3 Sports You Missed, Vol. 9

A modest Free Bird proposal, an actual proposal after the closest gymnastics championship in decades, and a master of multiple bike types

Hey all, sorry the Sports You Missed were delayed from Monday to Tuesday. Turns out my computer decided not to turn on anymore, which threw a big wrench into my plans to write things on a computer due to the lack of computer.

I’m currently typing this on my iPhone with a USB-C keyboard attached to it. It works pretty decently (and makes it much easier to sprinkle emojis into my writing) but my wife keeps walking into the living room and saying “wow! That looks so stupid!”

Anyway, onto the sports!

🦅Fly high free birds 🦅

In December, the American U20 team at the IIHF World Junior Championships made the momentous and objectively correct decision to use “Free Bird" as their goal song—specifically the start of the guitar solo, about 5 minutes into the song.

But Free Bird, ultimately, was meant to be played at a game between the American and Canadian women’s teams, the two most evenly matched gold medal contenders in any sport in the world. Because basically every major international women’s hockey event comes down to a gold medal game between Team USA and Canada, and basically every gold medal game between Team USA and Canada goes into overtime¹. And a golden goal scenario simply screams for Skynyrd.

Of course, Sunday’s gold medal match at the 2025 IIHF Women’s World Championship went to OT. ²After 17 deadlocked minutes³, Penn State’s Tessa Janneke shoveled home a goal off a bad Canadian turnover… and then…

WON’T YOU FLYYYYY HIIIIIGHHHHH FREEEEEEEE BIIIIIIIIRDDD

I love that Janneke chucked her stick into the crowd immediately after scoring, as Lynyrd himself intended. Apologies to the Czech spectator who had to go to the ER but at least you got a cool souvenir.

On the one hand, Free Bird is absolutely the perfect song for Team USA’s goals and should be adopted permanently at all ages and all genders. However, we really need to win back the trust of the international community at this moment in time. So I propose that we generously relinquish exclusive access to Free Bird, reserving our nation’s most Hell Yeah song for any time any championship in any sport comes down to a shootout or golden goal scenario. Penalty kicks at the World Cup Final? Play Free Bird when England skies the kick over the crossbar. Two fencers tied 15-15 at the Olympics? Play Free Bird as soon as that final touch gets someone the gold. One-arrow shoot off for the World Championship in archery? LOOOOOORD I CAN’T CHAAAAAANGE (guitar noises)

I’d like to issue an official projection for next year’s hockey tournament at the Winter Olympics next February: Team USA and Canada are going to play for the gold medal, and it’s probably going to go to overtime. Let’s hope the DJ in Milan is prepared.

The judges said yes!

Paul Juda had to stick two high-pressure landings Saturday night.

The first came on the last rotation of his college career, probably the highest-leverage single vault in the history of NCAA men’s gymnastics. Stanford had won five straight national championships, with Juda’s Michigan team finishing as runners-up in the last three championships. Most gymnastics team championships are blowouts—when you’re dealing with the combined scores of four gymnasts on six apparatuses, the scores are rarely close. But Michigan finally had a chance to get past Stanford, so long as Juda didn’t mess up this last vault.

And oh yeah, and Juda was a fifth year senior, so this was the final meet of his college career, and oh yeah, Michigan was hosting this year’s national championships⁴, and hold up, does he have a giant ring in the side of his singlet? That can’t be good for the aerodynamics of flipping through the air multiple times.

Juda, a member of the 2024 bronze medal-winning Olympic team, had fallen on the pommel horse earlier, resulting in the worst score by any Michigan gymnast on any event in the entire championship. That left Michigan was trailing by 13.8 points—roughly what you’d score a bad vault.⁵ And the vault is the most all-or-nothing apparatus. You screw up a pass in your floor routine, you’ve still got a bunch of other elements to salvage an OK score. You flub the vault? There’s no redo.

But Juda was the 2022 NCAA vault national champion and 2024 NCAA silver medalist. He wasn’t going to do a bad vault.

Juda got a 13.966, giving Michigan the team win by .166 points—the closest national championship since 2000.⁶

With the title sealed, Juda turne his attention to another critical task: proposing to his girlfriend, Michigan women’s gymnast Reyna Guggino. While Juda had showed nerves of steel on the final vault, he was clearly shaken trying to stick the landing on a proposal in front of thousands of fans and a national TV audience. “I just wish I could be half of the man of you are,” he said before remembering she is not a man and fumbling around for a couple of seconds, at which point he meekly said “half the partner???” At this point, he smartly deciding to get down on a knee before he said anything else wrong.

Luckily, Guggino did not downgrade his execution score and accepted the proposal.⁷

From the mountains to the cobbles

In previewing cycling at the 2024 Olympics, I was blown away by the sheer number of types of biking—the road race, track cycling, BMX, and mountain biking. Clearly, bike people think that different types of bike and different biking conditions are unique enough that they each require their own sets of athletes.

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot disagrees. After dominating the mountain bike competition in Paris, Ferrand-Prévot returned to road cycling this season after deciding to focus on mountain biking in 2018, and right off the bat, she took one of the most prestigious one-day events in the sport, Paris-Roubaix. I guess it’s kinda like mountain biking—large parts of the Paris-Roubaix course are famously cobbled.

My guy Michael Baumann at cycling newsletter Wheelysports wrote about Ferrand-Prévot’s triumphant return to the road… and wondered whether maybe she’s the best biker out there right now:

Ferrand-Prévot was apparently recovering from illness and wasn’t 100 percent to even start the race. Once at the line, she was supposed to be riding for Marianne Vos. To win the race under those conditions is impressive enough. To do so nine weeks into a comeback after a six-year layoff was damn near miraculous. If she can win this race, she can win anything, up to and including the Tour de France Femmes.

Le Papillon et La Pierre

Some sports you won’t miss

Little bit of a light week in the “upcoming sports” category. We’re in the one week in between the final NCAA Winter championship (gymnastics) and the first NCAA Spring championship (beach volleyball.) As always, give me a holler or take to the comments if I have missed a Sport You Won’t Miss.

London Marathon: Sunday, April 27, in London obviously), very very early in the morning in the USA. The men’s marathon in London could be the most eagerly anticipated marathon ever? It’s the marathon debut of Jacob Kiplimo, who smashed the half-marathon world record a few months ago and could potentially crack the two-hour barrier. The race also has the reigning Olympic champion (Tamirat Tola), the winner of the previous two Olympic marathons (Eliud Kipchoge, who is 41 and slowing down), the reigning Olympic triathlon champion (Alex Yee, making his marathon debut), another 3-time Olympic gold medalist (Kenenisa Berkeley, who finished second last year), and also, last but not least, the guy who won the event last year (Alexander Mutiso). Streaming on a track-specific website 👎

World Snooker Championship: Already underway. Held in Sheffield, England every year. My wife’s cousin visited New York from Sheffield a few weekends ago and gave us the hard sell on how great Sheffield is (the Arctic Monkeys and the band that made the song 🎵 I WAS WORKING AS A WAITRESS IN A COCKTAIL BAR 🎵 are from there) but did NOT mention this event so it must not be that important. Streaming on paid snooker-specific platforms 👎

Pan-America/Oceania Judo Championships: I generally haven’t been highlighting regional championships on here but I do appreciate that judo has combined North America, South America, and Oceania into one conglomerate. Big chance for some island-to-island crossover competition between the Caribbean and Pacific. Streaming on a judo-specific website 👎

1. The full stats here: 6 of 7 all-time Olympic gold medal games have been USA Canada. So have 23 of 24 World Championship gold medal games. And 10 of the last 15 matchups between the two have gone into OT.

2. Between this and the NCAA women’s hockey championship also ending on a golden goal in OT, I feel like we should all make sure to tune into the PWHL final in a few weeks. Every women’s hockey championship comes down to the wire.

3. This was the longest women’s world championship match ever. Big credit to Team USA backup goalie Gwyneth Philips for entering the gold medal game in the third period after an injury to starter Aerin Frankel and making every save in OT.

4. Sort of a reverse basketball situation—in men’s hoops, the NCAA tournament is at neutral sites and the women play the first rounds in front of raucous home crowds; the women’s NCAA gym championship is always at a neutral site in Ft. Worth, Texas, while the men’s championship is hosted by prominent gymnastics schools. It’s in Champaign, Illinois next year.

5. 28 of 38 competitors at the championships scored a 13.8 or better on vault.

6. The real MVP’s of Michigan’s final rotation comeback were David Wolma and all-around champion Fred Richard, who stuck 14.4 vaults to put Juda in position to win with a 13.96t6. But look, sometimes you write about the guy who hit the game-winning layup and skip over the guy who hit five threes earlier in the game… especially if the guy who hits the game-winner proposes to his girlfriend afterwards.

7. Side note: You ever wonder how many athletes planned to propose after winning the big game but lost and had to go back to the locker room with the ring and figure out another time to propose?