The Real Day 1

IT'S TIMMMMMEEEEEEEE!!!

 Logo by Richard Voysey and in my opinion a lot better logo than the one that they picked.

And clearly I couldn't be more excited.  I am slightly bummed that currently at 4:51 PM CST the Opening Ceremony is a good hour and 51 minutes over and I can't watch it live because NBC will only broadcast it in primetime, but c'est la vie.

News of the day:

The Men and Women's individual and team ranking rounds have been completed.

In the Men's Individual round, South Korea's Dong Hyun Im set a World and Olympic Record with 699 points on the 70 meter.  Amazing for a guy who is legally blind in one eye.
The top ranking Americans in this event were Brady Ellison at 10th place and Jacob Wukie at 12th place.

In the team round, South Korea is ranked first with 2087 points, France is second with 2021 points, and the USA is in third place with 2019 points.

In the Women's Individual Round, South Korean Bo Bae Ki is currently ranked first with 671 points. The highest ranked Team USA members are Khatuna Lorig at 4th place, Miranda Leek at 14th place, and Jennifer Nichols at 15th place.

In the team round, South Korea is again ranked first  with 1993 points (surprise, surprise) and team USA is ranked second with 1979 points.

The next round for the Individual events will take place on Monday at 4:00 AM CST

Obviously, once tomorrow hits, I am not going to be so explicit about each sport, or this thing will go on forever.  For now, let me just give a quick rundown of what's happening tomorrow and what the medal events will be.

Tomorrow's Medal Events

The Men's Archery team will be back tomorrow to complete their event and the medal round will take place at 12:00PM.

 Men's Cycling Road Race will compete tomorrow for the gold at 4:00AM (If you happen to be up that early)

Women's Fencing Individual Round for the Foil will compete for Gold and the medal round will take place around 1:40 PM.  USA fencer Mariel Zagunis will compete tomorrow after having the honor of being the USA flag bearer this evening.  She is seeking her 3rd Gold medal.  In my opinion, fencing is a fun sport to watch, and as this one might actually be broadcast live, I would encourage you to watch.

In Judo, both the Men and the Women's Extra Lightweight will compete for Gold with the medal round occurring at 10:00AM

Women and Men's 10-meter Air Rifle will compete for gold with the Women's medal round at 5:00 AM and Men's at 9:30 AM

And.....SWIMMING because we are way into that in this country.  There are a lot of heats so I will just skip to the medal events.  Men's 400 Meter Individual Medley medal round will happen at 1:30PM and will likely include Americans Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps. Men's 400-meter Freestyle will run at 1:49 PM CST and American's Conor Dwyer and Peter Vanderkaay will be competing for the medal.  The Women's 400-meter Individual Medley will happen at 2:10 PM CST and Americans Elizabeth Beisel and Caitlin Leverenz will compete with Australia's Stephanie Rice and Canada's Stephani Horner.  The Women's 4 x 100meter Freestyle will go for gold at 2:40PM.  Swimming is one of the most popular events of the Olympics games and as most of you know who Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte are, you will probably be most interested in this, and I will certainly try to watch this after work.

Last medal event happening tomorrow, Women's under 48kg Weightlifting at 9:30 AM CST

Events that aren't medaling tomorrow, but are starting are Badminton, Basketball, Beach Volleyball (I know people appreciate this one and I certainly love me some Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh), Boxing, Equestrian Dressage, Gymnastics, Handball, Rowing, more Soccer, Table Tennis, Tennis (without Rafael Nadal sadly), and Volleyball


Phew, that's a lot of stuff going on tomorrow.  Now let's be honest, most of it probably won't be covered live and some of the sports won't get the coverage of the marquee events like swimming but, regardless, I will let you know who wins each medal tomorrow and keep the running country medal count.   That's all I have for now, but I will post again after the Opening Ceremony and let you know all of the awesome highlights, and the worst team uniforms.

Before I finish this, I just found out one more piece of news.  Sadly, Illinois own Anna Li will relinquish her spot as an alternate on the US women's gymnastics team after she fell and hurt her neck while practicing on the uneven bars the other day.  That's got to be devastating when you spent your whole life driving towards this goal and to injure yourself to completely remove yourself from competition.  Sad!  Ok, ending this now.  See, there is so much info out there.