Late Results for Friday, August 15

Athletics: In the men's shot put, where either a top-12 finish or a minimum throw of 20.4 metres was needed to qualify for the final, the shortest throw came in group B of the qualifying round: Chang Ming-Huang, 26, representing Chinese Taipei -- i.e., Taiwan -- had a best throw of 17.43 metres. The gold medallist's best throw in the final was 21.51 metres. Four shot putters had no mark in the qualifying round, and there was one DNS. Isabel Checha of Spain, 26, finished 29th in the women's 10,000 metre. There were two DNFs and one DNS. Checha's time was 33:17.88; the gold medallist's time was 29:44.66.

Cycling: In the qualifying round of the men's team sprint, the Polish team of Maciej Bielecki, 21, Kamil Kuczynski, 23, and Łukasz Kwiatkowski, 26, were relegated -- i.e., pushed to last place, something akin to but not as severe as a disqualification -- after Kuczynski fell. As a result, they finished 13th.

Weightlifting: In the women's 75 kg, 20-year-old Elizabeth Poblete of Chile finished 12th with a score of 197; the gold medallist's final score was 282. And in the men's 85 kg, where there were five DNF, the Seychelles added their second DFL with Terrence Dixie, 24, putting up a score of 255; the gold medallist's score was 394.

Standings to date: The Seychelles and Poland add their second last-place finishes, moving into 7th and 11th place, respectively; Chile, Taiwan and Spain get their first DFLs.

Medal Nervousness

Colby Cosh in the National Post:

The medal-count panic now spreading within Canada after a week of Games has also served to teach us something about ourselves, if we should bother to introspect. We tend to think of ourselves as very soft patriots by international standards -- relaxed and rational about our reputation, convinced that other nations are very impressed with us indeed. Every single foreigner who has ever met a Canadian knows what balderdash this is: We are among the world's most hysterical nationalists. And our medal nervousness proves it. Before the Games, this newspaper printed a list of 15 projected Canadian medal winners: The number of these who have so far had a chance to win a medal and blown it is precisely zero. Yet to read the press or the Internet, or even to hang around the water cooler, one would think the sky were falling.

I shouldn't pick on my own country so much; it's just that there's so much low-hanging fruit. Are there similar examples out there from other countries? (India is usually a good candidate.)

Early Results for Friday, August 15

Archery: In the men's individual event, Joseph Walter Muaausa of Samoa, 46, was 64th in the ranking round and had the lowest score of the round of 64. Fortunately, at least for me, this result is unambiguous; it was entirely possible for the person with the lowest score in the round of 64 to have been ranked higher, or vice versa; someone who set an Olympic record in the round of 16 ended up finishing only 14th.

Canoe/Kayak (Slalom): In the heats of the men's C2, the South African duo of Cyprian Ngidi, 25, and Cameron McIntosh, 32, finished 12th. Their combined time after two runs was 277.2, including a total of 54 penalty seconds. It was the slowest time overall, though the top three times in the heats were faster than the gold medal time in the final, for whatever reason. This was also the case in the women's K1, where, thanks to two and a half minutes in penalties each, two competitors in the finals had slower times than the slowest time in the heats. But, applying my own vague rules as to who gets the DFL, the slowest time in the heats prevails, because these two put in a better score earlier to make it to the final. As a result, the DFL goes to 19-year-old Luuka Jones of New Zealand, with a time of 272.36.

Shooting: Hazem Mohamed of Egypt, 38, finished 56th in the men's 50-metre rifle, prone position; his score of 576 was 18 points behind what would have been needed to qualify for the final.

Swimming: Heats for today's swimming medals were held Wednesday. In heat one of the women's 200-metre breaststroke, Tatiane Sakemi of Brazil, 22, finished with a time of 2:39.13. The gold medallist's world-record time in the final was 2:20.22. There was one DNS in the heats. For once, heat two had the slowest time in an event -- in the men's 200-metre backstroke: Estonia's Andres Olvik, 22, whose time of 2:03.66 was nearly 10 seconds behind the gold medallist's time in the final, which was another world record. There were two DNSes in the heats. Danil Bugakov of Uzbekistan, 20, finished heat one of the men's 200-metre individual medley with a time of 2:10.04; the gold medallist, some nobody, put in a world-record time of 1:54.23 in the final. There was one DNS in the heats. And finally, in the women's 100-metre freestyle, 16-year-old Olga Hachatryan of Turkmenistan, where I'm not sure there is any standing water, finished with a rather slow time of 1:14.77 in heat one; the gold medallist's time in the final was 53.12 seconds. There was one DNS in the heats.

Badminton had a medal today, but it -- like other sports involving rackets or paddles -- is not something for which I can figure out a last place.

Still to come later today: athletics (men's shot put, women's 10,000 metre), cycling (team sprint) and weightlifting.

Standings to date: Egypt and Turkmenistan each add their second DFLs; South Africa and Brazil each add their third, moving into third and fourth place, respectively.