The Olympics do not occur every year, so I wanted to highlight some of the stories about women in the Olympics for today’s female post.
Women In Numbers
The biggest story prior to the start of the Olympics was that there were more American females competing than males. However, this is also the case for all of the Olympians in this year’s games.
The United States is represented by more women than men for the first time ever. Russia also has more women competing. One hundred and twelve years after women were first allowed to compete, and 108 years after they were first awarded medals, more women will compete in these games than ever before, whether you count by percentage (45 percent) or total (4,860).
Its 2 bad we cant have commentators who better represents the team&knows more about the game @brandichastain! #fb
Lay off commentating about defending and gking until you get more educated @brandichastain the game has changed from a decade ago. #fb
Its important 2 our fans 2 enjoy the spirit of the olympics. Its not possible when sum1 on air is saying that a player is the worst defender!
I feel bad 4 our fans that have 2 push mute, especially bc @arlowhite is fantastic.@brandichastain should be helping 2 grow the sport #fb
Jesus Christ, Hope, you’re 30 years old. Maybe one tweet would have sufficed to defend your teammate, but this is the part where we say, “Yeah u mad bro.”
For an actual break down of the U.S. victory over Columbia, instead of these silly issues, read this post.
16 year old Chinese swimmer shocks world
Ye Shiwen wins gold, breaks a record, faster than men, and is only 16
Despite the fact that American Ryan Lochte edged Michael Phelps for the gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley, China’s Ye Shiwen is receiving heaps of press. It’s not because she won a gold medal, but how she won the gold medal.
After 300m of fly, back and breaststroke, Ye was eight-tenths of a second behind USA’s world champion, Elizabeth Beisel. And then, with 100m to go, something extraordinary happened. She swam her first 50m of freestyle in 29.25sec, and her second in 28.93. Those are just numbers, and mean little to those who do not study the sport. To put them in context, consider this: Ye was faster in the final 50m of her own 400m IM than Lochte was in his.
Dude. She was faster at the end of the race than the best guy in the world. And she’s 12 years younger than Lochte. To top it off, she was the first swimmer to break a world record in this Olympics by more than a second. She broke Steph Rice’s time that earned her a gold medal, and Rice was wearing the polyurethane suit that has since been banned. Impressive stuff from the young Chinese swimmer.
There are plenty of stories that have and will occur, and they all won’t be represented here. Feel free to post them on the Facebook page or tweet them at 70’s Big (I’ll retweet Olympics results). Here’s a few quick hitters:
Kim Rhode
The female athlete, 33, won the gold in women’s skeet shooting Sunday, making her the first U.S. contender to take an individual-sport medal in five back-to-back Olympics, according to the AP. She also tied the world record and set an Olympic record: she shot 99 out of 100 targets. (Editor’s Note: This was her fifth straight Olympics that she medaled in, setting an American record.)
Dana Vollmer
The 24-year-old swimmer and defending world champion set a world record in the 100 M butterfly with a time of 55.98 seconds Sunday – good enough to earn her the gold medal, according to the AP.
Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh
The beach volleyball contenders are trying for a third consecutive gold medal – and they’re already well on their way to securing that win. On Saturday, the duo beat out Australians Tasmin Hinchley and Natalie Cook in a tense match that went way past 11 p.m. local time. The final score: 21-18 and 21-19. “I was worried,” Walsh said of playing so late. “At home, it hits 11 and I’m a zombie. But we could play at 4 in the morning, we don’t care.”
For complete “Day 2 of the Olympics” coverage, see this post (there’s an American bias, feel free to post more coverage in the comments). The first two paragraphs focus on an interesting turn of events in gymnastics:
Nobody saw this coming: Defending all-around champion Jordyn Wieber, the face of this year’s U.S. women’s gymnastics squad, failed to qualify for the finals in her signature event. She lost to teammate and friend Aly Raisman, who turned in quite possibly the performance of her young life.
The emotional chaos that ensued after the scores were flashed said it all: Wieber stood crying in the background, head down, while Raisman tried to field a reporter’s questions even though she was crying herself, clearly torn by mixed emotions. Was this a blip on the radar for Raisman or is she about to step from the shadows to create her own legend? And will this blow rattle Wieber’s psyche or will she still be able to bring her best performance to the team competition? We’ll find out soon.