Day 12

Day 12

Is it just me, or is anyone else bothered by the American Medal Ceremony uniforms?? I mean, look at the other uniforms in this picture. I mean, they are kind of ugly, but at least they tell you where the athletes are from.  The US could be from anywhere. The worst part is that they clearly designed this jacket so that it would have commercial appeal to the masses back here who might want to buy it.  That's not the point! These should be easily identifiable as being American when we see the athletes on the medal stand.  That's just my two cents, but the blatant effort to appeal to the consumer rather than represent the country is annoying.

How about these instead???


There has been a lot of debate and smack talk after yesterday's women's soccer semifinal between Canada and the US.  One of the interesting facts that came out of the controversial game delay call against Canada is that Abby Wambuch worked to engineer that penalty.  Every time the Canadian goalie attempted to slow down the pace of the game, she counted out loud near the ref until the goalie threw the ball away.  By pointing out the time taken by the Canadian goalie, she was able to draw the foul onto Canada.  Sorry guys, that's just playing smart.  I mean, the goalie was in fact holding the ball much longer than she should have been, so any talk about poor sportsmanship is just wrong.

OMG!! How cute are Andy Murray's dogs wearing his medals!!


Today's Medal Winning Events:

Women's 100m Hurdles: Oh man! This was fun to watch.  Also, very fast.  Sally Pearson, the favorite here, performed as expected and won the Gold in this event.  Lolo Jones did not medal in this event but managed to come in 4th. USA's Dawn Harper did not defend her title but managed to pick up the Silver. Teammate Kellie Wells won the Bronze.

Men's High Jump: Russia's Ivan Ukhov won the Gold after hilariously losing his shirt during the middle of the competition and having to wear his warm up t-shirt.  Erik Kynard of the US won the Silver and Derek Drouin of Canada won the Bronze.

Men's Discus Throw: Germany's Robert Harting won the Gold with a throw of 223' 11 3/4".  Ehsan Hadadi of Iran won the Silver and Gerd Kanter of Estonia won the Bronze.

Men's 1500m: Algeria's Taoufik Makhloufi won the Gold handily.  After being banned and then reinstated after pulling out in the middle of his 800m semi-final, Makhloufi made no indication that the 'injury' he suffered during that semi-final was affecting his race at all.  Suspect?...I think so.  Leonel Manzano won the Silver after closing spectacularly.  He passed four runners in the last 60m to take the medal.  Abdalaati Iguider of Morocco won the Bronze.

Men's Parallel Bars: Unsurprisingly, a Chinese man won this event.  Zhe Feng won the Gold medal.  Marcel Nguyen of Germany won the Silver and Hamilton Sabot of France won the Bronze.  No Americans made it into this final.

Men's Horizontal Bar: This final was awesome with the athletes pulling out their best and most impressive moves to compete on this apparatus.  The Netherlands picked up their very first medal in Gymnastics with a Gold in this event.  Epke Zonderland did a seriously impressive and difficult routine that was awesome to watch and won the medal.  The Silver medalist, Fabian Hambuchen of Germany, did an equally awesome routine.  Kai Zou of China picked up the Bronze medal and also looked pretty fantastic.

Women's Balance Beam: Controversy in this event again.  Linlin Deng performed a flawless routine and picked up the Gold medal and countrywoman Lu Sui won the Silver with just 1/10th of a point less.  Aly Raisman was the last athlete to compete and after her turn, she landed in 4th position.  The score unfair based on the scoring of the rest of the field, and the US contingent contested the results.  The won the appeal and Raisman's score was raised enough to land her in 3rd place with the Bronze.

Women's Floor Exercise:  YAY ALY RAISMAN! She performed a flawless routine and came away with the Gold.  Teammate Jordyn Wieber stumbled on her exercise and landed out of bounds and inevitably in 7th place.  I am sad for her, because I really wanted her to be able to redeem herself for not qualifying for the All-Around.  I am happy for Aly Raisman because she performed the best she ever has.  Catalina Ponor of Romania won the Silver and Aliya Mustafina of Russia won the Bronze.

Women's Sprint: Australia's Anna Meares won the Gold, Great Britain got another Silver as Victoria Pendleton came in second, and Shuang Guo of China won the Bronze.

Women's Omnium: Another Gold for Team GB. Laura Trott won the Gold, USA's Sarah hammer won the Silver, and Annette Edmondson of Australia won the Bronze.

Men's Keirin: I don't think I listed this one yesterday.  Oops.  Oh well.  Team GB won the Gold as Chris Hoy won yet another race.  Maximillian Levy of Germany won the Silver and Teun Mulder of the Netherlands won the Bronze.

Men's 3m Springboard: Ilya Zakharov of Russia won the Gold over the dominant diving Chinese who got the Silver and Bronze.  Kai Qin won the Silver and Chong He won the Bronze.

Team Dressage: Great Britain won the Gold, Germany won the Silver, and the Netherlands won the Bronze.

Men's RS:X - Windsurfer: Dorian van Rijsselberge of the Netherlands won the Gold, Nick Dempsey of GB won the Silver, and Przemyslaw Miarczynski of Poland won the Bronze.....and I still have absolutely no idea what this event is about.  Oh well.

Woman's RS:X -Windsurfer: Marina Alabau Neira of Spain won the Gold, Tuuli Petaja of Finland won the Silver, and Zofia Noceti-Klepacka of Poland won the Bronze.

Women's Duet Final: Wah! I didn't get to watch any of this.  Unsurprisingly, Svetlana Romashina and Natalia Ishchenko of Russia won the Gold, Ona Carbonell Ballestero and Andrea Fuentes Fache of Spain won the Silver, and Xuechen Huang and Ou Liu of China won the Bronze.

Women's Team Final: Team China won the Gold over Team Japan. Team Singapore won their match over Team South Korea to take the Bronze.

Men's Triathlon: Alistair Brownlee of Great Britain won the Gold by 11 seconds over Javier Gomez of Spain who took the Silver.  Great Britain also took the Bronze with Jonathan Brownlee coming in 3rd.

Men's Greco-Roman 66 kg: Tamas Lorincz of Hungary won the Gold in his match over Hyeonwoo Kim of Korea.  The Bronzes went to Steeve Guenot of France and Manuchar Tskhadaia of Georgia.

Men's Greco-Roman 96 kg: Ghasem Gholamreza Rezaei of Iran won the Gold over Rustam Totrov of Russia. Bronzes went to Jimmy Lidberg of Sweden and Artur Aleksanyan of Armenia.


Tomorrow's Medal Events: 

WATCH WATCH WATCH WATCH!!!!!

TEAM USA vs TEAM USA

Walsh-Jenner and May-Treanor vs.  Kessy and Ross.  I am so excited

This takes place at 3:00PM CST so hopefully NBC will show this one live!

Men's Kayak Singles 1000m

Men's Canoe Single 1000m

Men's Kayak Doubles 1000m

Women's Kayak Fours 500m

Individual Jumping Final

Men's 49er - Skiff: Erik Storck

Men's Team Final

Women's High Jump: Janay Deloach and Brittney Reese compete

Women's 400m Hurdles: T'erea Brown, Georganna Moline, and Lashinda Demus compete

Women's 200m: Carmelita Jeter, Sanya Richards-Ross, who goes for her second medal, and Allyson Felix compete in a Marquee event.

Men's 110m Hurdles: Jason Richardson, Aries Merritt, and Jeff Porter compete.

Women and Men's Flyweight Finals

Women's Freestyle 48 kg

Women's Freestyle 63  kg

Ok Bed Time, medal count tomorrow... short answer, we are down by 3 total medals and 4 Gold medals to China.