Females in the Olympics

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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).

Title IX was huge for growth in women’s sports. Nowadays women can earn their living in professional sports and, as of this year, women compete in every Olympic sport. It was a good step for a progressing American society; I hope it continues around the world.

 

Hope Solo should know better
One of the American football/soccer commentators is Brandi Chastain, the gal who ripped her shirt off when the American women won the 1999 World Cup (see image on left). During the U.S. – Columbia match, Chastain pointed out that defender Rachel Buehler “needs to improve (her defending) in this tournament”. After the 3-0 U.S. victory, Hope Solo raged out on Twitter, saying:

 

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.

More gymnastics coverage.

33 thoughts on “Females in the Olympics”

  1. Worth a mention; in the rowing, Britain’s double scull team of Katherine Grainger and Anna Watkins broke the Olympic Record in their heat this morning by fully five seconds. Grainger is 36, and in a sport dominated by younger athletes (unsurprisingly, given the physical demands) then to stay at the top of the game at that age must take a phenomenal amount of dedication and effort.

  6. If y’all did not watch the epic lifting put on by Zulfiya Chinshanlo in the women’s 53Kg class, you missed something very special. Plus her coaches’ exuberance was great to see. They clearly have been waiting all their lives for a lifter like her. Her clear enjoyment of every lift was inspiring.

  7. “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.”

    “…more women will compete in these games than ever before, whether you count by percentage (45 percent) or total (4,860).”

    These two quotes seem to contradict each other. If only 45 percent of the competitors are women, then wouldn’t that imply that 55 percent are men, and women do not make up a majority of the overall competitors?

    In other news, how about that Columbian woman that straight punched Abby Wombach in the face? Did anyone see Abby’s celebration after her goal? Classic.

  8. Swimming is such a bullshit sport.

    Oh? You won a gold in swimming? cool story bro. So if You were on a ship, crashed, and couldn’t get into a rescue boat, we can be assured that you will survive. But, if you’re an asshole, then you’re survival is pretty much useless.

  9. I’ve been really impressed by the bowling ball biceps on the male gymnasts. I actually just find all of the gymnastics events quite incredible. That one really small girl that vaulted like twice as high as the others yesterday was fun to watch.

    But the most intense competition I’ve seen so far is table tennis. Wow.

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  16. About the Chinese girl, Ye Shiwen. Yes that last 50 split was crazy fast, but if you watched the swim and then watched the mens 400 IM, Lochte was already in cruise control out ahead, while she had to put the afterburners on for the last 100m to pass the American competitor. Also, Lochte finished the race in around 4 mins flat, while she was out at 4:30ish.

    Just sayin, 1.3 billion people, they are eventually going to have good swimmers without doping.

  17. I just want to say that I’m glad you came around to the idea of using the words woman and women.

    Now, if you would just stop using female as a noun. It sounds ridiculous– this isn’t a science experiment of chimps or female alligators. If you were talking about “a group female weightlifters”, that would be one thing, but to say that “the females in the competition are amazing” just sounds weird.

    Sorry to be a douche. I’m just trying to make you better man.

    • shouldnt you be trying to boss your own children around?

      Also I highly doubt any “man” would ever say to another man in real life “im just trying to make you a better man” without eating some of their own teeth after saying it.

      • Haha, Stroud. While it wasn’t very funny, that comment was tongue in cheek. (do you even know what that means?)

        I knew if you read this you would have something completely stupid to say. As always.

        Who are you defending anyway? Justin is completely capable of doing that for himself (or ignoring me if he so desires) and doesn’t need dumb-ass brown shirts like you always sucking his dick. He is isn’t a fragile flower that can’t take a suggestion or proposed change. I’m a fan and I buy his books so he doesn’t need you to protect him from me or my ideas.

        Clearly, you can’t even see what an asshole you are so I really should just ignore you. I’ll try to pretend I can’t see the dumb ass shit you always say.

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