Day 3: Part 2

Day 3: Part 2

Today, I learned that the London Olympics are the first event to ban the highly engineered full-body swimsuits that were so popular in Bejing.  I suddenly realized that all the men were only wearing those short suits and I was confused as to why that was, so I looked it up, and now I know.  Oh the Internet, what a wonderful place to find random information.

Looks a little different, huh? No more Speedo LZR suits.   Anyways, on to the actual events.

Today's Medal Winning Sports:

Women's 3m Synchronized Springboard:  This is really fun to watch, although it is kind of weird that diving in unison is an Olympic sport.  I like it! The US women Kelsey Bryant and Abby Johnston won the Silver!  Apparently, they both collect rubber ducks...random fact of the day. They did crazy dives where they jump off of the board and do two somersaults and then a full twist before hitting the water.  ACK!  That looks scary and I am always afraid that they are going to hit their heads on the board as they go by.

The Chinese pair Zi He and Minxia Wu won the Gold as expected and the Canadian pair Jennifer Abel and Emilie Heymans won the Bronze.  This was Heymans fourth medal in four consecutive Olympics, the first time that has ever been done by a Canadian athlete.

***Women's 100-meter Butterfly: American Dana Vollmer won GOLD with a new World Record time of 55.98!! First woman ever to finish under 56 seconds in the 100-meter fly.  China's Ying Lu got the Silver and Alicia Coutts of Australia won the Bronze.  Claire Donahue from the US finished 7th.  The butterfly always looks really awkward under the water. They just look like they are flopping into the water.  I can't do it.

Men's 100-meter Breaststroke: Cameron van der Burgh of South Africa won the Gold, Christian Sprenger of Australia got the Silver, and the United States' own Brendan Hansen won the Bronze medal.  He beat his eight year rival Kitajima who came 5th.

Women's 400-meter Freestyle: Yay! Another medal for the US, and one for Britain.  Frenchwoman Camille Muffat got the Gold with an Olympic Record.  American Allison Schmidt won the Silver and Britain's own Rebecca Adlington won the Bronze. Schmidt could not have been more excited in her post-race interview and I could not be more happy for her.

Men's 4x100-meter Freestyle: The US lost this race in the final 25 meters to the French team and Lochte and Phelps combined couldn't get it done.

Women's Team Final: China takes the Gold, Korea takes the Silver, and Japan takes the Bronze.

Men's Sabre Individual:  Aron Szilagyi of Hungary trounced his opponent Diego Occhiuzzi of Italy to take the Gold.  In the Bronze medal match, Nikolay Kovalev of Russia came out on top to take the medal.

Women's Road Race: Marianne Vos of the Netherlands won the Gold, Elizabeth Armitstead of Great Britain took the Silver, and Olga Zabelinskaya of Russia won the Bronze.  I watched a little bit of this race before I went to work this morning, but apparently they don't think it is worthy of being covered in the Primetime coverage, so I didn't get to see what happened.  Boo NBC!

Women's Half Lightweight: Kum Ae An of North Korea won the Gold medal, Yanet Bermoy Acosta of Cuba won the Silver, and Priscilla Gneto won her Bronze medal match to take the medal.

Men's Half Lightweight: Hungary's Miklos Ungvari won the Gold medal in the final match over Georgia's Lasha Shavdatuashvili who got the Silver. Jun-Ho Cho of Korea won the Bronze.

Women's 10M Air Pistol: China's Wenjun Guo won the Gold, Celine Goberville of France won the Silver, and Olena Kostevych of Ukraine won the Bronze.

Women's Skeet: Kimberley Rhode of the US won the Gold medal with an almost perfect 99 targets hit out of 100.  After the competition, Rhode said that she now had something to work on for next time.  Ning Wei of China got the Silver, and Danka Bartekova of Slovakia took home the Bronze.

 Women's 48-53 kg: Kazakhstan picked up their second gold of these Olympics with Zulfiya Chinshanlo taking the ladies Gold in this event with two lifts, the second of which weighed 288 lbs. Ummm....that's like more than twice as much as I weigh.  That's crazy. Taiwan's Shu-Ching Hsu won the Silver and Moldova's Cristina Iovu got the Bronze.

In Other News:

Women's Gymnastics:  Woo! I know its kind of a terrible sport in many ways because these poor young girls have so much riding on their shoulders and have been doing nothing but gymnastics for their whole lives, but I love watching it!  Today the women completed their qualification round.  Mckayla Muroney is insane on the vault.  She goes so high in the air...its Crazy!  The Americans in general just crushed the vault section of the qualifier and nobody else in the world can touch them on this event.  Jordan Wieber, the US All-Around Champion, failed to qualify as one of the two athletes to compete in the All-Around in these Games and is devastated.  Her mom had to send her a virtual hug over Twitter because she was not able to get down to the floor to give her a real hug.  Aww...sad, but also, geez people. You can't let the girl's mom down to give her a hug.  To be fair, she probably just wanted to be left alone.  Gabby Douglass and Abby Raisman will compete for the Individual All-Around medals.  

It seems pretty harsh that Wieber does not get to compete. She had the 4th best score after the qualifiers in the whole field of gymnasts and yet because each country is only allowed to have two athletes compete in the All-Around, she is shut out of the competition.  That seems really unfair., but I guess that's just my opinion.  Well...mine and Bela Karolyi's.

Sharapova sails through her round against Shahar Peer.  Number 2 Radwanska lost to Julia Goerges of Germany. Wozniacki won her round as did Kvitova, Li Na, Serena Williams, Zvonareva, and Ivanovic.  Number 5 Sam Stosur lost her first round.

Now for the men.  Tsonga, Djokovic, Ferrer, del Potro, Federer, Isner, and Tipsarevic won their rounds.  Hometown hero Murray also made it through his first round vs. Wawrinka.  Tomas Berdych lost his first round match.

Tomorrow's Medal Events:

Men's Synchronized 10m Platform: USA men Nicholas Mccrory and David Boudia compete.

Women's Individual Epee: American's Maya Lawrence and Courtney Hurley compete

MEN'S TEAM FINAL:  The American men have a good chance to win gold here and watching them do crazy strong things is awesome.  You should watch.

Women's and Men's Lightweight Finals

Men's 10m Air Rifle Final

Men's 200m Freestyle Final: Ryan Lochte competes for Gold

Women's 100m Backstroke: American darling 17 year-old Missy Franklin swims for Gold

Men's 100m Backstroke: Matthew Grevers and Nick Thoman compete.

Women's 100m Breaststroke: Rebecca Soni and Breeja Larson swim as well as Aussie darling Leisel Jones.

Medal Count is.........................zzzzzzzzzzzzz........... sorry will update tomorrow.  Time to snooze.