Are there any normal people at the Olympics?
Top Three @ The Paris 2024 Olympics
2nd August, 2024 - Part 5
No, is the answer. There are not. Everybody competing at the Olympic Games is a super human freak.
Let’s go Wilde
Hayden Wilde watched the triathlon at the Rio Olympics and decided that is what he wanted to do with his life too. Five years later he won the bronze medal at Tokyo 2020 which, remember, were actually held in 2021. He was one of those who benefited from the one year delay. If they were held as originally scheduled in 2020 it’s unlikely he would have medalled and this could be quite a different story.
The triathlon at Paris 2024 was a signature event here on Wednesday morning, with the swim in the (apparently) newly cleaned Seine,1 and the bike and run legs through the streets of central Paris. I was watching from the Avenue des Champs-Élysées where the crowds were thick enough for there to be Mexican waves - it was an electric atmosphere to soak up.
I’m sure many kiwis were screaming at the television in the closing stages of the race. Hayden took the lead early in the run leg and looked to have the gold medal in hand before he hit a wall with about 700m to go and was passed by his great rival and (apparently) great friend, Alex Yee from Great Britain.
There is a wonderful expression to describe a half marathon: 15km of hope and 6km of truth. Unfortunately in the final kilometre of that triathlon race hope turned into truth.
The run leg was four laps of a 2.5km course. The lap splits tell the story. Alex completed the run in 29 minutes and 47 seconds. Hayden was only 2 seconds slower. They both ran the first lap at a blistering pace. Alex slowed a lot in the second lap, which saw Hayden build a lead. From that halfway point onwards Alex picked up the pace and kept getting faster, meanwhile Hayden continued to slow over the final 5km.
While it might have seemed that the race was lost right at the end during the run, another “leg” of the race we can interrogate are the two transitions - from swim to bike and from bike to run. Here’s how their times compared:
Hayden sure could have used those 5 extra seconds spent putting his shoes on when he was overtaken with the finish line in sight!
Either way, we should be happy he won silver rather than sad that he didn’t win gold.
I am everyday people
This is my challenge for you this weekend: Try to run just one kilometer at the “slow” average pace Hayden maintained over the final lap - which was 3:07min/km. Unlike Hayden you don’t need to swim 1500m, ride 40km and run 9km first - you can start fresh. Please report back with your best times. You won’t even get close!
One of the greatest ideas I’ve heard for improving the Olympic Games is to include one normal person in every event - just to provide context. So, for example, the 100m would be eight lanes of elite sprinters, and Dennis from the sales team, who frankly probably shouldn’t try to squeeze into the full body skin suit. The handball competition could include Sarah and a bunch of her mates who normally play indoor netball but reckon they could give it a shot. The weightlifting would be a dozen of the strongest people on the planet plus Brian, who hasn’t been to the gym in 15 years but still backs himself. I think it would make it even more compelling to watch. When it’s only Olympians competing against other Olympians, it’s hard to tell just how freakish they all are. Including normal everyday people would make it much more obvious.
A variation of this could be Olympians vs other Olympians, but not in their chosen sports.
Steph Curry and Anthony Edwards are two very well known NBA stars representing the USA in basketball at Paris 2024. Lily Zhang is not as well known, but also representing USA in table tennis. They all have a chance to win medals this week.2
It turns out the two basketball players also fancy themselves as table tennis players. A video of the two basketball players talking up their table tennis skills to Zhang during the opening ceremony went viral. She put them in their place, predicting that she would easily beat them 21-0.
I love this comment from Anders Lind, who is representing Denmark in the table tennis competition at Paris 2024:
“Some people who don’t play table tennis actually think they have a chance to win a single point. It’s cute, but it’s not true”
Source: NY Times
At the end of the artistic gymnastics programme at the Olympics there is an exhibition event where athletes basically just get to show off their best tricks, without the pressure of judging and competition. They do the same after the figure skating competition at the Winter Olympics. It’s pure entrainment, and it’s fun to watch. But Steph Curry vs Lily Zhang in a competitive game of table tennis on the final day of the Olympics - the organisers could probably charge whatever stupid price they wanted for those tickets and they would still sell out the stadium!
Make it rain
The medal drought turned out to be more of a droughtn't.
The women’s rugby sevens team got the party started with a gold medal, the night before Hayden’s silver in the triathlon. The next day the rowing team won a gold + silver + bronze trifecta. And today there was another silver in the sailing.
So, after the first week of competition, here’s how the medal tables that matter are shaping up:
Boom! Punching above our weight, baby!
Just one more gold medal would have us top of both tables.
Only Ireland and Slovakia are on the board amongst the teams of five million:
The lightweight women’s double skulls finished fourth this morning, so we are hanging in there on this table too:
Some other countries to keep an eye on:
Georgia - they have a clutch of judo medals, including one gold, with more events tomorrow. They also have two fourth place finishes.
Australia - they compete in a much heavier weight division and yet are still impressively punching up. Currently third on the medal table behind China and hosts France.
Norway - two fourth places, but no medals yet.
Ireland - gold and bronze medals in the rowing and swimming respectively mean they are our biggest light middle-weight threat. Let’s see how they go in week two - remember, we’ve got our ace waiting in the wings.
Italy - they’ve won five gold medals and 17 medals in total, but also have 12 fourth place finishes. Are they poised to pick up the mantle from Hungary (2020) and New Zealand (2016)?
While we’re nearly at the half-way point, there are many more medals up for grab in the second week. In fact 40% of the medals are awarded on the final five days of competition.
Today was the first day with more than 20 medals awarded. Tomorrow there will be over 30 medals awarded. We’ll be back at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in the morning, hoping for another couple as the rowing competition wraps up. And then in the evening at Stade de France, now transformed from a rugby ground into an athletics venue, where kiwis will be competing in shot put and 100m.
Just like Hayden did in the triathlon we’ve burst into the lead, but there is still lots of running to do. Let’s not celebrate too soon.
Important Reminder: medal tables, however they are sorted and filtered, are mostly nonsense - the focus should be on performances in individual events.
This is the fifth instalment in a series of indeterminate length:
Are there any normal people at the Olympics?
More coming soon!
How the river could go from unacceptably polluted the previous day to okay to compete in overnight when the said night includes thunder storms is left to the imagination of the reader.
Zhang has a chance to win two medals as she is competing in both singles and teams events