Rings Roundup, Day 7: Ooh la la, France is kicking ass
Teddy Riner cements his status as a Judo God, Leon Marchand sweeps his Olympics, and France sweeps BMX podium. Sacre bleu, c'est beaucoup d'or!
Welcome to the second weekend of the Olympics. Friday was a banger. The track competitions got underway Team USA won medals in archery, equestrian, and rifle, so you’d better not fight us in a war sometime between 1500-1900.
6 Rings: The Judo God
One of the best things about the Olympics is learning about sports you’ve never watched before. But the actual best thing about the Olympics is watching athletes so good you don’t really need to know anything about the sport you’re watching to sense their greatness.
I’ve watched judo a bit over the course of several Olympics. And I’ve gotta say… yeah. I got nothing. I don’t understand which actions are worth which points, or how many points win a match. But I circled France’s Teddy Riner’s appearance in the super-heavyweight judo category as one of the must-watch events of the Olympics.
Riner is one of the most dominant athletes in the history of his sport, and really any sport. The 11-time world champion is 6-foot-8, 330-pounds, and won 154 consecutive matches between 2010 and 2020, including both Olympic gold medals. You may remember him as the big lad lighting the Olympic cauldron in the Opening Ceremony—he’s that big a deal in France.
In judo, if you throw an opponent onto their back, it’s a match-ending ippon. In the quarterfinals, Riner threw Georgia’s Guram Tushishvili onto his back for an ippon.
In the semifinals, he faced Tajikistan’s Temur Rakhimov, the 2020 silver medalist. He threw Rakhimov onto his back for an ippon.
Judo, is, surprisingly, a huge deal in France—they’ve won more golds all-time than any nation besides Japan, which invented the sport. (This is why a man who rightfully should have played left tackle for Nick Saban and winning two national championships before getting drafted second overall by the Houston Texans, making four All-Pro teams, and earning $78 million over the course of a 12-year career, ended up doing judo.) And the Paris crowd showed up to see their GOAT. They had cardboard cutouts of Riner’s head and chanted TED-DY! TED-DY! TED-DY!, and they wanted to see one thing: Teddy Riner throwing his opponent onto his back for an ippon.
The gold medal match was with Korea’s Kim Min-Jong, who won the 2024 World Championship that Riner sat out. It was tightly contested for three minutes—and then Riner slipped his foot behind Kim’s, tripped him, and threw him onto his back for an ippon:
I’m not a judo analyst, and I don’t need to be: That man’s the GOAT.
5 Rings: France France France
BMX racing is sheer chaos, a minute-long race with eight riders jockeying for position over a course seemingly designed to create crashes. Sometimes the best rider wins; sometimes the best rider clips a wheel ten seconds into the race and breaks their collarbone.
But in the men’s final, Team France made it look like the Tour de France, a wheeled ballet of organized, orderly teamwork. They finished 1-2-3, with Joris Daudet, Sylvain Andre, and Romain Mahieu taking gold, silver, and bronze. France had never even won a medal in men’s BMX biking since the sport entered the Olympics in 2008—now they have three.
There are about one or two podium sweeps per Olympics. Part of this is because many events limit entries per country. Part of this is because it’s really freakin’ hard to have the three best athletes in one sport. This is the first time it’s happened to a host nation since China swept men’s and women’s table tennis in 2008. (Not happening this year! But we’ll talk about that tomorrow, probably.)
The host always gets an Olympic bump. The last five host nations won more gold medals at their home Olympics that at any other Olympics in the previous 100 years. (Ugh, I had to word this so carefully to account for Great Britain’s performance at the 1908 Olympics.) Part of this is probably the ability to auto-qualify competitors in every event, but it’s also the ultimate home-court advantage: Not only are the crowds larger and more raucous than they usually are in random Olympic sports, they’re all cheering for you. And while everybody else is flying across the globe to live in a massive weird apartment complex with heavy security, surprisingly food, and cardboard bed sex, and you’re just like… at home, chilling.
But even considering that bump, France is going the hell off. With more than half the games to go, they’ve won 11 gold and 37 total medals, already surpassing their totals of 10 gold and 33 total from the Tokyo games. They haven’t finished top-5 in the gold count since the 1948 Olympics; now they’re second. On Friday, they had three iconic moments between the BMX sweep, Riner’s win, and Leon Marchand closing out his Olympics with his fourth gold in four races. I believe the word is “Allez.”
4 Rings: Challengers was a documentary
Once again back to the only Olympic sport that matters: Doubles Tennis. Not only does it have spectacular gameplay and great storylines—it also features messy interpersonal drama between partners and unusual Olympic pairings. But it’s hard to imagine one spicier than the gold medal romcom unfolding between doubles legend Katerina Siniakova and her on-again off-again boyfriend, Tomas Machac.
Siniakova has completed the doubles career Grand Slam and won the women’s doubles title in Tokyo, but had never been able to break through on the mixed doubles scene. In 2021, she started dating Machac, and they paired together for a few tournaments, but never got past the second round. They apparently broke up a few months ago, with Siniakova telling Czech press that they were professionals who could separate their careers from their private lives and would continue to play together at the Olympics.
In the finals they faced off against China’s Xinyu Wang and Zhizhen Zhang—incidentally, Zhang is Machac’s partner on the pro tour outside of the Olympics, and they just made the semifinals at the Australian Open this year, so he was playing with his ex-girlfriend against his coworker. Wang and Zhang were two points away from sealing the gold, but Machac and Siniakova won four straight points to win Czechia’s first gold medal of the Paris games.
I have spent most of the last 20 hours trying to dissect the post-victory interactions between Siniakova and Machac to determine whether they are currently hooking up. Most of their post-match interactions were pretty standard for doubles partners. They did briefly kiss, but it was just a peck rather than a full-on make-out. In the post-game presser, Siniakova said “that’s our personal life, and you don’t need to know that,” which could mean they’re still broken up and don’t want to talk about it in such a celebratory moment.
Then Machac said “this is top secret—in red words, top secret” Siniakova began giggling and said “we like when you are confused!”, and OH MY GOD THEY’RE BANGING. They’re banging! The sirens are blaring indicating our Banging Detectors have determined a 96.2 percent chance of banging.
Congratulations on the gold medal and, you know, the banging.
3 Rings: Another Heroic Bronze
We all focus on the golds, because winning is everything. But the biggest fights at the Olympics are often the battles for bronze at the only event where coming in third place is considered a great honor. It’s the difference between coming home with a shiny medal and a title nobody can take away from you and… well, fourth place.
And Team USA keeps busting out stunning performances of bronze bravery. There was Pommel Horse Guy, the last-second Rugby Touchdown, Suni Lee’s perfect floor routine… and now we have Grant Fisher, who kicked like a kangaroo in a legendary finish to the 10,000 meters. He couldn’t hold off Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi to win silver, but crossed the line .33 seconds ahead of Canada’s Mohammed Ahmed.
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10k finishes often feature the handful athletes left over after 9,900 meters separating themselves from the pack. But on Friday, we saw a dead sprint to the line, with the top six all crossing the line within a second each other. Absolutely disgusting. I simply cannot fathom running 9.5 kilometers and then hitting a top speed. It is the devil’s work and you should not allow children to watch it.
But it was thrilling perversion, and a historic moment for Fisher. Team USA had only won three medals in the 112-year history of the men’s Olympic 10k, and none between Billy Mills’ 1960 gold and Galen Rupp’s 2012 silver.
2 Rings: The Silver Queen
And while I generally agree that winning any Olympic medal is a remarkable achievement which deserves immense praise and lifelong recognition… I’m starting to feel a little bit bad for Regan Smith. She entered the Olympics with five World Championship gold medals, but no golds at the Olympics—just two Olympic silver medals and one bronze. In Paris, she went silver-silver-silver in her three events, finishing yesterday with a 200m backstroke loss to Australia’s Kaylee McKeown, the same woman who beat her in the 100m backstroke.
With five career silvers, McKeown is now tied for the all-time lead in silvers without a gold. (Some athletes have won six silvers, but they’ve all additionally won gold; 9-time sprint medalist Merlene Ottley of Jamaica is the all-time leader in silver/bronze medals without a gold.)
At this point, we’re probably going to lose that battle to have the most swimming golds Australia, and although we’re still favored to win the most total golds across the Olympics, I’m starting to get nervous.
1 Ring: 3x3 is so back
The other day we wrote about Team USA’s 0-4 start to the 3x3 competitions, and it got worse. They actually dropped to 0-6 combined. But USA basketball never loses seven combined games in a row, no matter how many players are on the court!
But with their backs against the wall, both teams have responded. The women’s team has won three in a row, guaranteeing a spot in the quarterfinals. They beat France 14-13 on a layup with 5 seconds remaining by Dearica Hamby, then scored an even more dramatic win over Canada. Hailey van Lith scored a two-pointer to tie the game with 22 seconds left, forcing overtime, where the first team to score two points wins. Canada scored first to take a one-point lead, but Rhyne Howard drilled an icy stepback two to win 18-17.
Team USA are the defending gold medalists, the reigning world champs, and have more active WNBA players on their roster (Hamby and Howard) than the rest of the field combined (just Tiffany Hayes on Azerbaijan.) They had a bad start, but they should win this.
The men’s team, things are bleaker. They started off 0-4 and lost Jimmer Fredette to a groin injury. (The dumbest people on the internet have apparently never seen someone receive treatment for a groin injury before.) With no subs and no margin for error, they’ve also won back-to-back games, including a heroic effort where Canyon Barry scored 15 of the team’s 21 points to beat France 21-19. (Yes, he shoots free throws underhand.)
They should still get out of the group stage, but they’re in a lot of trouble. Fredette is not only their best player, but leaves them without the option to substitute. 3x3 is an endurance test with 10 minutes of more-or-less non-stop play, and every player I’ve talked to says the hardest part of adjusting is not learning the new rules but developing conditioning. They don’t have a huge talent advantage and will need to win back-to-back-to-back games to win the gold. Let’s see what they can do.
Can you explain why US didn't use their best 400 runners in the mixed 4x400 relay?
I think you want 2012 for Galen Rupp