The Paris Olympics are in their middle section, during which track and field rules. There's no more pure, simple expression of sport than this: We're seeing who can run the fastest, throw the furthest, and jump the highest. Medals aren't decided by judges giving points for artistic interpretation; the clock and the ruler are are all that matters.
Here are the gold medal winners on Day 11's track and field events:
Women’s 200m race: Gabrielle Thomas (USA)
Women’s 3000m steeplechase: Winfred Yavi (Bahrain)
Men’s 1500m: Cole Hocker (USA)
Men’s long jump: Miltiadis Tentoglou (Greece)
Women’s hammer throw: Camryn Rogers (Canada)
Let's talk medals, baby. If you're wondering how well everyone is doing, here's the medal count. Spoiler: USA is number one, and it's not even close.
USA — 86 (24 gold, 31 silver, 31 bronze)
China — 59 (22 gold, 21 silver, 16 bronze)
France — 48 (13 gold, 16 silver, 19 bronze)
Great Britain — 46 (12 gold, 15 silver, 19 bronze)
Australia — 35 (14 gold, 12 silver, 9 bronze)
Japan — 29 (11 gold, 6 silver, 12 bronze)
T7. South Korea — 26 (11 gold, 8 silver, 7 bronze) T7. Italy — 26 (9 gold, 10 silver, 7 bronze)
Netherlands — 19 (8 gold, 5 silver, 6 bronze)
Canada — 18 (6 gold, 4 silver, 8 bronze)
On the other side of the leaderboard, there is a currently an eight-way tie for 69th place (nice). The following nations have won a single, bronze medal in the Parisian Games: Austria, Cabo Verde, Egypt, Granada, Indonesia, Iran, Portugal, and Slovakia.
The Olympics has a long history of presenting strange and obscure sports. There were Olympic pigeon races in 1900, solo synchronized swimming events in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and competitive poodle clipping in 1900 (an exhibition, but still). But the greatest forgotten Olympic event of all, and the one we must bring back in 2028 is distance plunging.
You might not know the name but I bet you've distance plunged at least once. The sport is played by diving into a body of water and seeing how far you can travel in 60 seconds without moving at all.
It was only played at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, where American William Paul Dickey won the gold medal with a distance of 62 feet and six inches (I think I could beat this, no problem). America took home all the distance plunging medals that year, but we were the only country that competed.
I assume that Dickey's score is the world distance plunging record, but it has probably been beaten many times by people who didn't even know they were doing a sport. Anyway: below is a picture of GOAT plunger Dickey.
