Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Tokyo 2020: Medals and Records

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

Most coverage of the Olympics is very biased towards whatever country you happen to live in, and certain popular sports. Lesser sports and accomplishments from athletes in other countries may often be completely overlooked. So, I figured I’d give a recap of the Tokyo Olympics by putting my very special touch on it, and focus on the exceptional performances across all sports from this Olympics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most coverage of the Olympics is very biased towards whatever country you happen to live in and certain popular sports. Lesser sports and accomplishments from athletes in other countries may often be completely overlooked. So I figure I'd give a recap of the Tokyo Olympics by putting my very special touch on it and focus on the exceptional performances across all sports from this Olympics. So join me as I go through the outstanding medal and record accomplishments of the 2020 Olympics on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Masterclass. If you've been inspired by the Olympics, wouldn't you want to improve in your chosen sport by learning from an actual Olympian? With Masterclass, you can learn directly from some of the world's best athletes. You can learn tennis from four-time Olympic gold medalist Serena Williams, or gymnastics

from seven-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles. Or you can learn skateboarding from Tony Hawk, who I'm sure would have won a slew of medals in skateboarding if it was in the Olympics when he was in his prime. You can start learning from the world's best for only $15 a month. Just go to everything-dash everywhere.com slash masterclass or click a on the link in the show notes. Once again, that's everything dash everywhere.com slash masterclass. There's a lot that goes on over the two weeks of the Olympics, a lot of events, a lot of competitors, and a lot of stories. It's easy for many of the interesting things

to get lost in the shuffle. But fear not, for that is why I am here, to tell you about what really mattered. So let's start off with the person who had the best Olympics overall. There are Two people who I think you could describe had an almost perfect Olympics. The first is American swimmer Caleb Dressel, who won five gold medals in swimming. This is the 10th best individual performance at a single Olympic Games in terms of medals. The only reason he wasn't perfect was because he was actually in a sixth event, the mixed 4 by 100 meter medley relay. This is an event with two men and two women, and it was the first year it was held.

The U.S. team only took fifth. The person who I think truly had a perfect Olympics, and it would be very hard to do better than she did, was South Korean archer Ansan. Unlike swimming, there aren't a lot of medals given out for archery, even though they could probably easy double or triple the number if they had different distances and different types of bows. As it stands, there are three possible medals you can earn in archery, and Ansan won three gold medals. She won the gold in the women's individual, the women's team, and the mixed team. Moreover, in all three events, she set an Olympic record. Archery doesn't get a lot of attention, but she really couldn't have done any better than she did. She won every event, and she did it in record-setting fashion.

The Bob Beeman Award for the Most Incredible Single Performance has to go to Norwegian Carson Warholme, who won the gold medal in the men's 400-meter hurdles. He didn't just win the gold, however. He crushed his own world record. Warholme finished at 45.94 seconds, beating his previous world record by 0.76 seconds, which is an eternity at that level of competition. The 400-meter hurdle world record was last set in 1992 before Warholme came along. The Best Teammates Award has to go to Sue Bird and Diana Tarasi of the American Women's Basketball Team. They became the eighth and ninth people ever to win gold medals at five.

different Olympics, and they became the first teammates ever to do so together. However, in the winning a lot of medals at a lot of different Olympics department, the new champion is the equestrian Isabelle Worth from Germany. She won a gold medal in Team Dersage, making this the sixth different Olympic games where she has won a gold medal, making her the first person ever to accomplish that feat. She has also won more medals than any other equestrian athlete in Olympic history. She won gold medals in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2016, and now 2020. A 29-year gap between winning her first and most recent gold medals.

She's 51 years old, still the top rank in the world, and remember, Aquestrian is the one Olympic sport where men and women compete directly against each other. Speaking of winning a lot of medals, I have to mention Alice and Felix. She won a bronze medal in the women's 400 meters and a gold medal in the women's 440. by 400 meter relay. With those two medals, she now has 11 medals total in track and field, making her the most decorated woman in track history and the most decorated American, breaking the record of 10 medals set by Carl Lewis. Just two years ago, Felix gave birth to her daughter prematurely, which resulted in a very dangerous Caesarian section. She managed to spring

back and win two Olympic medals at the age of 35. I should also give a mention to Australian swimmer Emma McKeon, who won the most medals in Tokyo. She won seven in total, four gold and three bronze. She is the 10th person in history ever to win seven medals at a single Olympics. If there's one single event that is the premier event of the Olympics, it's probably the men's 100 meter dash. This year it didn't get as much attention, because the guy who won was rather unknown. Lamont, Marcel, Jacobs from Italy.

Nobody expected him to win. He didn't even make the finals of the 100 meters at the time. the last world championships. It's the first time that Italy has won pretty much anything in sprinting. There was actually a lot of World and Olympic records set in track this year, and one of the reasons was new shoes and a very high-tech track which was used in Tokyo. Likewise, there were some major records set in cycling. Cycling is always subject to new records because it's so heavily dependent on technology. In the women's team pursuit, the German team dropped the world's record by a whopping six seconds.

In the special category of the best worst performance, or maybe it's the worst best performance, the recipient would have to go to American swimmer Katie Ledecki. She won four medals in total, two gold and two silver, which by any measure is a great Olympics for anyone. However, she didn't actually make the podium for one event, the women's 200-meter freestyle, making the first time she hadn't gotten a medal at a major event in nine years. She's so good and dominant that having a very good Olympics for her was actually a step down from her previous performances. The I Didn't Think You Could Do That Award goes to Dutch Middle Distance Runner Safan Hassan.

She did something that no one else has ever done before. She won medals at 1,500 meters, 5,000 meters, and 10,000 meters. 1,500 and 10,000 meters are very, very different events, and hardly anyone even competes at those distances. let alone wins medals. She won the gold at 5 and 10K and a bronze at 1,500, the first person in history to do so. She was actually a refugee who settled in the Netherlands and didn't start running until she was 14. There were several brand new sports at the Olympics this year, most notably was skateboarding. The most notable thing about skateboarding is that there were not one, not two, but three skateboarding medalists who were 13 years old.

Not too far off, 14-year-old Chinese diver Juan Hong Chan won a gold medal in diving. FYI, the youngest participant in the games this year was 12-year-old Hen Zada from Syria, who participated in table tennis. Surfing also made its Olympic debut this year, not much unexpected as both the men's and women's divisions had former world champions win. I would like to note that in the 2024 Olympics in Paris, the surfing competition will be held in Tahiti, 15,700 kilometers away. That will make it the most distant competition from a main Olympic site since the 1956 Melbourne Games when the equestrian events had to be held in Stockholm

because of an Australian animal quarantine. The hot and cold award goes to American baseball second baseman Eddie Alvarez. With his silver medal in baseball, he became the sixth person in history to win a medal at both the summer and winter Olympics. He previously won a silver medal in 2014 in short track speed skating. Finally, I'll end with some national awards. Kudos to Turkmenistan and Burkina Faso for winning their first ever Olympic medals.

Turkmenistan won a silver in women's weightlifting, and Burkina Faso won a bronze in the men's triple jump. Also winning their first gold medals were Bermuda in women's triathlon, the Philippines in women's weightlifting, and Kotter in the men's high jump. However, I want to go out of my way to give a very special recognition to the tiny country of San Marino. They too won their first ever Olympic medal. That makes them the smallest country in the world ever to win a medal at the Olympics, taking that distinction away from Liechtenstein by about 4,000 people. Alessandra Perrelli won a bronze medal in women's trap shooting. However, that isn't the end of the story.

San Marino wasn't done, not by a long shot. Pirelli and her partner Gian Marco Bertie won the silver medal in mixed team trap shooting. and San Marino still wasn't done. Miles Amine then won the bronze medal in the 86-kilogram category of men's freestyle wrestling. That's three Olympic medals for a country of 34,000 people. That means on a per capita basis, San Marino won an Olympic medal for every 11,310 people in the country. By far, the greatest per capita performance in Olympic history. To put this into perspective, the country with the most medals, the United States, the United States,

United States won a medal for every 2.9 million people, and the runner-up China won a medal for every 16.4 million people. India only won seven medals, the same number that Emma McKeehan won individually. Their per capita medals were won for every 197 million people. That means that San Marino's per capita performance at the Tokyo Olympics was 17,430 times greater than India's. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them.

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