Kentucky wildcats finished 1-2 in women’s 100M Hurdles. Jasmine Camacho-Quinn representing Puerto Rico win gold and world record holder Keni Harrison of USA won silver. Jasmine is a resident of Charleston and her mother is from PR and she decided to represent PR instead of USA.
Incidentally, Jasmine’s brother Robert Quinn is a linebacker for Chicago Bears.
Another SEC non-American – Joseph Fahnbulleh of Florida, who grew up in Minnesota but is running for his parents’ home country of Liberia, advanced in the 200 meter heats. Fahnbulleh was the NCAA 200 champ this year.
Not SEC, but Hunter Woodhall’s GF finished sixth in the long jump. German woman went 7.00 meters on the last jump to take gold away from Brittney Reese of the USA, who IS SEC (Rebnecks).
I thought the focus on where they hit the takeoff board was very interesting. The German woman hit the board 17 cm back, meaning she gave up 7 inches on the winning jump, and still won. And one of the fouls was a quarter-inch over the line.
The German girl is the current world champion and was the hot favorite to win it. So the right player won. But I got to give it to Brittney Reese. She is always there on the podium and mostly with the gold when big meets arrive. Plus she is doing amazing work in her community in Mississippi. Ole Miss fans should be proud of her,
Shepard Smith, the news anchor who recently came to CNBC from another network, is on the NBC Olympic coverage. He’s also an Ole Miss grad. And he was just gushing over Reese last night
LSU’s Armando Duplantis won the Pole Vault as expected but after a good battle with American Chris Nielsen.
Duplantis is the current world record holder and is another case where it could have been a US gold. Armando, a dual citizen of US and Sweden has an American father and Swedish mother and lives in US. But as a lot of athletes do in such cases, he chose to compete for Sweden instead of US at an early age to avoid having to compete in the US trials.
Also Armando’s brother was on the LSU baseball team.
Yep, I remember him. He beat us at Baum one Saturday afternoon with a three-run dinger that barely made it into the bullpen.
Mondo Duplantis is the kind of talent that shouldn’t worry about which country he represents. Unless something really weird happens like happened to Sandi Morris the other day, he’s an automatic for about the next four Olympics. Probably with multiple gold medals.
Ole Miss’ Sam Kendricks should have been in that PV battle but the 'rona got him. And almost took out a big portion of the Australian team who had been exposed to him for some reason (does Sam have an Aussie girlfriend?).
Yes, but he didn’t know how good he was when he made the choice to represent Sweden.
Also today, 19 year old phenom Athing Mu of Texas A&M and US won the Women’s 800M gold medal with a new American record. This girl is an amazing talent. She could double in 400M and 800M if she wants to. Big win fir the Aggies.
That will be interesting. Before NIL, an athlete like Mu would turn pro right now. But she might be able to stay in college if she wants, still accept shoe contracts and things like that.
Not SEC, but Gabby Thomas of Harvard got bronze in the women’s 200 right after the 800. I suspect there were a few Harvard gold medals back in the day where they tried really hard to limit Olympic sports to the wealthy, but I also suspect it’s been a while.
Speaking of which, somebody did the hard work for me. Harvard is actually still in the top 10 for most Olympic medals from an American university. We’re tied for 39th with, among others, Mobilehoma. A&M is behind us, by the way. We have Gaby Lopez and Maria Fassi in women’s golf; either one certainly could contend for a medal. The women’s course setup (same course as the men) is very long, which could favor Fassi who hits it a loooooong way,
My stance remains the same, by the way. Gaby and Maria couldn’t choose where they were born, nor did they have the option Mondo Duplantis had with dual citizenship. But they chose to be Hogs, and that means I’m rooting for them no matter which flag they have on their bag.
I just ran across something that Mondo wasn’t the first Duplantis kid to compete for Sweden. Big brother Andreas also pole vaulted for Sweden from 2009 to 2015.