So the United States has the most medals, which is awesome. :) I'm going to mostly cover stuff that happened to the U.S., but there are several things that happened for other countries that I think deserve mentioning. :)
The United States won medals in twenty three different sports (here goes): archery, beach volleyball, boxing, cycling (BMX, road & track), diving, equestrian, fencing, golf, gymnastics, judo, rowing, sailing, shooting, swimming, tennis, track and field, triathlon, volleyball, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling. (If you notice - OCD me needs to have them in alphabetical order.)
Now for the things I think are worth mentioning. I'm going to cover other nations first, then go to the U.S. In track and field, Wayde Van Niekerk of South Africa broke Michael Johnson's 17 year old record in the 400 meter. The new world record is now 43.03 seconds. Let me tell you - that's fast.
During the medal ceremony for the woman's 3m springboard diving, fellow Chinese diver Qin Kai proposed to He Zi. Sweet...
Finally for other countries - Fiji. Fiji is a small island in the South Pacific. Their rugby team won the island's first ever medal, and a gold one, too! Click here to see some pictures. I'm incredibly excited for them!!
Guess who the first gold medal of the games went to? The United States! Virginia Thrasher won the gold medal in the 10m air rifle event. Proud of our country! :)
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| Virginia Thrasher with the first gold of the games! |
Kristin Armstrong of the U.S. won gold in the women's 29.7km time-trial biking event. It's her third straight gold, and came just before she turned 43. What a nice birthday present! :P
On a not-so-happy note, the United States women soccer team, usually a dominate force, lost to Sweden in a 4 to 3 shootout. Slight bit of good news - Sweden lost in the gold medal match against Germany. And since I'm a German fan after I'm a U.S. fan (because I speak the language - kinda) I'm excited for that! Of course, still bummed for the USA. Incredibly mixed feelings. :)
A bit of more happy news... Allyson Felix won silver in the 400 meter. She almost had gold, but Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas dove across the finish line, grabing the gold, and leaving Felix with the silver. Felix did win a gold in the 4 by 100 meter relay.
Now for my top two favorite sports - swimming and gymnastics. I'll start with gymnastics and the Final Five: Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles, Laurie Hernandez and Madison Kocian.
They all won gold in the team event. Yay! Raisman and Biles got into the all-around competition. Biles won gold and Raisman won silver.
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| The Final Five with their medals!! |
In the individual events the U.S. totally rocked. We got a medal in every single individual event. All of them. Wow! Simone Biles won gold in vault and floor exercise, and bronze in beam. Aly Raisman won silver in floor, and Madison Kocian won silver on the uneven bars. Laurie Hernandez won sliver on the beam.
Gymnastics was busy, but swimming was even busier. We won a total of thirty-three medals in swimming, and almost half of those were gold! (Eight were silver, and nine were bronze.) I'm not going to go over them in such detail as I did gymnastics (that would take forever), but I'm going to highlight three things that stood out to me.
First: Simone Manuel won the women's 100 meter freestyle, becoming the first African-American woman to win an individual medal! Her reaction in an interview after the race is awesome, and gave me chills. :)
Second: Katie Ledecky. I really liked all of the swimming, but Ledecky got a lot of medals, so I'm picking her. :) She won gold in the 200 meter, 400 meter and 800 meter freestyle, as well as the 4x200 meter. In the 4x100 free she won silver. Also, in the 800 meter free, she broke her own world record! Pretty awesome. :)
Anyway - that's the post for this week. Hope you enjoyed! Check out TAJ News Blog, too. We just unveiled our new design!!
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