Sport climbing was another one of my favorite events at these Olympics, so I really enjoyed this story by Ewan Murray about British teenager Toby Roberts and his incredible feat to win the gold medal. It includes this great quote from Roberts:

I’ve always loved climbing things.

I think there’s a lot to be said for sports where teenagers win just having fun and doing things (see also: skateboarding, breaking), as opposed to the rigid programs that often rob childhood in sports like gymnastics and swimming. I’m sure these newer sports require a lot of intense training, but the young athletes still seem to have a childlike joy and just love trying things out.

And now we must come to one of my favorite moments of Paris 2024 so far, which occurred in the beach volleyball gold medal match late last night, or early this morning, depending on your time zone. Let me describe the scene…

The imported sand was angry that day, my friends. The atmosphere was boiling as the Canadian and Brazilian players rushed the net, screaming in each other’s faces while a referee tried to intervene and send them back to their ends. They didn’t let up, growing more and more agitated before finally backing off. The referee showed one of the Canadians a yellow card and both teams stood fuming at their respective ends. Suddenly the opening bars of John Lennon’s Imagine filled the air and the fuming players couldn’t suppress a small smile before finally breaking into laughter and the tense atmosphere dissipated. There hasn’t been a more perfect Olympic musical moment since the injured, last-place 50k walker walked into Stadium Australia at the 2000 Sydney Olympics to the tune of I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers.

OK, we need to talk about Raygun. This morning, Australians woke up to find that the women’s breakdancing (or B-girl) competition had been held and won, but it wasn’t the winner who was the focus of the world’s attention, nor was it Australia’s 18 gold medalists. It was Rachel “Raygun” Gunn who everyone was talking about. This story refers to the “online hate,” but I don’t know if that’s how I’d describe it, although I might feel differently if I were a victim myself. Mockery might be a better word, but even that sounds a bit strong. From what I saw, it was more of a gentle joke, which I think most Australians appreciate.

And speaking of medals, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. We all know that Americans prefer to base the medal count on total medals rather than gold medals. Here in Australia, we’re big fans of the status quo because if we calculated total medals, we’d fall faster than a 10-meter diver. But we’re also big fans of the “per capita” argument, especially when the swim is over.

But a new challenger has emerged in the form of Robert C. Duncan, an astrophysicist emeritus at the University of Texas, and Andrew Parece, a strategy consultant and vice president of Charles River Associates in Boston, Massachusetts, who has developed the Goldilocks method.

Countries are ranked according to how unlikely their medal count would be if everyone in the participating countries worldwide had the same per capita propensity to win medals. Therefore, the expected number of medals a nation will win is expected The number of medals won depends on population size. For example, since the population of the United States is about 13 times larger than that of Australia, the United States is expected to win 13 times more medals at the Games.

You can read all about it in Jackson Ryan’s fascinating article and let me know what you think – the link to email me is at the top of the page.

Before we get too deep into analyzing all the action, let’s take a look at the medal tally. Although most of the “belt sports” have already finished, Australia managed to hold on to third place behind the USA and China, both of whom have an incredible number of medals. Japan, Great Britain and France are all close behind and with a lot of medals still up for grabs, anything can happen. Well, not anything, nobody can come close to the USA and China, but a lot can definitely happen.

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