4 Sports Things You Missed over 4th of July weekend
Featuring big basketball stars in untelevised games, a historic Tour de France win, and of course, more Irish sports coverage.
Hey all, hope you enjoyed the 4th. While you were at the lake or the beach or the barbecue, I was taking note of all the sports things you probably weren’t watching.
I’ve got new Olympic previews coming every day this week—including one later today! But first, the sports things:
The biggest basketball tournament you couldn’t watch
In soccer, the biggest tournament is obviously the FIFA World Cup, and the Olympic tournament is a relative afterthought. In basketball, the Olympic tournament is the most prestigious international event, while the equivalent FIBA World Cup is the afterthought. Which is a real shame, because the Olympic tournament can only have 12 teams while the World Cup has 32.
So we’re stuck in an odd situation. International basketball is driven by NBA talent, but NBA talent is often unavailable at the World Cup, either due to disinterest in playing or NBA teams saying no. But there aren’t enough spots in the Olympics for all the elite NBA stars to qualify, so not every NBA star who wants to play in the Olympics gets to.
That means some of the best international basketball is… the Olympic Qualifiers, held this past weekend at four separate tournaments in Greece, Latvia, Puerto Rico, and Spain. All sorts of NBA players who didn’t play in last year’s World Cup showed up in hopes of punching their ticket to Paris. The marquee name was Giannis Antetokounmpo, who was held out of last year’s World Cup due to a back injury. His Greek team went up against Luka Doncic and Slovenia in the semis—you’d think a game between two of the best, most popular players on the planet would be a pretty big deal, right? But it wasn’t even on TV in America, as the games were limited to FIBA’s streaming service. (ESPN simply had to have wall-to-wall coverage of Bronny James hitting a summer league layup.)
In the final, they played a Croatian team which missed last year’s World Cup entirely because their NBA talent wasn’t able to participate in qualifying. This time, they had Ivica Zubac and Dario Saric. Giannis had 23 and 8 to send Greece to the Olympics for the first time since the Sofoklis Schortsanitis era.
The folk hero was Puerto Rico’s Jose Alvarado, who the Pelicans held out of last year’s World Cup for precautionary reasons. Puerto Ricans love basketball—I always assumed their national sport was baseball, but then I realized how passionate they are about JJ Barea’s performance in the 2011 NBA finals—and got to host their qualifying tournament. I would’ve picked a Lithuanian team led by Domantas Sabonis (another player held out of last year’s World Cup due to contract concerns) but Alvarado poured in 23 and the San Juan crowd went nuts. It’s Puerto Rico’s first trip to the Olympics since 2004—and sure enough, they’re facing Team USA in the group stages, 20 years after The Carlos Arroyo game.
I was really rooting for the Bahamas, a surprisingly star-studded squad featuring DeAndre Ayton, Buddy Hield, Eric Gordon, and 2025 draft prospect VJ Edgecombe. They weren’t able to make the last World Cup because all the World Cup qualifying window is during the NBA season, and much of their success is based on their NBA talent. The Bahamians won their first three games of the tournament and were one win away from their first-ever Olympic berth—but they needed to beat Spain in a tournament held in Spain, and that was too much. Hopefully, Ayton, Hield, Edgecombe, and a 40-year old Eric Gordon can run it back for the LA games.
One last Tour
The sports world is on the road to Paris, except, for some reason, the Tour de France, the race which is very literally a road to Paris but is ending in Nice for the first time ever because Paris is too busy with Olympics stuff. It’s been a great Tour. Tadej Pogacar is stunning to watch. Eritrean Biniam Girmay became the first Black African rider to win a Tour stage—and repeated the feat a few days later, and currently leads the Points classification. And the people in charge of the Tour decided to fine a racer for pulling over to the side of the road to kiss his wife. It’s a normal sporting event.
And a cycling great got to have (most likely) the last big moment of his career. 39-year old sprinter Mark Cavendish jumped ahead in the final meters of Stage 5 to win his 35th career Tour stage. That pushed the Manx rider past Eddy Merckx, breaking a record set in 1975 and allowing me to set a new record for “words in a sentence surprisingly ending with X.”
This is the last tour for Cav, who has announced his retirement at the end of the Tour. But then again, he also announced that before last year’s Tour, and then he didn’t set the record and had to unretire. He’d been sitting on 34 wins since 2021, and was kinda hanging around hoping to win #35—and the Tour de France is a pretty brutal sporting event to simply hang around in. They make you ride a bicycle over the Alps! The literal Alps! It’s especially grueling for sprinters like Cavendish, who aren’t competitive in mountain stages. Between injuries, crashes, mountain struggles, and contractual issues, Cavendish had only finished two of the last ten Tours. Now his work is done.
For cycling coverage from someone who actually understands how the sport works, check out my former Ringer colleague Michael Baumann’s Substack.
A new highest jump
A centimeter is less than half an inch, but it’s big enough to set a new world record. Since 1987, the women’s high jump record was 2.09 meters. Sunday, Ukranian Yaroslava Mahuchikh jumped 2.10 meters at a Diamond League meet in Paris:
Mahuchikh won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics at just 19 years old, and is clearly comfy jumping in Paris. It’s the second ancient track and field record to fall this season—the men’s discus record, set in 1986, was broken in May.
It was one of two world records set at the Paris meet—Faith Kipyegon set the new women’s 1500 meter mark, but that was a record she set last year, so I’m not hyping that one up as much. Either way, the Olympics should be good.
This is a GAA blog now
Last week we talked about Gaelic football, this week we’re talking about the other big GAA sport: Hurling. Unlike the football, I truly have no idea what’s going on in this sport, but I know that it’s extremely violent and involves smacking the hell out of a little ball with a wooden stick.
Anyway, Limerick had won four straight All-Ireland titles before losing to Cork in the semis on Sunday—I’ve been gawking at this play where Cork’s goalkeeper makes a stunning stick save, then his teammate pulls up midfield down the massive pitch and smashes the ball 60 yards through the uprights. It’s like they combined Caitlin Clark’s shot selection and Barry Bonds’ swing. I’m sold.
Thank you for the hurling news! Years ago, I stayed in a B&B outside Cork that doubled as the hurling-mad owners’ family home. The father and elementary-school sons demonstrated shots for us in the net beside their garage. I’m delighted to think how happy they are this week.
Cork, by the way, is wonderful place. Great, great foodie culture—true throughout Ireland, really. 🇮🇪