Results for Saturday, August 9

Fewer medals are awarded today than on any other day of these Games, which means not very many last-place finishes to report on yet.

Cycling: In the men's road race, 30-year-old Luciano Pagliarini Mendonça of Brazil came 90th with a time of 7 hours, 8 minutes and 27 seconds. That's 44 minutes, 38 seconds behind the first group across the finish line (and two and a half minutes behind the 89th-place finisher), and if that seems like a lot, consider that the race is 245 kilometres (152 miles) long, and that Pagliarini's average speed was around 34 km/h (21 mph) over that distance and time, versus 38 km/h (23 mph) for the winner. There were also 53 DNFs, seven of whom were lapped. Pagliarini is a cyclist of some note: he has a Web site and a Wikipedia entry, which calls him "one of the best of his country."

Shooting: In the women's 10-metre air rifle, Turkmenistan's Yekaterina Arabova, who turns 25 tomorrow, received a score of 376 in the qualification round and finished 47th. Competition was tough: the eventual gold medallist shot a perfect 400 in the qualification round, and the lowest advancing score was a mere 396. In the men's 10-metre air pistol, 38-year-old Sri Lankan Edirisinghe Senanayake came 48th in the preliminary round with a score of 561; a score of 581 was needed to advance, and the eventual gold medallist got 586.

Weightlifting: In the women's 48-kg event, Karla Moreno, 20, of Nicaragua came 11th in a field of 14; there were three DNFs (who couldn't perform a successful lift). Her score of 150 was well behind the gold medallist's score of 212.

Medals were also awarded in judo and fencing, but from what I can tell it's not possible to determine a last-place finisher in these sports.

Standings: I still have some work to do before I start recording the standings, but it's still too early for anything interesting. Nicaragua is nominally ahead in the last-place race because it has the smallest delegation.