Things we learned in Tuesday night’s Summer Olympics action:
Ledecky and Phelps both took home individual golds on Day 4 of the 2016 Olympics, and Phelps added another as part of America’s victorious 4×200-meter freestyle relay team to cement USA Swimming’s status as biggest fish in the Olympic pool. For Phelps, Tuesday’s haul represented his 20th and 21st gold medals.
Ledecky’s a bit further behind. She’s only got three, but she is only 19 years old, so she probably deserves a pass.
Those two weren’t the only ones to add to their medal counts in the pool on Tuesday.Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu earned her third gold medal of the Games by setting an Olympic record in the 200-meter individual medley. Her effort prevented an American sweep, but Madeline Dirado still managed to win bronze, giving the country four swimming medals on the evening.
Team USA did well on dry land, too. Women’s gymnastics put on a dominant performance that evoked memories of Jordan, Magic and Bird at the 1992 Olympicswhen they mollywhopped the rest of the competition in the team all-around. The Americans won gold by a shocking 8.2-point margin of victory, routing Russia and China in the process. NBC’s broadcast team suggested each point in the team event is equivalent to “two or three touchdowns” on the football field. Using that metric, the United States gymnasts are Alabama. The rest of the world is a school bus filled with mannequins someone parked near the field.
And while Travis Stevens didn’t win gold in his third shot at Olympic glory, he still made history. His silver medal performance was America’s first podium showing at 81kg since 1992. With the performance, he can officially say he’s better than Allen Coage — aka Bad News Brown — the former WWE wrestler who took home a bronze medal back in 1976.
Stevens was trucking competitors on the mat in Rio. New England Patriots safety Nate Ebner did it on the field as part of the first USA Rugby team to compete at the Olympics since 1924. He trucked a Brazilian player to help spur a 26-0 win over home team Brazil on Tuesday, which helped wash the bad taste of a last-play loss to Argentina earlier in the afternoon. The Eagles will have to find a way to beat a Fiji team that treated its opponents like Bane did Batman in its first two games to have a chance of advancing into the medal rounds (aggregate score in two wins today: 62-26), but the team proved it can hang at an elite level.
That put the Americans’ medal count at 26 — with nine golds — through just four days of Olympic action. The next closest team, China, is nine medals behind.
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