.