Olympic Dreams, Olympic Nightmares

It is both why we love the Olympics and why the Olympic Games can be so heartbreaking. In an instant, you can realize a lifetime of gold medal dreams. And in that same instant, all of those dreams can be dashed.

Women’s Gymnastics Team Final and Simone Biles

Simone Biles has realized more dreams than almost anyone in Olympic history, but she will not win five gold medals at these Olympics. Now, that number will stop cold as she has withdrawn from the team finals.

 

Biles left the competition after the vault, the first of the four rotations for Team USA. On the final three rotations – bars, beam, and floor, the remaining members of the American team fought valiantly but ultimately came up short. The team of Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee, and Grace McCallum settled for silver behind the Russians.

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The day before the team finals, Biles posted on her Instagram: “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times. I know I brush it off and make it seem like pressure doesn’t affect me, but damn sometimes it’s hard.”

U.S. Women’s Soccer Team

What is happening with the USWNT? First, a 3-0 loss to Sweden, the first loss for the U.S. women in 44 matches. And now a 0-0 tie against Australia to back their way into the knockout stage and a quarterfinal match on Friday.

Yes, they only needed a tie on Tuesday to move on. But considering the early struggles in the tournament, it would have been a benefit to enter the knockout stage looking again like the gold medal favorites.

 

The one bright spot for the U.S. is that with four points in Group G, they wouldn’t have a possible rematch against Sweden until the finals, scheduled for August 6. Betting markets still have faith in the women; they post +150 odds to win the women’s soccer gold medal. While they’re still the favorite, their odds dropped significantly while Great Britain and Sweden have lowered to +400 and +450 respectively.

 

U.S. Women’s Basketball Team

The American women in Tokyo feature six first-time Olympians, but the new faces are all playing like the old faces that have defined the U.S. Women’s basketball team since 1996. That is when the U.S. began its current Olympic winning streak that on Tuesday against Nigeria reached 50 consecutive games.

WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson led the American effort with 19 points and 13 rebounds. The Nigerians were paced by 16 points from Ezinne Kalu, an American-born Nigerian who played her college basketball at Savannah State.

The US Women’s team enters Friday’s game against Japan as whopping 19-point favorites according to the sportsbook’s Olympic women’s basketball odds.

Lydia Jacoby Wins Unexpected Swimming Gold

A year ago, Lydia Jacoby was just the 18th fastest woman in America in the 100-meter breaststroke. The then 16-year-old still planned to attend the Games in Tokyo to help inspire her for 2024, when she might be able to make the Olympic team.

Instead, because of the pandemic delay, she blossomed as a swimmer over the following year, made the Olympic team in 2021, and now as a 17-year-old, she is the fastest woman in the world in the 100-meter breaststroke. The high school student from Seward, Alaska, was a surprise gold medal winner on Tuesday, upsetting the defending Olympic champion, American Lilly King. King, who hadn’t lost in the event in five-and-a-half years and was overwhelming chalk according to Olympic odds, took the bronze.

 

The win is even more improbable for Jacoby when you consider that there isn’t a single 50-meter Olympic-sized pool in Alaska, and for much of 2020, there were no open pools in her hometown because of the pandemic.

Naomi Osaka Loses in Third Round

The nightmare summer for Naomi Osaka continued on Tuesday when she lost in the third round of the Olympic women’s tennis competition to the Czech Republic’s Marketa Vondrousova. Osaka, who was given the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron earlier this summer, withdrew from the French Open to focus on her mental health.

Osaka also skipped Wimbledon and hadn’t played in nearly two months. And because she was at the opening ceremonies on Saturday, her first match was moved to Sunday — setting up three matches in three consecutive days. And on that third straight day, she simply didn’t have it, losing 6-1, 6-4.

 

With the earlier loss of world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty of Australia, the gold medal was there for Osaka’s taking. The highest remaining seed is the fourth-seeded Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, a semifinalist at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2019.

 

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