NearPup

This looks like an excellent street course. Full marks to the IOC, they are really good at creating venues for X-Games style events now.

Only game today without a home run :P

So much for that

The batters are completely wearing down Dallas Escobedo. 100 pitches and she isn’t even out of the 4th inning. The Canadian batters are doing an amazing job extending their at bats.

Combination of Italy pitching well and the US not being great on offense. US was great on defense though.

Full credit to team . That was a solid performance. and do appear to be on a collision course for gold.

Def seems to be an improvement over London and Rio.

Softball is actually quite fast pace as far as bat and ball sports go.

I honestly like not having fake fan noise.

Despite what the IOC might think softball is not women’s baseball and baseball is not men’s softball. TBH as long as MLBers aren’t involves I’d rather see men’s softball in the Olympics over men’s baseball.

The NBC graphics are absolutely gorgeous. They have very nice origami style transitions.

To be fair even the Dutch team is majority North American (thanks to the various Dutch municipalities in the Caribbeans) Israel's competitiveness in baseball is brand new, they didn't really have any meaningful success before they qualified for the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

It won't be included because of the 2900 athletes cap. Luge would need to be willing to cut like 20 athletes from artificial luge, which will be hard especially since they are going to need to add women's doubles from the existing athlete quota sooner rather than later.

I predicted but tbh any of the six teams could realistically win gold.

Yes! This is a legitimate gold medal chance.

Cycling def has one of the worst qualification system of any sports. Unfortunately weightlifting, boxing and 3x3 stole their crown for the worst qualification system this year.

They predicted bronze in BMX freestyle for Marin Rantes… who didn’t qualify.

Lol the runner-up ran 11.09s.

I’m taking two weeks off and living in Tokyo time for the Olympics. New experience for me, last time I could watch that much of the games was Beijing.

This misconception is just so annoying. The 2016 national polls underestimated Trump less than the 2012 polls underestimated Obama, or that the French polls in 2017 underestimated Macron. How good or bad polls are is very state dependent, too. Ohio and Michigan polls have been sort of garbage recently, compared to polls of say Georgia that have consistently been spot-on.

Barty is very far from a shoe-in. Heck even Djokovic could be vulnerable to an upset. Lets not overstate how weak this field is.

Apparently the Tokyo BMX track is the longest in Olympic history, which is excellent.

In chronological order: 1. Lori-Ann Muenzer winning the women's sprint in Athens 2004. Nobody gave her a real chance, Cycling Canada wasn't interested in supporting her at all, yet she became the only Canadian to ever win Olympic gold in cycling. Her semi-finals win against Anna Meares was just incredibly gritty. 2. Eric Lamaze winning individual show jumping gold in Beijing 2008. The entire show jumping competition was a dream for Canada in 2008, with long time Olympian and Canadian show jumping legend Ian Miller picking up his first medal. But it's Lamaze's gold medal that was the most amazing. The drama of the jump-off for gold (following a very long and very entertaining bronze medal jump-off) was incredibly compelling. But most impressive is the amazing redemption story for Lamaze, who's life was derailed by cocaine addiction. Cocaine also robbed him of his chance to compete in the 1996 Olympics. Unfortunately there has been tragedy since, with his beloved horse Hickstead dying in the ring a few years later, and recently Lamaze has sadly been battling brain cancer, and we all wish him the best. But that one night in Beijing was a perfect fairy-tale ending. 3. Penny Oleksiak winning gold in the 100m freestyle in Rio 2016. I almost don't feel like I have to explain that one. First gold medal for Canada in swimming or track and field (the two biggest Olympic sports) that I could remember, won by a young athlete that came out of nowhere in a huge come from behind victory. The tie with Manuel, who also made history in a bunch of ways, was pretty cool, too. Bonus: Tiësto's awesome trance set at the 2004 Olympics.

****

Great picture, but really not digging the "look of the games". IMO it's the worst one (among summer games) since Atlanta.