Watch Every Sport, Paris Olympics Edition!

Canoe/Kayak Sprint

Have I watched it before? Yes

What match/stage? Multiple finals, single and partners

Overall Impression?
Sprint events (running, swimming, rowing) are just fun to watch because they go so fast. Then you get that crazy perspective thing where it doesn't even look like they are going that fast because they are ALL going really fast.



Sports remaining: Artistic Gymnastics, Breaking, Cycling Mountain Bike, Cycling Road, Football, Modern Pentathlon, Rhythmic Gymnastic

Just watched some of this and fairly perplexed... literally just said aloud 'he just needs a point...how does he even get a point?'

My favorite thing is when the athletes seem to just be doing the same thing and the commentator says something like "Risky move there by Smith." Was it?!?!?!

My memory from years and years ago is that you score points by hitting someone in the colored band on their chest pad or if you hit their head.

Also: how were your seats at the Athletics? Did you have anyone you were rooting for in particular? Are you going to get to see anything else on your trip? I'm super jealous!

(And if you don't mind leaving out spoilers about who won what, I'm still catching up on several of the track events).

Cycling Road

Have I watched it before? Yes, in little bits and pieces

What match/stage? Women's finals

Overall Impression?
Longer races (swimming, running, biking) don't always do much for me. Too much time watching things not really change. However, I really enjoyed watching this race, and a big part of that was the sportsmanship. At one point two riders kept touching this other rider's back. I thought it was like cyclist code for "let us pass." But then they kept their hands on her and weren't moving ahead. Turns out there was something going wrong and they were keeping her upright until they got to a place where she could get help. Then an athlete offered another athlete some water. And for such a long race, it was surprisingly close at the end. Very fun.



Sports remaining: Artistic Gymnastics, Breaking, Cycling Mountain Bike, Football, Modern Pentathlon, Rhythmic Gymnastic

Football

Have I watched it before? Yes, quite a bit!

What match/stage? Women's semi-finals, USA vs Germany

Overall Impression?
I generally enjoy watching soccer, though I'll admit it's a sport I mainly watch when the World Cup rolls around. This game in particular was okay but not great. One of the announcers brought up some concerns that she had about the amount of travel the athletes were having to do and the lack of rest they were getting. And you could see a certain muted nature to the play. That said, there were some good plays and the commentators did a good job of talking through the game.



Sports remaining: Artistic Gymnastics, Breaking, Cycling Mountain Bike, Modern Pentathlon, Rhythmic Gymnastic

Our seats were pretty good, middle tier close to the finish line so a good spot for watching the relays. I was rooting for Katerina Johnson -Thompson in the heptathlon and the GB relay teams and 800m runners. No spoilers, but it was good to see the finals (on TV) yesterday of the events I'd seen the live heats of.

Eager to read your thoughts on breaking.

The performance of "Raygun" notwithstanding, if you ask me, those who question its legitimacy as an Olympic sport either said that before watching any of it or they're fools. I loved every minute of what I got to see.

Were you able to spot yourself at all in watching the replays?

Artistic Gymnastics

Have I watched it before? Every Olympics!

What match/stage? A mix of men's and women's finals.

Overall Impression?
Okay, I had a period where (like maybe other people?) it was really hard to watch gymnastics without thinking about the widespread physical, mental, and sexual abuse that was revealed. In particular, in the film Athlete A, one gymnast talks about Kerri Strug's famous one-legged landing and says something to the effect of "Where other people saw a great moment, I saw a child who couldn't say no." Anyway, this Olympics was the first time where I felt like I was able to not quite think about that as much. I think that it helps that the gymnasts (at least team USA) are older. Simone Biles is 27! And while adults can obviously be manipulated, pushed too hard, etc, it feels less icky. It also helps that Biles is a total legend, but this Olympics made space for many other gymnasts to shine. The floor routine and the beam were all very fun to watch.



Sports remaining: Breaking, Cycling Mountain Bike, Modern Pentathlon, Rhythmic Gymnastic

Breaking

Have I watched it before? Not as a sport!

What match/stage? Women's finals

Overall Impression?
This was just super fun. Athleticism and artistry and just a different vibe, but clearly something that belongs. I loved that they used the dancers' "street names". I love that you don't know which song will be played for each round. And, best of all, I really appreciated the commentary that helped me understand the elements that would earn someone a high score. The dancer from the Netherlands, India, was just amazing. It also seemed like the crowd was really into it, and I loved that the teams had their people around the stage to hype them up. (And I also loved that part of it was clapping at your opponent when they made a mistake).



Sports remaining: Cycling Mountain Bike, Modern Pentathlon, Rhythmic Gymnastics

--Hey, man, we were wondering if you'd like to play the piano in the Olympics closing ceremony.

--Whoa! Yes, of course!!

--Great. There's just one thing . . .

^ It bounced around a bit at one point!

Whenever there are people/objects on wires and the movement doesn't seem quite right, I'm always like "Is this intentional?!?!?!?!"

Loved the giant german wheels as the Olympic rings. It took me WAY too long to realize that what I was thinking of as weird shaped rocks was an abstracted outline of the world map, lol. And I didn't realize that the band Phoenix was French.


I still have a few replays to watch to get all of the sports. (And the replays will no longer be available tomorrow, so I'm sure there are many events I would have loved to watch but won't get the chance to, like the men's break dancing or some of the diving).

This has been a really lovely Olympics. I'll write more once I get through all of the sports, but the sportsmanship and general feeling of joy and celebration has been incredible.

And the team made up of refugees won their first medal, which is super cool!

I think Speed Climbing was my favorite thing I watched this year!

They are stunningly fast.

Rhythmic Gymnastics

Have I watched it before? Not for a very long time!

What match/stage? Individual finals

Overall Impression?
You know, sometimes you make a decision/judgement about something when you are young and just don't bother to revisit it. When I was much younger, I remember watching rhythmic gymnastics and coding it in my head as just some kids twirling ribbons while they sort of danced around a stage. Well, no. Incorrect. I'm not sure if the sport has come a ways or if I just didn't really tune in that first time, but there's so much timing/accuracy to this. The women are basically doing a dance/acrobatic routine . . . except you have to be holding (or about to catch) a ball, a ribbon, batons, or a hoop. And you have to be good at all four. That said, this still feels a little beauty-pageant to me (as a quick barometer: are there any other sports in the Olympics that are single gender? Synchronized swimming I guess?). But like with the other gymnastics, I think it helped that many of the athletes were in their 20s (and one woman was 30), because I think it's frankly a little iffy to have a 13-year old laid out on the ground rolling a ball up and down her body. And I did think it was kind of funny that clearly there's a cultural thing here of dramatically throwing down a towel before strutting onto the stage? Better than I remembered, but not something I wanted to watch more than about 20 minutes of.



Sports remaining: Cycling Mountain Bike, Modern Pentathlon

Cycling Mountain Bike

Have I watched it before? Nope!

What match/stage? Men's finals

Overall Impression?
As with the other events that are very long, I wasn't super patient. Though it should be noted that the course is much more varied than just watching someone go around the same flat track 10 times. As someone who is not good at riding a bicycle, this made me vicariously stressed, especially when they go over the downhill log sections.



Sports remaining: Modern Pentathlon

Ya it was nuts. Crazy talent

Modern Pentathlon

Have I watched it before? Nope!

What match/stage? Women's finals

Overall Impression?
Like the heptathlon, it's really cool to see people who have talents across the board, and also neat to see how different athletes have different strengths across those events. I would say that it suffers just a smidge from the fact that they aren't necessarily the best at just the isolated events. So the swimming, for example, wasn't quite as thrilling as the straight up swimming events. HOWEVER! This gets a full extra half star because I was so delighted that the running portion in part took place in the equestrian section, so that the women were running around all of the different jumps and obstacles.



Sports remaining: NONE!!