Speaking of Sports

By John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

What a great Olympics!  After a shaky start with a wild and controversial opening ceremony, the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics went off without any problems and ended up being a very good Olympics.

I’ve been watching the Olympics for many years.  I’ll never forget my first Olympics in 1972 when I was 10 years old and the likes of Mark Spitz winning seven gold medals, Olga Korbut performing on the uneven bars and balance beam, Cuba’s Teofilo Stevenson winning the first of his three boxing gold medals at heavyweight and, of course, the Soviet Union’s 51-50 win over the U.S. in men’s basketball in one of the most controversial sporting events of all time.

If you haven’t had the chance to see the ending of this game, you have to google it and watch it.  Despite sworn testimony from the referee and timekeeper from the game that the Soviet victory was illegal, a five-man jury denied the U.S. appeal and the U.S. did not attend the medal ceremony and refused their silver medals.

Another race that sticks out in my mind from that year was Dave Wattle (who always wore a baseball hat while running) winning the 800 meter finals by .03 after going from last to first in the final 200 meters.  You have to see this race, too!

In addition, the 1972 Olympics were known for when two Israeli team members were killed by terrorists trying to get the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners from Israel (my how things don’t change sometimes).  There was even the chance that the Games would be suspended or halted, but after one day, the Games continued.

I wasn’t much into the 2021 Olympics at Tokyo.  Those were rough times for everyone and even the athletes tended to think they were weren’t like anything before.

Some of the memories I’ll have from this year’s Summer Olympics include:

•  Although I like all sports and tend to look for the lesser-known sports during the Olympics like ping pong, equestrian, badminton and handball, I also tend to stick to the three main sports of swimming, gymnastics and athletics (or track and field).

The swimmers started the Olympics off fast and exciting and not without a little controversy involving Chinese swimmers and past drug tests.

One of the top athletes at this year’s Games was Leon Marchaund, a great swimmer from France who won four gold medals including an incredible two golds within two hours one night.

Other favorites of mine and top performers were Caleb Dressel, Katie Ledecky and Torri Huske from the U.S., and Summer McIntosh from Canada.

•  Wow, some of these races are so close, right down to the thousandths of a second.  Take the men’s 100 meter dash finals where the top seven athletes finished within .09 of each other.  For some comparison, it takes .1 to blink your eye.

What’s more, the top two athletes finished within .005 of each other.  The picture from above of the athletes finishing the race will be the top memory for me of these Games.

It’s interesting to note that if that had been a swimming race, it would have gone down as a tie between first and second because swimming only goes to a hundredth of a second while track goes to the thousandth of a second.

•  The gymnastics stars from the U.S., including Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Sunni Lie, were exceptional.  I was however, disappointed in some of the back-and-forth that the athletes felt necessary over social media.  This wasn’t the time to air their grievances and I thought it was kind of petty for Biles to complain so much.

In addition, I never like it when people claim that they’re the best.  If others say it, it’s okay, but a person should never claim to be the greatest.  Show me, don’t tell me, is what I like to say, but evidently it’s okay for Simone to let everyone know what she thinks and even wearing a GOAT (greatest of all time) necklace.

I’ve always liked modest athletes the best!

Controversy also took center stage in gymnastics with Jordan Chiles placing fifth in the floor exercise, but then having her place changed to third after an appeal.  However, Romania was successful with another appeal, putting Chiles back in fifth and the U.S. countered with yet another appeal of its own.

These events are so subjective to begin with that it’s so hard to determine what their actual score should be . . . but, we can’t be changing things later.  There has to be a better system.  One idea is to let the 

coaches know when the preliminary score has been arrived at and give them one minute before the result is posted for everyone else to see.

It’s pretty complicated to come up with gymnastics scores so it’s probably best to wait a bit before posting the score for the public before the coaches and officials have had a chance to look the score over.

•  Track and field (or athletics as it’s known for the Olympics) has been and continues to be the top sport for me at the Summer Olympics.  I’ve always been a big hurdling fan so the 400 meter hurdle races were two of my favorites.  Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Rai Benjamin were two of the stars in track for the U.S. and both won the 400 meter hurdles along with anchoring great 4×400 meter relay teams that also both won golds.

Among the other track athletes I have to mention as Dutch runner Sifan Hassan, who placed third in the 5,000 and 10,000 meter runs before winning the gold medal in the marathon on the final day.  She was the first one to attempt that in 40 years and only one other athlete has placed in all three events.  How’s that for being in shape?

How about Armand Duplantis of Sweden, who won the pole vault with a world record.  They showed some early video of Duplantis doing the pole vault in his back yard when he was 3 or 4 years old and it was amazing to see him progress into a world champion.  His world record earned him $100,000 from Sweden and the reason he only went up one centimeter from the former record is because he gets that money every time he breaks a record; something he has done nine times.

And Grant Jackson Fisher, who became the first American to medal in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meter races at the Olympics, including an unbelievable finish in the 5,000 meters.

And finally, two of my favorite track athletes are Norwegians Karsten Warholm and Jakob Ingebrigtsen.  First, I have to tell you I’m 50 percent Norwegian.  Warholm was the man to beat in the men’s 400 hurdles and that’s exactly what Benjamin did on the way to winning gold, while  Ingebrigtsen lost a very memorable 1500 race won by U.S.A.’s Cole Hocker before coming back to win the 5,000 meters.

Ingebrigtsen was favored in the 1500 and when he didn’t medal, the Norwegian press were very hard on him with several headlines claiming “total humiliation” and “complete failure.”  And we thought the American press could be hard.

•  The Chinese dominated the diving competition, sweeping all eight golds for the first time in Olympic history.  These divers are amazing and it’s no wonder other countries don’t have a chance when they’re competing against them.  Thanks goodness China gets only one entry in the diving competitions.  

•  As far as basketball goes, I have a tough time with pros playing for the U.S. team.  The pros play for millions of dollars every year and they have their own NBA Finals.  It was one thing when the pros competed in the Olympics to prove to the rest of the world who is the top country in basketball, but the pros are taking away prime time spots from other athletes that could probably use a little TV time and money instead of Steph Curry, LaBron and their buddies.

•  It was a tie for the gold medals between the U.S. and China, but it shouldn’t have been.  People will always remember the women’s basketball team earning a 67-66 victory over France.  That gave both countries a final tally of 40 gold medals.

One thing a lot of people might forget is that two athletes tied for the high jump title and if they had agreed, they could have both had gold medals and the final results would have shown they tied for first.

Instead, New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr and American Shelby McEwen stupidly decided to keep jumping to determine the winner.  What followed were 11-straight misses by the two jumpers before Kerr finally got over 7 feet, 8 inches to win the gold, coming after the bar had to be lowered two times until the jumpers cleared the height again.  I’m sure by the time they had finished, they both had second doubts about not just sharing the gold medal, especially considering McEwen had just passed up $50,000 that goes with a gold medal.  

In addition, the extra gold medal would have given the U.S.A. a one-medal edge over China in the final standings, 41-40. 

•  It’s always fun to see sports you don’t always get to see and great athletes from other countries that you’ve only heard about.  I do have a criticism that the TV networks tend to concentrate on swimming, gymnastics, track and basketball a little too much instead of introducing us to sports we don’t see very often like fencing, field hockey, equestrian and more.

•  The next Summer Olympics in 2028 will be held in Los Angeles.  L.A. also hosted the Summer Games in 1932 and 1984, while St. Louis hosted the Summer Olympics in 1904 and Atlanta hosted in 1996.  

The U.S. has also hosted the Winter Olympics four times and will host the Winter Games again in 2034 in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The 2026 Winter Olympics meanwhile, are set for Italy and the 2030 Winter Olympics are set to be played back in France, while the 2032 Summer Olympics will be hosted by Australia.

•  Each Olympics sometimes introduces new sports while also halting others.  Baseball and softball will be back for the 2028 Games after being reintroduced in 2021 at Tokyo but being left out at France.  Also, flag football and squash will be added for 2028 and lacrosse and cricket will also return after a many-year layoff.

•  Yes, the Olympics were especially great this year and it was nice to see the Games conclude without any major problems.  The countdown has begun for the L.A. Summer Olympics in 2028.  

Only a little less than four years to go!