DFL

Celebrating last-place finishes at the Olympics. Because they're there, and you're not.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Afternoon Results for Saturday, August 16

Cycling: In the men's points race, French cyclist Christophe Riblon, 27, lost 20 lap points and finished 21st with a score of –17, compared with the gold medallist's score of 60. There were two DNFs.

Rowing: Women's single sculls: Homa Hosseini, 19, Iran, fourth in the E final. Men's single sculls: Norberto Bernardez Avila, 21, Honduras, second in the F final; one DNS. Women's pairs: Kim Crow, 23, and Sarah Cook, 23, Australia, fourth in the B final. Men's pairs: Piotr Hojka, 24, and Jarosław Godek, 27, Poland, second in the C final. Women's double sculls: Laura Schiavone, 21, and Elisabetta Sancassani, 25, Italy, fourth in the B final. Men's double sculls: Haidar Nozad, 25, and Hussein Jebur, 32, Iraq, second in the C final; one exclusion. Men's four: the Chinese team of Zhang Xingbo, 27, Zhao Linquan, 21, Guo Kang, 20, and Song Kai, 24, did not make it out of the repechage.

Shooting: In the men's 25-metre rapid-fire pistol, Hong Kong's Wong Fai, 38, finished 18th with a score of 558; he would have needed at least 579 to advance to the final. There was one disqualification. In the men's skeet final, Roger Dahi, 46, representing Syria, finished 41st with a score of 91; he would have needed 118 to have a shot (sorry) at advancing.

Standings to date: Poland takes the lead! Australia moves into seventh place, China into ninth.

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Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Results for Tuesday, August 24

Athletics: Women's 5,000 metre: This should have been in yesterday's results, but I somehow missed it. Sonia O'Sullivan of Ireland finished 14th with a time of 16:20.90, more than a minute behind the next-to-last finisher and about 95 seconds behind the leader; she appears to have trailed badly at the end. There was one DNF. [Correction] Women's pole vault: Alejandra García of Argentina and Silke Spiegelburg of Germany tied for 13th place with a jump of 4.20 metres on the third attempt; the twelfth-place finisher also vaulted 4.20 but did so on the second attempt, and as a result was ranked higher. The winner vaulted 4.91 metres; one athlete failed to clear the minimum height and received no mark. Men's 3,000-metre steeplechase: In show jumping for humans, Polish runner Jakub Czaja's time of 8:56.24 was the slowest in the heats; the winner's final time was 8:05.81. There were two DNSes and one DNF in the heats. Women's 100-metre hurdles: Canadians may be bemoaning the result in the final (we're very good at bemoaning, actually), but the slowest time in the heats was put in by Maria Joelle Conjungo of the Central African Republic -- 14.24 seconds, compared with the winner's time of 12.37 seconds in the final. Women's 400 metre: Libyan runner Ruwita El Hubti's time of 1:03.57 was the slowest in the heats, but two other runners put in times in excess of a minute. The winner's final time was 49.41 seconds. Men's decathlon: Of 30 athletes competing, Victor Covalenko of Moldova had the lowest score, 6,543 points. The winner had 8,893 points. Victor was the only competitor to score fewer than 7,000 points, but hey, this is the decathlon, okay? Men's 1,500 metre: Despite media expectations that he would be the next Eric the Eel, Robert Caraciolo Mandje did not finish DFL in this event. I'm pleased to report that he came in third-last. (I love it when expectations are confounded.) Instead, Jimmy Anak Ahar of Brunei Darussalam put in the slowest heat time of 4:14.11. Each of the three slowest runners put in times above four minutes; the winner's final time was 3:34.18.

Cycling: In the men's points race, Wong Kam-Po of Hong Kong finished 20th with two points, compared to the winner's 93. Three competitors did not finish. In the women's sprint qualifying round, Evgenia Radanova of Bulgaria finished 12th with a time of 12.457 seconds and a speed of 57.798 km/h; the winner's time and speed in the qualifying were 11.291 seconds and 63.767 km/h, respectively. And in the qualifyings for the men's sprint, German cyclist Stefan Nimke finished 19th (11.338 seconds, 63.503 km/h; the winner's results were 10.177 seconds and 70.747 km/h in the qualifyings).

Diving: The men's 3-metre springboard wrapped up today; in the preliminaries yesterday, Justin Wilcock of the United States finished 32nd with a score of 225.87, 291.72 behind the leader in that round. Justin received a score of zero for his fifth dive, so something unfortunate must have happened, but he was trailing throughout.

Equestrian: They awarded the team jumping medals today; Mexico had the most penalties -- 70 -- after the first round and, like the other teams that did not make the top 10, did not advance to the second round.

Weightlifting started with little tiny people hauling giant weights; now the guys are getting much bigger. And the weights much heavier. Today it was the men's 105-kg class, and Eleei Ilalio of American Samoa was 16th, lifting a total of 295 kg. The winner lifted a combined total of 425 kg, and all but the bottom two were within a few kilos of 400. Six lifters were DNF; all of them trying to lift more weight than Eleei did -- and failing at it.

Standings to date: Poland moves into second place and Bulgaria and Germany make big moves up the board. But the big story is Brunei Darussalam, whose single athlete finished last in his single event. That means that Brunei has scored a perfect 100 per cent in the last-place sweepstakes -- though I suppose that percentages greater than 100 are theoretically possible if an athlete enters, and finishes last in, more than one event. Still!

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