Five Ring Circus

“Instantly, scoreboards showed Aicher had finished in 1 minutes, 36.14 seconds — four-hundredths of a second behind. Johnson sighed and rubbed a hand over her head in relief. Johnson ultimately won and Aicher took the silver, their careers forever altered by that tiny difference determined by the most important team at the Olympics you don’t know about — the Omega timekeepers.” The most important team at the Olympics isn’t a country. It’s the timekeepers. “Since the Swiss timing giant sent employees with 30 stopwatches to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympics, Omega’s business of keeping results at the Olympics has grown so large and sophisticated that a delegation from the company is already in Los Angeles preparing for the Olympics’ return in 2028.”

+ Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic hex continues after faltering in team combined slalom.

+ Speed skating star Leerdam wins gold as fiance Jake Paul weeps. (The former was enjoyable, the latter more so.)

+ “A postrace interview with the bronze medal winner in the men’s Olympic biathlon competition on Tuesday took an unexpected turn when he revealed in a live broadcast that he had been unfaithful to his girlfriend.” (He basically seemed to be trying to get her back. Will it, or a bronze, be enough?)