Ex-Hog Anna Hopkin wins gold for Britain in Mixed Relay

Football Insider Board
#1

Anna anchored Great Britain’s 4x100 Mixed Medley Relay to a gold medal at the Olympics.

This is a new event where two men and two women make up the Relay team. The Medley relay consists of swimming four 100M legs, first backstroke, followed by the breaststroke, followed by the butterfly and finishing off with the freestyle. A team can assign two men and two women for any of the 4 strokes. A lot of strategies involved in team selection. It is a fun event, where almost for every leg, men are swimming against women and lead can change dramatically from one team to another at the end of each leg,

USA was expected to medal but did not. The team was handicapped by the breaststroke swimmer Lydia Jacoby losing her goggles that got wrapped around her mouth as she swam. A tough break. Lydia incidentally was the first swimmer from Alaska to make the USA team and won the 100M breastbone at these Games.

BTW, Track & Field now also has a Mixed Relay

#2

I personally see no reason for mixed events.

#3

I don’t know, I’ve been to events with mixed doubles and mixed drinks that were pretty fun, so there is a reason.

1 Like
#4

Not saying this should be your reason, but the reason International Olympic Committee added mixed events to many sports is to have more events for women. They are trying to have as many sports and events fir women as men. A noble cause.

#5

We have some incredible athletes on campus.

#6

I really don’t understand why we matched the Jacoby against the male Brit record holder. He destroyed her and consequently we were never a factor.

#7

That sounds reasonable. However, I would go the opposite way, I would reduce the games in numbers and have an equal overall number of male/female in the true basic Olympic events.

#8

Well, US wanted to use Caleb Dressel, period. If they had matched a male against World record holder Peaty on the breaststroke, that would have meant not being able to use a male and Ryan Murphy on the backstroke. And we do not have any man in the Top 10 in the world in breaststroke. So, I can see why they used a female in the breaststroke and Jacoby had won the gold medal in women’s 100M breaststroke, That was the only option there. Unfortunately Jacoby had her goggles come off and lost 2 seconds on that leg.

On the other hand, I thought they should have had Dressel do the butterfly instead of the anchor free and let Abbet Weitzel anchor the free. Abbey is better than Anna Hopkin. With that move and Jacoby not losing two seconds because of the goggles malfunction, we may have won or come in fir a silver at least. Great Britain was the favorite to win this.

We should have let Caleb Dressel do the butterfly instead of the free and have Abby Weitzel anchor the free.

#9

This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.