Everything you need to know about tonight’s Olympic primetime coverage—without knowing what actually happened.
WOMEN’S 10M PLATFORM
The Chinese diving team will be looking to bounce back from yesterday’s “disappointing” silver medal in the men’s 3m springboard competition. As is always the case when people jump off boards into water, the Chinese are favored and expected to take gold. Nineteen-year-old Chen Ruolin is the defending champ in this event, and she already won the 10m synchronized competition in London, which she also won in 2008. That means that a 19-year-old has a chance to become a two-time, two-time gold medalist. I can’t even….
MEN’S TRIPLE JUMP
American Christian Taylor comes in as the lone favorite after the other pre-tournament favorite, Great Britain’s once-missing Phllips Idowu, failed to qualify for the finals. Will Claye, Taylor’s teammate at the University of Florida, won bronze in the long jump and is expected to challenge for a medal here as well. Can the Americans make it a second straight day with a gold-silver result in track and field? Or will another jump-jump-jumper spoil those plans? The effort you’d have to go through not to watch this, which should be interspersed through NBC’s coverage, is not worth it.
MEN’S 800M
David Rudisha of Kenya is the defending world champ and the favorite. He’s also the world-record holder with a time of 1:41.01. This race is just straight-up amazing. More than one person runs a ridiculously fast time in the context of Olympic history. If you actually chop the time up and see how fast they’re running each 100m, you will immediately cease to exist. So, don’t do that, but definitely watch this race. Basically, everyone who runs is better than everyone else, ever.
MEN’S 200M
You’re going to watch this race, so here is a theory: Usain Bolt never runs as fast as he can because if he does, he’ll explode into a million tiny Usain Bolts, and since they have the same DNA as him, they’ll then run as fast as they can, and they’ll explode, increasing the number of Usain Bolts by a factor of a million, and then all those Usain Bolts will do the same thing, and so on and so forth. Eventually, the world would just be Usain Bolts. I think this means Usain Bolt is the God Particle, which, you’re welcome, science.
WOMEN’S JAVELIN THROW
Barbora (cool name!) Spotakova of the Czech Republic is the world’s best repurposed-hunting-paraphernalia thrower. She has the world record, and no one’s close. So your decision is whether or not you want to see Barbora Spotakova compete against younger versions of Barbora Spotakova because she’s pretty much only competing against her personal bests. I’d suggest maybe including an accuracy component in the future, Mr. Olympics, but what do I know? I’m just a guy who happened to get TWO BULLSEYES IN ONE SINGLE GAME OF DARTS.
MEN’S DECATHALON
Ashton Eaton enters the second and final day of the decathlon competition as the leader and somewhat overwhelming favorite, after setting the world record at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Trey Hardee, two-time defending world champ in the event, is behind Eaton in second place. Today’s events include 110m hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and 1,500m. If American domination is your thing, sorry about globalization, but you should definitely check this out.