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.