Day 3, Monday July 30th

Another day of Olympic competition has come to a close.  Ryan is getting ready for a work trip, so this is Kristin updating.  I apologize in advance if my post is not as witty and entertaining as his!

The biggest change to our fantasy standings today was Closet Russian Woman's Basketball Fan (Jonathan) storming to a huge lead.  CRWBF earned medals in swimming, shooting, and two gold medals for the Chinese men's gymnastics team. 

Speaking of gymnastics, there was quite a scandal in the men's team competition that had a huge effect on our leader board.  The competition was coming to a close, and a Japanese gymnast was completing his last event- the pommel horse.  On his dismount, he wobbled quite a bit and received a very low score.  After that performance, it was declared that the Chinese won the gold, Great Britain surprised everyone with a silver, and Ukraine earned the bronze.    Just as we were enjoying the Olympic moment of the home crowd cheering, the Japanese protested, flashed some cash (literally), and the score was changed, catapulting the Japanese into second place.   From this one change, Union Jim (Jimmy) went from zero to six points because he has not one, but TWO, Japanese gymnasts!

Team Mark joined the Mad Hatter in struggling in the swimming department when Ryan Lochte was defeated once again by a Frenchman and failed to medal in the 200 freestyle.  Missy Franklin earned The Cheerio's (Alisha) first gold of these games in the 100 backstroke.

I am reminded how quickly things can change in these games because I have plummeted from first to tied for tenth in two days!  Oh well, there are still a lot of medals to be won!

Day 2 - Sunday July 29th

Day 2 of the Games wrapped up with many events getting under way and heading closer toward delivering medals.  Swimming is the biggest juggernaut currently clipping along and delivering nightly medal swings.


Here are your standings after Day 2:

Fish and Chips of Gold took a huge step forward today by featuring 4 medal winners - Gold in diving, Vollmer's World Record Gold in the 100m Butterfly, an Archery team silver medal to China, and the first Wild Card points awarded in these games to Rebecca Addlington of Great Britain in the 400m Freestyle.  NBC ran a feature story on her carrying the hopes of her country on this race after securing Gold in Beijing.  However, she ended up with the Bronze.  I'm sure the British people hold fast to Coach Reilly's philosophy from The Mighty Ducks when he told his Hawks team "It's not worth winning, if you can't win big," and will duly shun her for failure.  Oh well, Fish and Chips still got a point.

Another interesting swimming note is that The Tony Danzas are awarded 3 points for Matt Grevers in relation to the silver medal for the 4x100m Freestyle relay.  Even though Grevers did not swim the final, he still swam in the preliminary heats and is awarded a medal.  Therefore, The Tony Danzas poached a quality amount of points while watching it all happen.





The other big story of the day with huge ramifications for the Fantasy teams was the high drama around the USA Women's Gymnastics team.  The big winner of the night is Team Mark, while not securing any medals in gymnastics, Aly Raisman's rise to the top of the US team and subsequent eligibility for the All-Around finals secures her an additional medal opportunity that was not previously projected.  I believe she now has potential for 20 points (Team, All-Around, Floor, and Balance Beam).  Pretty huge for being the 3rd US gymnast off the board.  Team Faster, Higher, Stronger stays secure with Gabby Douglas and another potential 20 points, while Team Daft Bottin suffers the huge setback along with the emotional Jordyn Weiber, who goes from All-Around Gold Medal favorite to not even in the competition.  Now her potential points drop to only 10.  Very interesting to see how those picks have fallen out.  I'm beginning to think that The Dream Team took the right approach in picking the USA Men's and Women's basketball teams with his first two picks - there are very few "sure things" in the Olympics. 

One other note - it was discovered today that Chinese Women's Archer Fang Yuting was inadvertently listed twice on the projections, twice on the labels, and thus was drafted twice by Teams Fish and Chips of Gold and Lucy in the Sky with Gold Medals.  Each side will be rewarded the points for the team Silver as there's not much we can do about it now.  Next time I'll be sure to copy Michael Phelps a few times instead.

The drama continues on day 3...

Day 1 - Saturday July 28

Day 1 of the Games has come to a close, and already there are exciting upsets and surprises!


None bigger than the great equalizer...Michael Phelps doesn't even medal!  Ryan Lochte (and Team Mark) 1, Michael Phelps (and Team Mad Hatter) 0.

Here are your standings after Day 1:

For reference here so that you know which team is representing each person:
Mad Hatter - Kara
Team Mark - Mark (Seriously?)
The Cheerios - Alisha
Closet Russian Women's BBall Fan - Jonathan
The Dream Team - Trent
The Daft Bottin - Kristin J
Faster, Higher, Stronger - Kristin D
Fish and Chips of Gold - Katie
The Tony Danzas - Brad
Lucy in the Sky with Gold Medals - Ryan
Union Jim - Jimmy

The Dream Team and Faster, Higher, Stronger have taken the lead.  TDT was bolstered by the first ever Chinese gold medal swimmer in Sun Yang.  The clear lead was in grasp, however the American archers soundly defeated the South Koreans in the semi-finals, relegating the gold medal favorites to the Bronze medal.  This defeat had ramifications for multiple teams, as all three Korean archers were chosen in the draft. 

However, the further result from this defeat helped out Faster, Higher, Stronger (Italian Archer) and The Daft Bottin (American Archer).  FHS took the Super Mario Bros. approach and rode the Italians to victory today with the aforementioned archer and taking the Fencing bronze medal.  The Italians swept the podium in fencing, so FHS clearly followed the trail of pasta nicely.

The other notable result of the day was the narrow escape by the USA Women's Basketball team, with The Dream Team breathing a sigh of relief after the team was able to pull away from Croatia in the 4th quarter.  The Dream Team is banking heavily on both the Men's and Women's USA Basketball teams taking gold, so I think he will sleep better with the customary 40 point blowouts that are bound to follow.

Men's gymnastics will be one to watch (or avoid watching - the men's floor exercise is just silly), as favorites from China and Japan have faltered or been replaced from injury.  No one drafted the injured gymnast, but it could hurt China's team gold chances.

The medals will start accumulating quickly in the coming days.  Stay tuned for what is sure to be a rapidly changing leaderboard!  If you want to see the entire scoresheet, I'm going to post the update to the following link on google docs:  
2012 Fantasy Olympics Scoresheet

On another note, this tape-delay is just awful.  Lots of funny stuff on twitter at #nbcfail.  It's ridiculous when NBC delays the Phelps/Lochte race, but makes it the lead story on the NBC Nightly News.  

Teams!

2012 Summer Fantasy Olympics Rules

1. Each team will have 16 athletes and/or teams and 1 tiebreaker country. 

2. Draft order will be determined by a random draw.  Draft order will reverse each round.  Ex. Round 1 will go in order from 1-11, round 2 from 11-1, round 3 from 1-11, etc.  Each player gets one pick per round for 17 rounds.

"3. Each player will select a total of 16 athletes that will fill the following roster spots on your team:

One athlete or team per sport (14) and two wild cards from any sport.  Everyone must also choose a country to serve as a tiebreaker."

4. All remaining athletes will become free agents.  However, all teams will lock on 28-Jul-2012 at the beginning of the first event.  Trades may be made between teams, but only on the night of the draft.  No changes can be made to the rosters after these first events begin. A player may draft a tiebreaker country in any round, but remember that the medals won by that country will only come into play in the event of a tie.

5. The winner will be the player with the most points at the end of the 2012 Summer Games.  Points will be assigned as follows: INDIVIDUAL EVENTS: 5 points for a gold medal, 3 points for a silver medal, and 1 point for a bronze medal. TEAM EVENTS: 10 points for a gold medal, 5 points for a silver medal, and 3 point for a bronze medal.  Each player's final score will be based on an aggregate score from his or her team members.

6. If an athlete competes in both team and individual events (for example, a swimmer), that athlete can be selected as an individual, earning medals for both the individual and team events.  The team cannot be selected as a unit.  If, however, medals in an event are only awarded on a team-by-team basis (for example, basketball), only the team can be selected.

7. Medal counts will be updated in the official spreadsheet by the Commissioner or the Commissioneress on a more or less nightly basis and posted to the blog http://fantasyolympicgames.blogspot.com

8. Each player will select one country whose total medal count will be used to determine a winner, in the event of a tie among two or more players' aggregate scores. If the total medal count fails to break the tie, then the gold count, silver count, and finally the bronze count, will be used.

9. In the event that an athlete on your team is caught doping at any point during the games, you will be deducted 5 points.

10. In the event that an athlete on your team is kicked out because of a stupid facebook or twitter post at any point during the games, you will be deducted 5 points.

11.  If an athlete is stripped of a medal you will lose the points for that medal.