Day 8: Need for Speed

We make the shift from speed in the pool to speed on the track today and we'll see who speeds up the leaderboard in the next week.

One thing that has not been built on speed, but rather the slow, continuous march of a Godzilla through the city has been the Fire Dragons' domination of opponents in claiming gold during this fantasy games.  Perhaps now the Fire Dragons will be less like Godzilla but more like Smaug, the fierce dragon from The Hobbit who hoarded his golden treasure in a mountain for hundreds of years. Now the Fire Dragons will look to defend their place at the top of the mountain for the final week. The Fire Dragons claimed another gold in Fencing from Sofia Velikaya.  They were also looking strong in Tennis with world #1 Novak Djokovic looking to secure the hyper-rare Golden Grand Slam that only Steffi Graf has previously completed - winning all four grand slams and the Olympics in the same year.  However, Djokovic got frustrated, threw a racket in the stands, broke another, and lost, finishing off the stand and then withdrawing from the doubles tournament.  Not a joke from the Djoker.

SamuRyan's Tennis selection Ash Barty (women's world #1) did happen to pull off the Bronze medal in mixed doubles, salvaging her games after suffering a huge loss in round 1 of the singles event.

In the 100m women's final today Kara-oke started off a huge points day claiming the Gold pick with Elaine Thompson-Herah over SamuRyan's four-named flyer looking for a four-peat Shelly-Ann Frayser-Price who took silver as part of the Jamaican sweep in the event. Kara-oke also secured a great Wild Card pick with the New Zealand women's rugby team claiming gold and getting the 20 point bonus.

Hibachi Ninjas continue to get a lift from China's male weightlifting team, grabbing another Gold. TokYoMama rode the midnight train and grabbed a Bronze from the Georgia men's team.

Wasabi Warriors has continued to ride the wave to 3rd place, behind amazing performances from probably the two best swimmers at the Games: Caeleb Dressel of the US and Emma McKeon of Australia.  Dressel grabbed a gold and McKeon a Bronze.  

Another McAussie was Kaylee McKeown who secured a Gold and a Bronze for Ra-men+women.

Katie Ledecky of SamuRyan and Ariarne Titmus of TokYoMama had another head to head showdown in the 800m race and this time Ledecky held off Titmus for the Gold. Both finish with 4 medals in the games.

Day 7: The Gold Standard

Another day of events and there's a new leader at the top of the board, and it's easy to see why the Fire Dragons are at the top with 9 gold medals!  That's averaging more than 1 gold per day which is a tough pace to beat.

The Legendary League of Pokemon continues to get plenty of legendary performances, and is only 1 point out of first.  Despite not as many gold medals his team has amassed 17 medals, 3 more than the Fire Dragons as the next closest team.

Leading off the Gold rush today is An San of South Korean Archery hitting a bullseye on her THIRD Gold of the games, and of course An San is also carrying the Fire Dragons to the top.

Badminton had the first final competition with the mixxed doubles - Team China 1 faced Team China 2 and China won.  Unfortunately for League of Pokemon and Hibachi Ninjas they picked the silver Chinese team members, but still get 5 points.

Table Tennis also had a pair of Chinese competitors in the finals with Ma Long of Ra-men+women besting Fan Zhendong of Kara-Oke for the Gold.

Regular ol' Tennis had their first final event with the Men's mixed doubles final with a Balkan battle, pitting Croatia vs Croatia.  Croatia won and Wasabi Warriors was glad because she drafted one of the four Croatian competitiors (Mektic) and grabbed a Gold. 

Track and Field began today! The first medal was handed out in the 10000m race, and two competitors in the fantasy olympiad scored points. Selemon Barega of Ethiopia was the favorite in the 5000m but he pulled out the Gold medal in this race, making him a solid contender for double Gold in these two distance events.  Hibachi Ninjas are ready to keep chopping up the competition. Silver went to Joshua Cheptegi of the Fire Ninjas, who have enough points anyway.

Swimming wraps up soon but there are still a flurry of medals coming through. 

• Evgeny Rylov of ROC and League of Pokemon continued his exceptional Games with a Gold in the Backstroke. Team Ryan (SamuRyan and Ryan Murphy) took the silver.
• Duncan Scott, Great Britain, of Ra-men+women grabbbed a silver in the 200IM
• The Aussie women strike again in the 100m free with Emma McKeon of Wasabi Warriors grabbing Gold and Cate Campbell of Fire Dragons took the Bronze

Finally, Rowing keeps going stroke after stroke with plenty of points handed out today:

• Hibachi Ninjas - Germany Men Silver
• TokYoMama - Croatia Men Bronze
• Kara-oke - New Zealand Women Silver, Gold

The Kiwi women's rowing team has amassed 30 points so far and has propelled Kara-oke from the depths of Mordor to within striking range of Middle Earth.  

Day 6: Coronation Day

One of the biggest events of the games - the women's Artistic Gymnastics all-around final - was without the overwhelming favorite and #1 pick Simone Biles, but the show must go on and the coronation of the princess of the games still occurred.  Fire Dragons celebrated all night long with Suni Lee claiming the Gold and getting a chance to well outperform her expectations.  

Even with the win, it's only one event and plenty more wins registered today.  League of Pokemon hangs on for another day to the top spot:

Things remain very tight through the middle of the pack and one medal can swing the whole scoreboard.  Don't forget the team points are worth double! Track and Field events begin tomorrow, too.

Highlights from today (sorry, getting a late start so low on analysis or creativity today):

• Fencing saw a gold for Deriglazova of League of Pokemon and a Bronze for Volpi of Ra-men+women
• Table Tennis women's final saw a trio of medals presented: Gold - Chen Meng of Hibachi Ninjas, Silver - Sun Yingsha of Wasabi Warriors, and Bronze to Mima Ito of Fire Dragons
• Rowing had another string of finals:
• Croatia Men - Gold - TokyoMama
• Ireland Men - Gold - Fire Dragons
• New Zealand Women - Gold - Kara-oke
• Netherlands Women - Bronze - League of Pokemon
• Swimming continued with plenty of thrilling finishes with big wins for Caeleb Dressel and a come from behind silver for Katie Ledecky
• Caeleb Dressel - Gold - Wasabi Warriors
• Kliment Kolesnikov - Bronze - League of Pokemon
• Katie Ledecky - Silver - SamuRyan
• Emma McKeon - Bronze - Wasabi Warriors
• Ariarne Titmus - Bronze - TokYoMama

Who will be crowned the champion of the Fantasy Olympics? We approach the turn for home this weekend, so stay tuned over the next couple of days...

Day 5: Don't Stop Believin'

Finally on Day 5 - everyone has registered points on the board.  Like the famous Journey song, Kara-oke should be shoutin' out Don't Stop Believin' because there are plenty of points still to grab in the next week and a half.

However, The Legendary League of Pokemon continue to consistently amass points, striving to be the best, like no one ever was. Today, they were singing "Party in the USA" as the 3x3 Women's Basketball team claimed the first ever Gold medal in this event. However it didn't take long for the tune to quickly change to "Back in the USSR," as Evgeny Rylov continues exceeding expectations and grabs a silver in the 200m relay with ROC.

The Fire Dragons continue to "Take it to the Limit" by having the most Gold medals of any team. The big flex today is with the Latvian 3x3 men's team claiming the Gold for 20 big points. Diving also made a splash with another Chinese gold in Xie Siyi.

SamuRyan had a big climb up the "Wonderwall" today jumping to 3rd place. Leading the way was Oh Sang-Uk singin' "Don't Fence Me In" on the way to the team Sabre Gold. Katie Ledecky took the "Slow Ride" winning the 1500m Gold, and the Serbian men's 3x3 team claimed the Bronze medal. Of note, Filippo Ganna of Italy is SamuRyan's cyclist and had a chance in the road cycling time trial race today but finished 5th by 1 second.  Ganna is also expected to do well in the track cycling events as one of the only cross-over athletes.

The biggest bundle of points on the day were in the typhoon-delayed Rowing event finals, with many of the men's and women's events finishing today.  So let's go "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" to see a recap of our team winners:

1. Wasabi Warriors - Netherlands men Gold and Silver
2. SamuRyan - Australia women Gold and Bronze
3. League of Pokemon - Netherlands women Silver and Bronze
4. Kara-oke (finally!) - New Zealand women Silver

Other key updates:

• Kara-Oke lived in "China Grove" today with a diving gold Wang Zongyuan and a bronze from the 3x3 Chinese women's team.  Also present was Hibachi Ninjas with the 3rd Gold in Weightlifting for the Chinese men.
• TokYoMama was "Hungry like the Wolf" with a Hungarian fencing team bronze with Szilagyi.
• Ra-men+women sang "It's Raining Men" watching the Men's Gymnastics all-around final with their favorite Nikita Nagorny from ROC, but unfortunately some missteps only netted Nagorny the Bronze.  He nearly claimed the silver after the Chinese gynmast was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct and incurred a celebration penalty of .3 points, after he exited the mat and then re-entered to celebrate further.  The deduction made it much closer than it should have been, but he hung on for silver.  Duncan Scott also grabbed a Gold in a swimming relay from Great Britain.
• "The Land Down Under" remains a big hit in the pool for the Aussies with Elijah Winnington scoring a bronze for Hibachi Ninjas, and Ariane Titmus dominating again with a Gold for TokYoMama

Some of the team events don't finish until late in the games, so it's awesome to see the big points come in early for some of the first team events.  What will shake up the scoreboard tomorrow?

I hope you enjoyed all the sing-a-long selections, so I'll leave you with an awesome Olympic montage video at this link.

Day 4: American Tragedy

No way to summarize all the thoughts and confusion about Simone Biles' withdrawal today, but I hope that she can find a way to compete in the remaining events.  I know TokYoMama is counting on plenty from the #1 overall pick.

My first thoughts on seeing and processing what was happening was the "Yips."  I'm a huge baseball fan and my mind immediately went to Chuck Knoblauch and Rick Ankiel - two all stars that completely lost the ability to do what they were great at overnight.

Chuck Knoblauch was a gold glove winning second baseman for the Yankees, and part of their dominating run of World Series titles in the late 90s.  Suddenly he could not throw from second base to first base (not close), hit an old lady in the stands, then relegated to left field and his career was over a year later, unable to recover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnJFklbt0es

Rick Ankiel was a dominating pitcher on the rise for the Cardinals, and was pitching in the playoffs when the Yips hit - all of a sudden in the middle of an inning he could not throw the ball anywhere near the plate.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDZX525CSvw

Wild pitch after wild pitch shut him down, and then after repeating on another try a few days later, Rick Ankiel was out of baseball.  To his credit he put in an amazing amount of work and resurrected his career as a very good outfielder and very good hitter and made it back to the majors in one of the greatest comeback stories ever.

I hope Biles' story ends well, but it's extremely unfortunate to see this playing out on the biggest stage ever. Getting the yips in gymnastics could mean a disastrous injury instead of just riding the bench, so I hope this is not the end of her career.

Here's the scoreboard update for today:

Kara-oke remains scoreless, but there is still plenty to come.  The biggest loss is probably the major upset of Naomi Osaka in Tennis - one of the favorites for gold after lighting the torch during the opening ceremonies.  A major loss for Japan and for Kara-oke.

League of Pokemon maintains a consistent pace of finding a way to earn medals each day.  The 100m backstroke final saw BOTH swimmers from ROC on League of Pokemon taking on the favorite Ryan Murphy from USA (and SamuRyan).  Unfortunately, Murphy took the bronze with ROC taking the first two spots, and granting League of Pokemon 15 points.

And great Scott, Ra-men+women had a big day getting a Gold and a Bronze from the Chinese Taipei weightlifting team, and scored 15 points in swimming from Kaylee McKeown and Duncan Scott.

Surfing wrapped up and out of the 3 drafted athletes, only Carissa Moore of the US landed on the medal stand with a Gold medal, giving TokYoMama more than expected. Tough swimming for John John and Gabrielle.

Diving splashed in a gold for Hibachi Ninjas and Chen Yuxi.

The first team competition is complete with softball - the US went into the finals undefeated but facing the home team for Japan. After an extremely close battle the Japanese came out as winners (and stopping a US rally with one of the most unbelievable double plays I've ever seen). This means big points for TokYoMama, while only a silver for Wasabi Warriors. League of Pokemon grabs the Bronze with Canada defeating Mexico.

Day 3: Something in the Water

Day 3 is droppin' that coin and these medals are comin' out CLEAN cuz the water events are producing for our teams.

Diving saw Tom Daley scoring the first gold of the games for SamuRyan.  Daley ended the Chinese run of domination in diving and it couldn't have come at a better time.

Swimming got Caeleb Dressel going with a dominating 4x100 relay win, which has Wasabi Warriors excited for her top pick. The hyped match between Katie Ledecky of the US and Ariane Titmus of Australia did not disappoint with Ariane swimming like Ariel the mermaid and zooming by Ledecky at the end. TokYoMomma celebrates the point victory over SamuRyan.  The Aussies tagged another one on the board with Emma McKeon grabbing a bronze for Wasabi Warriors.

Other medal winner quick hits (not from the water):

• Archery - Kim Woo-Jin wins the men's team event for Korea and for SamuRyan (Woooooo!!!)
• Fencing - Sofia Velikaya slashes her way to a Silver in the Sabre for Pokemon League
• Gymnastics - Big day for lots of teams with the first medals handed out for the Men's team finals.  The final came down to .1 points between Gold and Silver, and the Northern Eurasian Olympic Committee hung on for Gold grabbing needed points for Ra-Men+Women and Hibachi Ninjas. China grabbed the Bronze (Also less than a point from Gold), and SamuRyan settles for 3 points.
• Table Tennis saw the mixed team finals grab a win for the home Country in Japan. Mima Ito puts 10 more points on the board for Fire Dragons. The expected favorites, China, lost the gold medal match and settle for silver, giving 5 points to League of Pokemon and SamuRyan.
• Weightlifting keeps rolling along and the Chinese women lift up another medal - a silver for League of Pokemon.

After not winning anything yet, I was very excited to have 5 medals go on the board for my team today.  Who will be the next big mover and shaker on the board?  I know TokYoMama is excited for #1 pick Simone Biles to finally have her first medal night tomorrow.
Also, Kara-oke - wrestling hasn't started yet so we're all going to be slammed to the mat by your Northern Eurasian team soon, don't worry.

Day 2: Upset City Baby!

In what may become the theme of the Games, Tokyo is shaping up to be Upset City.  The "most unpredictable games" might come true.  

What I hope is predictable will be my nightly scorekeeping, so here's the standings after Day 2:

RECAP:

The "Dream Team" US Men's Basketball team was already on the struggle bus, but still no one expected a first round loss to France.  And no, Tony Parker still doesn't play for France. Big OOF.

Ash Barty of Australia, world #1 Tennis player, just won WIMBLEDON....knocked out in the first round by a Spaniard. Ash was my Tennis selection and I was stoked I grabbed a sure thing.  I'm pretty sure this is all my fault. 

Skateboarding made its debut yesterday and the only write-in selection in the draft was TokYoMama's Nyjah Huston of the US - unfortunately, Nyjah couldn't execute the mega tricks and fell off the medal stand.  He was the overwhelming favorite in the Street competition.  It's tough on the streets.

Fencing continues to produce unexpected results - only Inna Deriglazova of ROC managed to grab a silver today despite multiple competitors in the running.  League of Pokemon were glad they did not glaze over this pick on the board.

Archery continued to show South Korea's dominance with the women's team taking the Gold.  This provided Fire Dragons with the pick of the draft so far - An San grabs another gold. Kang Chae-Young also grabs a gold for League of Pokemon. However, this proved to be disastrous for Wasabi Warriors as Choi Mi-Sun, a GOLD MEDALIST from Rio is left off the women's squad and doesn't get any points.  S. Korea is just THAT good. Unfortunately, that's sundown on Archery points for Wasabi Warriors.

Diving launched with springboard synchronized diving and China won.  Good news for Ra-Men and Wasabi.

Gymnastics saw plenty of qualifying events and really the only surprise so far is Kohei Uchimura - the star of the Rio games and Japan's superhero on High Bar falls off during qualifying and does not make it to the event finals.  A crushing blow for League of Pokemon who had high hopes for the high bar competitor, but now will face a low blow with 0 points in Gymnastics.

Swimming gets some points on the board with the Aussie women kangaroo hopping to the top of the leaderboard with a women's relay win for Fire Dragons and Wasabi Warriors.  Hibachi Ninjas were also enjoying a bloomin' silver medal from Jack McLoughlin.

Weighlifting continues to see China dominate - DOUBLE gold for Hibachi Ninjas.

What could happen tomorrow? Will I ever earn a point? We'll all watch and find out...

Day 1: So Many Events!

I'm currently watching a skateboarding final and a dude's phone fell out of his pocket.  Of course, then he stopped in the middle of his Olympic program to put the phone back in his baggy shorts.  The impeccably groomed horses from the Equestiran Dressage event are appalled, but this is the OLYMPICS and if you can use a broom to help a stone slide down some ice and win a medal then why not?

I saw bits of so many events beginning today - it's going to be exciting to see how things shape up!  Also, there's a typhoon heading toward Tokyo and that means the surfing is going to be LIT.

What's also LIT is our first look at the scoreboard with the first medals awarded in the games:

Three gold medals dropped today to kick off the scoring:

• League of Pokemon snatched a gold from China's women weightlifting team, along with keeping SamuRyan's US squad off the medal stand. 
  
  
• TokYoMama sliced their way to a quick gold in the men's Sabre finals with Aron Szilagyi of Hungary securing the first Fencing medal of the games. The upset here is for SamuRyan with Oh Sang-uk deciding to suck and the #1 seed fell in the quarterfinals, finishing off the stand. TokYoMama will stay hungry for more with the Hungarians a strong contender for the Sabre team finals gold.
  
  
• Fire Dragons shot to the lead with the Archery mixed doubles Gold medal with An San winning the first ever Gold for the event.  The South Korean team is stacked with excellence in Archery, and which team member got to compete in the event was unknown heading into the games.  I believe the results of some qualifying matches helped to settle the team and both the male and female participants were unexpetced, making this a huge value for the Fire Dragons and a big loss of potential points for Pokemon, Wasabi Warriors, and SamuRyan.  Still plenty of medal opportunities to come, but this gives a huge advantage to the Fire Dragon squad.

Lots more to come tomorrow with swimming kicking off and the points are going to start piling up quickly.  Buckle up...

Draft Results and Projections

OLYMPIANS,

Thank you so much again for coming to participate in this crazy event! We love each of you and really are so thankful you are willing to participate!

We have already been enjoying watching events all day and tracking on who has which athlete. I recommend printing out your team (and maybe everyone's!) to track who to cheer for. Caleb and I had a couple weightlifters going head to head earlier and I lost.

If you want to print I recommend going to the players page, filtering on your team, and then exporting out an excel file with your team and you can format the info you want. You also can print from the google sheets file.

There already have been a number of medals awarded and I'll be updating the scoreboard nightly (don't want to spoil the results all day!).

I will be making updates based on actual day by day results, so I want to caution that what you may watch live in "Prime time" evening for us is really happening in the next day in Tokyo, so don't worry if I didn't account for your gold medalist, yet - it may show up the next day.

DRAFT GRADES

I took an export of the draft results and tabulated the projected points for each team. This can kind of be seen as a "draft grade." The one caveat is all the write-in selections do not have projected points added, so while TokYoMama may be at the bottom of these standings, they have the most write-in athletes at 3 which greatly impact these results.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

2021 Summer Fantasy Olympics Rules

WELCOME TO TOKYO

1. Each team will have 21 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 1-8, round 2 from 8-1, round 3 from 1-8, etc.  Each player gets one pick per round for 22 rounds.

3. Each player will select a total of 21 athletes/teams that will fill the following roster spots on your team: One athlete or team per sport (19) and two wild cards from any sport.  Everyone must also choose a country to serve as a tiebreaker.

4. All remaining athletes/teams will become free agents.  However, all teams will lock on 24-Jul-2021 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 2021 Summer Games.  Points will be assigned as follows: INDIVIDUAL EVENTS: 10 points for a gold medal, 5 points for a silver medal, and 3 point for a bronze medal. TEAM EVENTS: 20 points for a gold medal, 10 points for a silver medal, and 6 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 (ex. 4x100m relay 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. New for 2021: Rowing, Weightlifting and Wrestling will be scored based on total points for all individual medals won by a drafted country.  For example, if USA women win 3 gold weightlifting medals, then the team that drafted USA women as their Weightlifting group will earn 10x3=30pts.

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, instagram, or twitter post at any point during the games, you will be deducted 5 points. New for 2021: TikTok

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

****SPECIAL COVID-19 BULLETIN**** If an athlete/team is denied participation due to a COVID-19 positive result, then this will not be a loss of any earned points for your team, but there will not be any opportunity to replace your athlete/team