DFL

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

Friday, August 22, 2008

Results for Friday, August 22

Athletics: Men's 50-km walk: 36-year-old Kazimir Verkin of Slovakia finished 47th; his time of 4:21:26 was 44:17 behind the gold medallist. There were seven DNFs, five disqualifications, and two DNSes. Women's long jump: In qualifying Tuesday, Tricia Flores of Belize, 28, had the shortest best jump: 5.25 metres in group A; the gold medallist got 7.04 metres in the final. Three athletes had no mark; one was disqualified for being bad. Women's 5,000 metre: 30-year-old Celma da Graca Soares Bonfim of São Tomé and Príncipe finished heat one with a time of 17:25.99 on Tuesday; the gold medallist's time was 15:41.40. One DNF and one DNS apiece in the heats. Women's 4×100-metre relay: Never mind the final, the heats Thursday saw three disqualifications and two DNFs, leaving the team from Thailand with the slowest finishing time of 44.38 seconds. The gold medal time in the final was 42.31 seconds. Men's 4×100-metre relay: The men's side saw two disqualifications and four DNFs; the slowest team left standing was that of France, with 39.53 seconds. The gold medallists in the final did it in 37.1 seconds. Men's pole vault: Three athletes cleared 5.3 metres (the gold medallist did 5.96 metres); I'm unable to break the tie. No DFL will be awarded. Men's decathlon: There were 14 DNFs in this event -- 35 percent of all athletes entered. Of the 26 capable of attempting all 10 events, Mikko Halvari of Finland, 25, was 26th with a score of 6,486 -- 2,305 points behind the gold medallist. Mikko got zero in the pole vault; he and one other athlete continued nonetheless, while two athletes did not start the following event. I don't know the circumstances for all 14 DNFs; I wonder how many were the result of giving up when zeroing out on a specific discipline.

Canoe/Kayak (Flatwater Racing): Men's 1,000-metre kayak single (K1): Alcino Gomes da Silva, 17, São Tomé and Príncipe, 9th in heat two with a time of 4:28.057. Men's 1,000-metre canoe single (C1): Sean Pangelinan, 21, Guam, 8th in heat two with a time of 4:49.284. Women's 500-metre kayak four (K4): Canada, fourth in the semifinal with a time of 1:38.366. Men's 1,000-metre K2: José Ramos, 25, and Gabriel Rodriguez, 29, Venezuela, seventh in the semifinal with a time of 3:27.423. Men's 1,000-metre C2: José Everardo Cristobal, 22, and Dimas Camilo, 18, Mexico, seventh in the semifinal with a time of 3:49.695. Men's 1,000-metre K4: Australia, fourth in the semifinal with a time of 3:02.743.

Cycling (BMX): In the men's BMX event, Latvian Ivo Lakucs, 29, had the lowest score of the four heats of the quarterfinal round. On the women's side, Australian Tanya Bailey, 27, had the worst score in the semifinals.

Field Hockey: New Zealand lost its classification match in women's field hockey to finish 12th.

Modern Pentathlon: All the female athletes in the modern pentathlon were able to complete the equestrian portion; insert cliché about women and horses here. Lada Jienbalanova of Kazakhstan, 38, was already 36th after the equestrian portion and did not start the final 3,000-metre cross country run. Her final score was 3,736 points; the gold medallist's score was 5,792.

Standings to date: Canada retakes the lead with its eighth DFL; Australia moves into fifth place with its sixth last-place finish. With their third DFLs each, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, New Zealand and France move into 14th, 15th, 18th and 23rd places, respectively. With two last-place finishes and only three athletes, São Tomé and Príncipe jumps into 24th place.

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Monday, August 18, 2008

Late Results for Monday, August 18

Athletics: The qualifying rounds for the women's discus were held Friday evening; in group A, 24-year-old Tereapii Tapoki of the Cook Islands had a best distance of 48.35 metres. She was the only competitor under 50 metres. The gold medallist's final result tonight was 64.74 metres. One competitor had no mark in the heats. Next, women's pole vault, where the Friday qualifying rounds saw three women clear only four metres; two others weren't able to do even that, and had no mark. (The gold medallist cleared 5.05 metres.) To break the tie, I'm going to assign the DFL to the woman who took the most attempts to clear four metres: Cypriot Anna Foitidou, 31, who did so in group B. Qualifying for the men's long jump was held Saturday evening: 29-year-old American Miguel Pate's best jump was 7.34 metres, exactly a metre behind the gold medallist's best in the final. There were two DNSes in the qualifying round, and one athlete had no mark. Also on Saturday, heats for the men's 3,000-metre steeplechase; 23-year-old Ali Ahmad Al-Amri of Saudi Arabia finished in 9:09.73 in heat two. The gold medallist's time in the final was 8:10.34. There was one DNF and one DNS in the heats. In heat five of round one of the women's 800 metre, which was held on Friday, Aishath Reesha, 19, running for the Maldives, had a time of 2:30.14. There was one DNF and one disqualification in the heats; the gold medallist's time in the final was 1:54.87. And finally, the men's 400-metre hurdles. 22-year-old Harouna Garba of Niger ran a time of 55.14 seconds in heat one on Friday. The Monday night time put in by the gold medallist was 47.25 seconds. There was one DNF in the heats.

Equestrian: With a total of 65 penalties, New Zealand's equestrian team was 16th in the first round of team show jumping, and did not advance to the second round.

Gymnastics: Ana Rente of Portugal, 20, finished 16th in the women's trampoline qualification round; only the top eight advanced to the final. Very low marks on her second routine led to a final score of 31.60 -- something must have happened. The next-to-last competitor's score was 57.60, and the lowest score to qualify for the final was 63.90.

Weightlifting: In the men's 105 kg, 31-year-old Moreno Boer of Italy finished 18th, with a combined weight of 330 kg; the gold medallist's score was 436. There was one DNS and one DNF.

Standings to date: Italy adds its fifth last-place finish to move into second; the Cook Islands (!), Niger, New Zealand and the U.S. add their second DFLs.

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Friday, August 15, 2008

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.

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Thursday, February 23, 2006

Early Results for Thursday, February 23

Biathlon: The women's 4×6-km relay ran this morning, and the team from Latvia -- comprised of Madara Līduma, 23, Anžela Brice, 35, Linda Savļaka, 22, and Gerda Krūmiņa, 21 -- came in 18th. Their time of 1:26:21.3 was 10:08.8 behind the gold-medal team, but there were five teams who were nine minutes or more back.

Curling: The finals aren't done yet -- the gold-medal game runs later today for the women, and the medal games run tomorrow for the men -- but the last-place finishers in round-robin play have already been assigned, so I might as well not wait any longer to report them. On the women's side, that's Italy; on the men's side, that's New Zealand. Each team finished 10th.

Hockey: Similarly, even though we won't know who won until Sunday, I can report that Latvia finished last -- 12th -- in men's hockey, thanks to their single point in the preliminary round.

Sara Fischer (Sweden)Snowboarding: The last snowboarding event is the women's parallel giant slalom, which just wrapped up. Swedish competitor Sara Fischer, 26, did not finish one of her qualifying runs and as a result was ranked 30th in the competition.

Standings to date: Sweden finally enters the standings, in 34th place; New Zealand enters in 28th. Latvia, with two more last-place finishes, moves up to 8th place, while host country Italy defies expectations with only its second last-place finish, moving into 17th place.

Later today: men's aerials, women's figure skating.

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Sunday, August 29, 2004

Results for Saturday, August 28

Athletics: Women's high jump: Australia's Petrina Price and one other athlete cleared 1.80 metres, but she finishes last because she took more attempts to do it. The winner's final height was 2.06 metres. Women's 1,500 metre: Sumaira Zahoor of Pakistan had the slowest heat time of 4:49.33, about five seconds behind the next-slowest time; the winner's time in the final was 3:57.90. Men's javelin: Edi Ponos of Croatia -- his best throw was 71.43 metres; the winner's best in the final was 86.50 metres. Men's 800 metre: Cornelius Sibe of Surinam had a heat time of 2:00.06, the only result above two minutes; the winner's final time was 1:44.45. Men's 5,000-metre: Sergiy Lebid of Ukraine with a heat time of 14:10.23; the winner's final time was 13:14.39. There was one DNF. Men's 4×100-metre relay: The only result above 39 seconds came from the relay team from Russia: 39.19 seconds, which they put in in the heats. The winner's final time was 38.07 seconds. Doesn't that seem close to you? Women's 4×400-metre relay: Greece had a bad run in the final, finishing at 3:45.70, but they did make it there; the slowest heat time was put in by Senegal at 3:35.18. The fastest final time was 3:19.01. Men's 4×400-metre relay: Spain had, at 3:05.03, the slowest heat time; the winning final time was 2:55.91. And that's it for track and field except for one event -- the marathon today.

Basketball: On the women's side, South Korea finished 12th with an 0-6 record. It was the same result for Angola on the men's side: they too finished 0-6 and 12th.

Canoe/Kayak (Flatwater Racing): Men's 500-metre K1: For some reason the Athens 2004 site isn't covering the results of heat four, where Steven Ferguson (see previous entries: New Zealand Kayaking Controversy, Steven Ferguson Update) finished last with the slowest time of 2:06.937. He had to work at it to finish last, though, because the next slowest kayaker was only four seconds ahead of him, and though that kayaker was a good 15 seconds behind everyone else, he qualified for the semifinal. Ferguson was the only one not to do so -- which is, of course, what he wanted. Men's 500-metre C1: This one's tricky, because everybody made it out of the prelims and posted different results in the semis -- i.e., the person with the slowest time in the prelims was not the same as the one slowest in the semis. To square this circle, I'm going to go to the slowest semifinal time, which was put in by Emanuel Horvaticek of Croatia and which was the slowest time overall: 2:06.347. Women's 500-metre K1: Thi Cach Doan of Vietnam had the slowest heat time, 2:06.126, but Indonesia's Sarce Aronggear was the only competitor not to advance from the prelims, so the last-place finish goes to her rather than Thi. (I'm really having to split hairs in these events!) Men's 500-metre K2: The Chinese twosome of Yijun Yin and Lei Wang had the slowest time in the prelims, made the semis, and finished last there. They were about eight seconds behind the winner in each case. Men's 500-metre C2: Americans Jordan Malloch and Nathan Johnson finished last in the repechage here, too. Women's 500-metre K2: Paula Harvey and Susan Tegg of Australia also finished last in their repechage.

Cycling: In the men's mountain bike event, Emmanouil Kotoulas of Greece placed 45th, three laps back, with no time recorded. There were five DNFs.

Diving: In the prelims for the men's 10-metre platform, Andras Hajnal of Hungary finished 33rd with a score of 305.79 -- 207.27 points behind the leader in the preliminaries (who went on to win silver). No diving accidents, just low marks.

Football: Serbia-Montenegro finished 16th.

Rhythmic Gymnastics: Poland finished 10th in the group all-around qualification with a total score of 41.775; qualifiers had scores of between 44.600 and 49.875.

Sailing: In the tornado class, Mauricio Santa Cruz Oliveira and Joao Carlos Jordao finished 17th with 172 total points and 155 net points -- the winners had 48 and 34 points, respectively. And in the star class, Mark Mansfield and Killian Collins finished 17th (142 total, 125 net; the winners had 60 total, 42 net).

Volleyball: Kenya was 0-5 and had less good results than the other 0-5 team, so instead of awarding an 11th-place tie to both, I'm assigning the last-place finish to Kenya.

Standings to date: More than half the countries at these Games now have at least one last-place finish. Australia moves into third place and China moves past Uzbekistan and France to make the top five.

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Steven Ferguson Update

A few days back I mentioned Steven Ferguson, the New Zealander who deliberately finished last (not what DFL stands for, incidentally) so as to avoid competing in the semifinals and to save his strength for the 1,000-metre K2 final. In the end, though, Ferguson and his partner, Ben Fouhy, finished eighth (out of nine) in that final Friday morning, about three seconds behind the winner. Whether this is just the result of bad karma or an indication that saving his strength may have helped, but not enough, who can say?

Incidentally, this story in yesterday's New Zealand Herald, which highlights the Ferguson story but talks about coming in last in general, is pretty good.

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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

New Zealand Kayaking Controversy

Controversy has erupted in New Zealand as a result of a deliberate last-place finish by one of its athletes. Kayaker Steven Ferguson deliberately paddled slowly to finish last in his K1 500-metre heat earlier today in order to avoid making the semifinals. He was nursing a back injury and wanted to save himself for the K2 1,000-metre final, where he and his teammate are medal hopefuls, but didn't withdraw from the 500-metre K1 because you can't withdraw from just one event: if you pull out, you're disqualified from the entire regatta.

Now this didn't go over well with everyone: New Zealand kayaker Owen Hughes -- not at the Games -- called Ferguson's actions "pathetic" and an "embarrassment," saying that Ferguson's spot in the race could have been occupied by someone who was willing to compete, and alleged that the reason Ferguson had that spot was because his father, Ian Ferguson, was the team's coach.

It's not always sweetness and light at the back of the pack, is it? (Thanks to Alan and Regan for help with this story.)

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Results for Monday, August 23

Athletics: Women's 20-km walk: Fumilay Fonseca of São Tomé and Príncipe finished 52nd with a time of 2:04:54, which was 35:42 behind the winner and about 15 minutes behind the next-to-last finisher. Three walkers did not finish and two were disqualified, presumably for breaking into a run. Women's triple jump: Athanasia Perra of Greece had the shortest best jump in the qualifying rounds at 13.19 metres; the winner's final jump was 15.30 metres. Men's discus: Samoan competitor Shaka Sola's result of 51.10 metres was the lowest in the qualifying rounds; the winner's final result was 70.93 metres. Women's 800 metre: With a time of 2:32.10, Sanna Abubkheet of Palestine had the slowest time in the heats, well behind the other competitors and considerably behind the winner's time of 1:56.38. There was one DNF in the heats. Men's 400 metre: Abdulla Mohamed Hussein of Somalia had the slowest heat time, 51.52 seconds. This race was a bit tighter: the winner's final time was an even 44 seconds.

Cycling: In the men's team pursuit qualifying round, New Zealand's foursome finished 10th with a speed of 57.411 km/h. The winning team's speed in the final was 60.445 km/h.

Softball: With a 1-6 record in the preliminaries, Italy ended up at the bottom of the final standings. But bear in mind that only eight teams were in the softball tournament.

Weightlifting: Aruba's Isnaro Faro finished 19th in the men's 94-kg event, lifting a combined total of 307.5 kg. I don't think he was too far off the pace, though: the winner lifted exactly 100 kg more, and those in between lifted from 320 kg on up. Six athletes received DNFs.

Standings to date: Insofar as final results in sports I can figure out a last place finisher for are concerned, this was a comparatively light day. Greece seems determined not to let the most last-place finishes crown slip through its fingers. Results from Palestinian and Somalian competitors are rather distressing: fully half of their Olympic delegations (four each) have now finished last. And it's great to see cute little islands enter the list; I bet you don't even know where São Tomé is!

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Sunday, August 15, 2004

Results for Sunday, August 15

Cycling: Today it was the women's road race, and the last to finish the 118.8-km course was Michelle Hyland of New Zealand, who, with a time of 3:40:43, finished in 56th place -- 16:19 behind the winner, according to unofficial results. Hyland appears to have brought up the rear of the final seven riders to finish.

Shooting: In the women's 10-metre air pistol, Francis Gorrin of Venezuela finished 41st with a score of 358; the top eight shooters (who made it to the final) had scores between 384 and 387. Francesco Repiso Romero of Andorra -- yes, Andorra -- finished 35th in the men's trap with a score of 106; the top six were well ahead of the rest of the field with scores above 140.

Swimming: In the women's 100-metre butterfly heats, the slowest time -- 1:07.94, slightly more than ten seconds behind the gold medallist's final time -- was put in by Natasha Sara Georgeos of St. Lucia. Nepal's Alice Shrestha finished last in the men's 100-metre breaststroke heat; his time of 1:12.25 was nearly 12 seconds off that of the winner in the final. In the women's 400-metre freestyle, Olga Beresnyeva of Ukraine finished her heat with a time of 4:26.30, well behind the winner's final time of 4:05.34. And in the men's 4×100 freestyle relay, China's team just beat out Greece for the slowest time in the heats (3:24.31, compared with the winning team's world-record time of 3:13.17).

Weightlifting: Virginie Lachaume (France) was eighth of eight in the women's 53-kg category; she lifted a total of 175 kg, compared with 222.5 kg for the winner. In the men's 56-kg category, Ahmed Saad of Egypt finished last in 11th place, lifting a total of 232.5 kg (compared with the winner's 295 kg), but six other lifters did not finish.

Standings to date: Egypt joins Algeria in a two-way tie for first, and a total of 16 countries, from the big (France, China) to the little (Andorra, St. Lucia) share third place. As more results are posted, perhaps some of these ties will be broken -- or perhaps we'll have a 37-way tie for second place! Stay tuned!

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