It's unfortunate that Simone Biles is the biggest story of the Olympics. I have no objection to pulling out (I hope there was an alternate who got to compete in her place...) but I feel that it's unfortunate that press has focused on an athlete that isn't competing, instead of on the athletes who are. Unfortunate for Simone, as well. Leave Simone alone.
Canada Women's soccer team defeats Team USA to advance to the gold medal game! They will play the winner of Sweden vs Australia. This is some payback for the 2012 semifinal where the Canadian women were leading the US until controversial calls by the referee gave the US a chance to tie and take the lead. This must be incredibly satisfying for them, they have been beaten by the US so many times, this time they win and the timing couldn't be better.
Jamaican women win gold-silver-bronze in the 100m sprint. How does a country with just 3 million people dominate sprinting to such a degree? Two women from Switzerland (of all places) finished 5 and 6; only one American was in the final and she finished 7th. America's fastest sprinter was watching on television; she was disqualified from the Olympics because she had smoked marijuana.
Laurel Hubbard, the transgender woman weightlifter, bombed out spectacularly and didn't register a single successful lift. Stupid-people will say that Hubbard's failure proves that transwomen don't have an advantage. Stupid-people will say that because they're stupid.
Imagine for a moment an athlete, perhaps a hockey player. He has some modest amount of success as a young man, makes it to the AHL, and scores some goals there. But he never makes it to the NHL, and at age 24 he hangs up the skates to move on with his life. Then, at age 39, he decides to give hockey another chance. And not only does he make the NHL, he becomes a star player, one of the league's best, an all-star player. And at age 43, an age when even the all time greats are retiring from the sport, he's still going strong and even gets chosen to play on the Olympic team! Everybody would recognize that this is a completely ridiculous story, right? A Hollywood fantasy. This is basically the plot of "Damn Yankees" (the middle-aged guy in that story had to make a deal with the devil to become a baseball star). People would ask, how is this former minor-leaguer becoming a hockey superstar at age 39, when other players are in rapid decline? Was this guy bitten by a radioactive spider? Is he wearing Kryptonite shorts? It would be completely unbelievable. And yet, that's the Laurel Hubbard story. A weightlifter who was successful in New Zealand but never qualified for an international event, left the sport at 24, came out of retirement at age 39 and achieved international success overnight. It would be unbelievable, if you don't mention that he's competing against women now.
Anyway. Hubbard's poor showing means that Canada's Quinn will be the first transgender athlete to win an Olympic medal. Who is Quinn? Quinn is a member of Canada's women's soccer team. Quinn only has one name. Quinn identifies as "transgender and non-binary" and uses they/them pronouns. Why isn't there a furor over Quinn being a transgender athlete on the women's team? Because Quinn is a female person competing against other female people. Not complicated and not controversial.
-k