Cycling: According to the unofficial results,
Dawid Krupa of Poland finished 75th in the men's road race with a time of 6:00:25 -- 18:41 behind the leader. Dozens of riders, of course, did not finish the 224.4-km race.
Diving: It was synchronized diving on Saturday.
Mark Ruiz and
Kyle Prandi (USA) came in eighth place in the men's synchronized 10-metre platform; their score of 325.44 was 58.44 points behind the gold medallists. In the women's synchronized 3-metre springboard,
Diamantina Georgatou and
Sotiria Koustopetrou (Greece) grabbed eighth and last place with a score of 270.33 -- 67.57 points behind the leaders.
Fencing: Nassim Islam Bernaoui (Algeria) placed 39th in the men's individual sabre event Saturday. [
Update]
Shooting: In the women's 10-metre air rifle, Macedonia's
Divna Pesic finished in 44th place with 368 points -- only 20 points behind the gold medallist. And
Rudolf Knijnenburg of Bolivia finished 47th in the men's 10-metre air pistol with 548 points -- only 42 points behind. Not that I know anything about shooting, but the spread between first and last seems awfully close.
Swimming: There are no posted overall results, so I've gone by the slowest result from the heats. In the men's 400-metre individual medley,
Nikita Polyakov (Uzbekistan) had the slowest time of 5:09.66 -- more than a minute behind the gold-medallist final time of 4:08.26. In the men's 400-metre freestyle, Malta's
Neil Agius finished in 4:22.14; the winner's final time was 3:43.10.
Sabria Dahane's (Algeria) time of 5:10.20 was nearly 45 seconds off the winner's pace of 4:34.83 in the women's 400-metre individual medley. I expect the spread in team sports to be closer generally, so it's no surprise that in the women's 4×100-metre freestyle relay, the
Swiss team's last-place time of 3:47.47 is less than 12 seconds behind that of the winning team.
Weightlifting: In the women's 48-kg class, Egypt's
Enga Mohamed lifted a total of 165 kg, finishing in 14th place; the gold-medal winner lifted 210 kg.
Standings to date: Algeria takes an early first-day lead with two last-place finishes! The rest of the field is in a nine-way tie for second with one last-place finish each.
Labels: algeria, athens 2004, bolivia, cycling, diving, egypt, macedonia, malta, media, poland, shooting, switzerland, usa, uzbekistan, weightlifting