Rings Roundup, Day 5: All Hail our American Amphibian

There's nothing like watching Katie Ledecky win a distance race at the Olympics. Plus, an ode to doubles tennis and concerns about poop.

The Olympics were good again Wednesday. Guatemala won its first ever Olympic gold. Australia’s women’s water polo team simultaneously set the record for longest Olympic water polo shootout win and most ludicrous coaching decision by swapping out their starter for a backup in the middle of the shootout before beating the Netherlands. France’s men’s handball team avoided falling to 0-3 against underdog Egypt by scoring a game-tying goal with one second remaining—now they’re 0-2-1 instead, but still in danger of not advancing out of the group stages. Let’s give out some rings.

Four Rings: Eiffel Phelps pulls the double

OK, wow, that French swim cyborg is a problem.

On Wednesday, Léon Marchand did something no swimmer had done in 48 years by winning two individual swimming golds on the same day—although it’s probably more fair to say he did something that’s never been done before. Marchand won the 200 meter breaststroke and the 200 meter butterfly—the two longest events in two very different, very grueling strokes. You’re not supposed to be the best at both of those. You’re definitely not supposed to be the best at both of those and win both in the same night. And you’re super-mega-definitely not supposed to be the best at both, win both in one night, and set Olympic records in both.

First, Marchand competed in the 200 meter butterfly, a stunning race in which he chased down world record holder Kristof Milak with tremendous, look-out-the-monster-is-right-behind-you speed. He torpedoed up to Milak like a torpedo with a huge underwater on the 150-meter turn, then pulled away with his massive butterflies soaring out of the water like a breaching orca.

@nbcolympicsLeon Marchand’s coach Bob Bowman, who also coached Michael Phelps, was so excited to see him break two Olympic records and take home two gold medals. 🥇🥇#ParisOlympics

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Then he got out of the water, put on fancy clothes, got up on the podium, got his medal, sang the national anthem and got flowers. Yada yada yada.

Then he got back into his speedo—actually do you think he changed out of the Speedo under his medal ceremony outfit? We couldn’t really see—and got back in the pool for the 200m breaststroke. It was an open question how he’d do in this one, since he’d never competed in at a world championship. He won it by almost a second. Easy.

Technically, there have been three swimmers to complete a two-gold swim evening, Marchand is probably the first in the modern history of the Olympics to do it legitimately. One of those three is Hungary’s Albert Hajos, who won two of the four swimming events at the inaugural 1896 Olympics, but that really shouldn’t count—the events were held in monster waves in the open sea. (“My will to live overcame my will to win,” Hajos is quoted as saying.) Another is Frederick Lane, who won two events at the 1900 Olympics, but one was an event called “the obstacle swim” that involved climbing over boats and was never held again. The only one to happen in an era when swimming was a real sport and not a hastily assembled bunch of dumb challenges was East Germany’s Kornelia Ender, who won the 200 meter free and 100 meter fly at the 1976 Olympics—but Ender was almost certainly roided up beyond belief, and eventually was kicked off the team when she became suspicious about all the drugs her coaches were injecting into her and started asking questions.

Marchand is 3-for-3 at the Olympics with three golds. His next and final race is the 200 meter medley—I’m sure all the other swimmers who just watched Marchand win two of the four strokes in the medley are feeling great about their chances right now. .

Three Rings: American Doubles

At the U.S. Open, winning singles players receive $3 million while winning doubles teams must split $700,000. At the Olympics, winning singles players receive One Gold Medal, while winning doubles players receive One Gold Medal. (Each!) That makes it one of the strangest sporting events in the whole deeply strange Olympics. Not only are the teams involved hastily assembled—doubles players don’t always team up with someone from their nation—they often feature singles tourists, who are given the right to play in a tournament they aren’t qualified for. Sometimes it even works—Roger Federer won with Stan Wawrinka in 2008.

This year brought one of the most hotly anticipated doubles pairings ever: The May-December Spanish squad of Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz. The combo is made particularly potent by the fact that Nadal is probably playing for the last time ever on the clay at Roland-Garros, where Nadal is the all-time leader in French Open victories and Alcaraz won his first title this year. The tennis world loves Rafa and Carlitos, and even had a cute name for their generation-melding Olympic partnership: Nadalcaraz.

I faded them. Nadal is 38, and physically destroyed after a career in which he pushed his body to the limit over and over again. And Alcaraz has even less doubles-playing experience than most players. While Federer, for example, had played in and even won top-level doubles events before breaking through as a singles superstar, Alcaraz has only played in eight career doubles matches. Nadal did win the 2016 Rio Olympic doubles tournament, but that was with doubles specialist Marc Lòpez, who had just won that year’s French Open in doubles.

Wednesday, they had their reckoning. In the second round, they played Team USA’s Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek, both of whom have been ranked World No. 1 in doubles. Ram is the back-to-back-to-back U.S. Open champ, while Krajicek won the French Open last year. In 2021, I interviewed Ram about the Olympic doubles tournament for an episode of the Ringer Guide to the Summer Games we never ended up producing. He talked about how the Olympics are a showcase for the doubles community, and how winning a silver medal with Venus Williams at the 2016 games was one of the highlights of his career. Long story short: Nadalcaraz was DOOMED.

Ram-Krajicek beat the Spanish superstars 6-2, 6-4. Watching the match, it was clear they simply understood the rhythms and strategies of the doubles game better than their opponents. The tireless energy and shot-getting ability which make Nadal and Alcaraz so exceptional in clay court singles were neutralized in a game where covering tons of ground is less important than standing at the net and dunking shots at weird angles.

In some ways, the tournament serves to answer a question: Are the specialists who make their living toiling away in doubles tournaments better at the version of the game they specialize in than the superstars making millions and appearing on magazine covers? On Wednesday, the answer was “yes.” The tennis world is in mourning over the unceremonious close to Rafa’s brilliant Roland-Garros career—but I am ecstatic that our heroes defended their doubles domain from dabbling dilettantes. Respect doubles or get wrecked!

1500 Rings: Katie Ledecky

If Marchand’s double was unprecedented, Katie Ledecky’s win in the 1500 meter freestyle was extremely precedented. She’s won it before, and she’ll win it again. Here’s the obligatory picture of Katie Ledecky and the next seven-best swimmers in the world—they’re in the pool, you just can’t see them because they’re so far behind Katie.

I took basically the same photo at the 2016 Olympics in Rio during the 800 meter—half the distance, same dominance:

After winning the 1500m on Wednesday, Katie now holds the top 20 times ever in the 1500m, the longest race in the pool at the Olympics. There’s no contest.

It might be predictable watching Katie Ledecky win distance races, but it’s a special Olympic moment I cherish into every time. We watch the Olympics to see greatness being great. And look at our American amphibian shine. There is no competition.

One Ring: Canada

I love when stupid cheating schemes get caught, revealed, and the perpetrators get punished. But sometimes, a cheating scandal crosses over and where I actually start rooting for the team. And folks, I’m pleased to report that like an NCAA team that got busted for paying players before the fall of the NIL Wall, I am officially on Canada’s side now.

After the team was caught spying on New Zealand’s practices with drones, resulting in the removal of their head coach and the revelation of a years-long, program-wide strategy of drone spying, FIFA docked the Canadians six points—essentially giving them negative two wins in a tournament where they could win a maximum of three games in group play.

But with Wednesday’s win over Colombia, they finished with three points—enough to advance out of group play. If they’d tied even a single game, they would’ve finished with one point and been eliminated. Instead, they’re moving onto the quarterfinals.

Their head coach is gone, and they no longer have access to the illegally garnered drone info which had apparently powered their program for the last few years. Win the whole damn thing! (Well, I want Team USA to win the whole damn thing, but maybe they can finish second.)

Zero Rings: The triathlon actually happened!

One big holdup at the Olympics so far has been the crappy Seine. I don’t mean this metaphorically: They’re supposed to hold the triathlon and the open water swimming events in the Seine, but there’s too much poop in the river.

This has been a big black eye for the Paris organizing committee, which spent over a billion dollars cleaning up the river so they can claim that the Olympics had a positive environmental impact. They need that river to actually be clean. Paris’ mayor even dunked her head underwater to prove the poop water wasn’t poopy anymore. But tests repeatedly came back with high levels of E. Coli. The organizers say this is merely due to recent rains, which can wash over sewage systems and send poop places it shouldn’t go. They didn’t seem to have a backup plan, proposing that the triathlon turn into a swim-less duathlon in the case of crap. USA triathlete Seth Rider says he prepared for the race to go on, even without clean water by avoiding hand-washing to build up an e. coli tolerance. They canceled various practice sessions and Tuesday morning’s men’s triathlon.

But the men and women ran, swam, and biked their races on Wednesday, with France’s Cassandre Beaugrand and Great Britain’s Alex Yee winning gold. Did the water magically become clean overnight? I guess we’ll find out if the triathletes have aggressive diarrhea sometime in the next few days. Hopefully the diarrhea hits in time to warn competitors in the open water swim before they hit the water next week!

Negative Three Rings: 3x3 = 0-4.

There are four USA basketball teams in Paris: the two 5-on-5 teams featuring the greatest, most famous basketball players on earth, and the 3-on-3 teams, featuring… not that. By FIBA rules, at least two of the four players on the men’s team must participate in various 3x3 events, so none of the players on the team is an active NBA player. Only one, BYU legend Jimmer Fredette, ever played in the league, and that was only a cup of coffee. The women’s team has less potent restrictions, and brought two WNBA players: Rhyne Howard and DeArica Hamby, as well as two other players, Cierra Burdick and Hailey Van Lith, who won a gold medal at last year’s 3x3 World Cup.

It’s not going well. Both teams started pool play 0-2, and fell to the bottom of the 8-team standings. (This may have changed by the time you read this—both teams are in action Thursday morning.) The women lost a game to Azerbaijan, which sounds really bad until you realize Las Vegas Aces guard Tiffany Hayes has Azeri citizenship. This has led to widespread criticism—how the hell can Team USA be bad at basketball? Even if it’s a weird basketball invented a few years ago?

I consider myself an expert on this subject. All the way back in 2019, before the 2020 debut of Olympic 3x3, I wrote a story about the NBA vs. 3x3 dynamic called “Can Team USA Field a Team of Randos and Still Win 3x3 Basketball Gold at the Olympics?” I think it’s dumb that FIBA insists on keeping NBA players out of the Olympics in 3x3—if they want to grow their version of the game, they should let the best players in the world play it.

But over the past five years, I’ve really grown to feel fond of the USA 3x3 teams. Although I made fun of Team USA for having a podcast producer, former Princeton player Kareem Maddox, on their roster back in 2019, I’ve gotten to talk to Maddox a few times at this point, and have developed a ton of respect for a guy who has now spent years criss-crossing the globe, playing in 3x3 tournaments, just so millions of people can ask “why does Team USA not have NBA players on it?”

And I just want everybody to know: These teams can—and should—play much better. The men’s squad, with the exact same roster, finished in second place at last year’s World Cup, losing only one game—the championship, by two points. And the women’s team won the World Cup last year, albeit with now-injured star Cameron Brink as team MVP. Neither team should be 0-2.

It sucks that we don’t get a chance to see the best players in the world showing how awesome 3-on-3 can look with truly elite talent. But what really sucks right now is watching these guys who have fought so hard to chase a strange Olympic dream getting wrecked and roasted.