Lifestyle
These Olympic medals don’t exist — so we made them up
Clockwise from left, pole vaulter Armand Duplantis, the Canoe Slalom Women’s Kayak Cross, women’s rugby player Sammy Sullivan, and the Men’s 100m Final.
Kirill Kudrtavtsev/AFP via Getty Images; Alex Davidson/Getty Images; Kristy Sparow/Getty Images; Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
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Kirill Kudrtavtsev/AFP via Getty Images; Alex Davidson/Getty Images; Kristy Sparow/Getty Images; Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
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The real Olympic medals are given out according to rules about speed, scores, perfection, actually defeating your opponent, all that boring stuff. But what if they weren’t?
What if there were another set of medals we could give to some of the best achievements of the games, even if they weren’t in officially recognized sports? We tried to think of what we’d hand out. So here are nine additional medals — call them the Extra Golds — for some of the additional feats of strength and cleverness that have delighted us in the last two weeks.
The one-man lift of one man
Mijain Lopez Nunez (right) celebrates with his coach on Aug. 6, 2024.
Punit Paranjpe/AFP via Getty Images
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Punit Paranjpe/AFP via Getty Images
It would have been enough that Cuba’s Mijain Lopez Nunez won his fifth consecutive gold medal for Greco-Roman wrestling — becoming the first Summer Olympian ever to hit that milestone. After he finished, he unlaced his shoes and set them on the mat to mark his retirement. But it wasn’t all poignancy — he also playfully flipped one coach onto his back, then lifted another and carried him a few steps. It’s one thing to win your match; it’s another to set a record in a grueling event and then celebrate by picking up an entire wrestling coach and carrying him around.
The 400 meter WHAAAAT?
Quincy Hall on the home straight in the Men’s 400m final on Aug. 7, 2024.
Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
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Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Team USA sprinter Quincy Hall was going to lose the men’s 400 meters. It was obvious. Heading into the last 150 meters or so, he seemed to have been bested by not one, not two, but three of the other guys in the race. And then he just accelerated. It looked magical. One of the curious things about sprinters is that when they’re speeding up, it can almost look like they’re slowing down. As Hall pushed toward the finish line, if you were watching him in a vacuum, you might think he was more spent, more tapped out. But he was somehow passing everybody! And he leaned at the finish line and just edged out Matthew Hudson-Smith of Great Britain to win the gold medal. We still have to admit: We don’t entirely get what happened.
The athlete drop
The beginning of the Canoe Slalom Women’s Kayak Cross heats on Aug. 4, 2024.
Alex Davidson/Getty Images
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Alex Davidson/Getty Images
Olympic sports begin in a lot of ways. A whistle blows, or a pistol bangs, or an athlete runs or serves or jumps. But the gold medal in athlete-dropping can only go to the kayak cross. In this event, several competitors are kept suspended above the course they are about to paddle through. Then they are dropped. Yes, they are flat-out indifferently dumped into the water the way you would release an undersized fish. And, crowded together, they have to navigate a course of buoys and get to the finish line. Anybody can run when a whistle blows or start a game when the referee says so. This is something entirely different.
The 6.25-meter maximum flex
Armand Duplantis set the new Olympic record in the men’s pole vault final on Aug. 5, 2024.
Kirill Kudrtavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
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Kirill Kudrtavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Swedish-American pole vaulter Armand Duplantis — Mondo — already was guaranteed a gold medal. He didn’t need to jump anymore. But Mondo does not jump because he needs to. No, Mondo jumps because he wishes to. And at the Paris finals, even when he already knew he had won, he wished to do something more: swipe the world record held by his greatest rival … [checks notes] himself. Earlier this year, Duplantis jumped 6.24 meters. So what was next? 6.25 meters, obviously. Never one to deny his loyal audience the drama they crave, he took three jumps to clear the bar at that height, but on that last one, he nailed it. Who knows what he’ll do next? Dare we hope for … 6.26 meters?
Audience participation
Léon Marchand reacts after competing in the Men’s 400m Individual Medley Heats on July 28, 2024.
Sarah Stier/Getty Images
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Sarah Stier/Getty Images
The Paris crowds have been thrilling to listen to, overall. Particularly in support of French athletes, they cheer, they yell, they chant, they roar. But they may have peaked when swimmer Léon Marchand was in the pool. Marchand swam in four individual races, and he won four gold medals. And every time, the crowd didn’t just yell for him; they pulsated for him. Whenever he was doing a stroke that brought him rhythmically up out of the water, the crowd made sure that every time they saw his head, they gave him a fresh shout. Let’s be honest: It’s hard to know whether any of this is intelligible to a guy whose head is still mostly underwater and who is hyperfocused on things like his own arms and legs. But it was as if the people watching his races wanted you to be sure they were cheering for no one else, sure they were there for him. And indeed, we knew.
The out of left field leader
Kristen Faulkner passes the finish line during the women’s road race of cycling on Aug. 4, 2024.
Wu Huiwo/Xinhua – Pool/Getty Images
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Wu Huiwo/Xinhua – Pool/Getty Images
U.S. competitor Kristen Faulkner didn’t think until relatively recently that she was going to compete in the women’s road race that runs almost 100 miles through the streets of Paris and surrounding towns. She didn’t even think she was coming to the Olympics until another competitor resigned from the team in July. As in, this July, last month. But things happen, and there she was. Late in the road race, she was in a chasing pair with another cyclist, separated by a few seconds from the leading pair. The announcers talked about whether the chasing pair could make a move — did they have enough left to get close? Could they close the gap? Well, they did close the gap. But almost as soon as the two pairs met and became four competitors together, Faulkner took off. Nobody followed. The announcer yelled, “Nobody is chasing! Nobody is chasing the American, Kristen Faulkner, the gap is exploding!” Faulkner — who only picked up cycling in 2016 – started her move with about two miles to go, and she ultimately won by almost a full minute. She was simply gone. Oh — and a couple days later, she won a gold medal in the track cycling team pursuit, making her the first U.S. woman to win gold medals in two different disciplines. Not the August she thought she was going to have in July, huh?
The last-minute lean
Noah Lyles crosses the finish line to win the Men’s 100m Final on Aug. 4, 2024.
Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
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Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
All of the sprinting events rely on the lean, for the simple reason that the rules state that you cross the finish line with your torso, not your head or your foot. (Quincy Hall, noted above, leaned, too.) Even after the men’s 100 meter dash, many of us believed that Team USA’s Noah Lyles had not won it. We were not even sure he had medaled. When they said he had, in fact, won the gold by five one-thousandths of a second, it felt like … no, he didn’t. He didn’t, did he? As it turned out, he did. Kishane Thompson of Jamaica looked like his essence, his general being, was ahead of Lyles. Your eyes might have told you he was the winner — at least one commentator’s eyes told her he was. Ah, but Lyles has the lean. He won by pushing his chest forward just enough. Lyles ran a remarkable race overall; he’d been in last place at the 40-yard mark. But you have to respect the lean that ultimately sealed the deal.
A note: It was only after I first added Lyles to this list that the news broke that he had competed in the 200 meters after testing positive for COVID. It was a sobering reminder of the lingering effects of COVID on these games that what had been such a uniformly great story turned troubling. Lyles is far from the only athlete who has gotten COVID or competed with COVID. But he has asthma, and particularly given what we know about long COVID, the sight of him leaving the field in a wheelchair was a reminder of the risks that remain, especially in the absence of meaningful precautions.
Use of an accessory
Stephen Nedoroscik celebrates after the Artistic Gymnastics Men’s Pommel Horse Final on Aug. 3, 2024.
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Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Look, by now we all know about Stephen Nedoroscik, “Pommel Horse Guy,” who helped clinch the bronze medal for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team. We know that he is great at pommel horse – a specialist, in fact. We know that he was the last to go, that he had to hit and hit hard in order to win the bronze that was obviously so special to those guys that it might as well have been gold. But we must also recognize the power of his accessory game. Nedoroscik has a couple conditions — coloboma and strabismus — that affect his eyesight, and he says that when he competes on pommel horse, he’s doing it by feel, so he leaves his glasses behind. We (his fans) got to the point where the sight of his glasses hanging on the chalk bowl – as they did during the team final, and as they did when he won an individual bronze medal in pommel horse – had an unmistakable, “Oh, it’s HAPPENING” feeling. Like lots of us, he doesn’t wear his glasses for fashion, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be cool.
Enthusiasm management
Sammy Sullivan wasn’t ready to celebrate until the win was official.
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Kristy Sparow/Getty Images
When the U.S. women won a bronze medal by beating Australia in rugby sevens, it was an absolutely classic last-minute sports moment. With Team USA down 12-7 in the closing seconds, Alex Sedrick ran all the way down the field from almost the opposite end and scored a “try,” tying the match at 12. Team USA would still need a conversion — a pretty easy-looking one, but still – in order to actually win. And so, as the team celebrated Sedrick’s score, one face on the sideline was not ready to celebrate. Sammy Sullivan served the very important function of jinx avoider, because as they waited to see whether they would actually get that conversion, she told her teammates: “SHUT UP.” We’ve all been there, teetering on the edge of jubilation, afraid that other people will ruin it just by admitting it’s happening. We have all lived with the fear that our moment of victory is impossibly fragile and hubris will make it shatter. Sammy Sullivan was all of us: “SHUT UP.”
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Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and Carmy (Jeremy Allen White).
FX
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FX
There has always been a metaphorical parallel between The Bear, the television show, and The Bear, the fictional restaurant on the television show. Even as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) transformed the Italian beef joint into the fancy restaurant of their dreams and wished for a Michelin star, there were undoubtedly locals who thought, “This is great and all, and I’m sure the food is good, but … I liked the beef sandwiches.” There’s still a window at The Bear to get them, but the focus is certainly elsewhere.
When it started, The Bear was mostly about the work that took place in the kitchen. The stresses of too many orders, territoriality from Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the arrival of Sydney, and the tightly wound but undeniably talented Carmy, making everybody both extremely stressed and significantly better. Over time, it shifted and grew, putting together beloved departure episodes like “Fishes” in Season 2, which introduced a boatload of guest stars for a flashback story of a disastrous family dinner before Mikey (Jon Bernthal) died. It spent time with Sydney’s family, it explored the way Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Mikey originally met, it followed Marcus (Lionel Boyce) to Copenhagen, and it went with Richie to work for Andrea (Olivia Colman). All these episodes were excellent. And there was still a kitchen. But the focus seemed to be elsewhere.
At times, the show seemed to have disappeared up its own nose, to the point where you weren’t watching the show The Bear as much as you were watching the phenomenon The Bear. There were too many real-life chef cameos, until it seemed like those chefs were checking a box on a list of “things all the cool kids do.” There were too many other cameos, culminating in a rare miss from the reliably charismatic John Cena. The show placed a lot of narrative weight on Carmy’s love interest, Claire (Molly Gordon) — weight that the underwritten character couldn’t support. But even if every experiment and every diversion had worked, viewers couldn’t be blamed for missing the close focus on the kitchen and the camaraderie — for thinking, “This is all really special, but I do miss the beef sandwiches.”
The fifth and final season dispenses with the departure episodes, and it mostly dispenses with cameos. It all takes place on one day, just after Carmy tells Richie and Sydney that he wants to step back from the restaurant and give it to them and Sugar (Abby Elliott) to run, and it mostly takes place right there at The Bear. Now that the clock set by Jimmy (Oliver Platt) has run out, his money has run out as well, and a series of cascading disasters puts Sydney, Carmy and Richie behind the 8-ball from very early in the day, not least because of the tension hanging over all three of them as they prepare to tell the staff about Carmy’s decision to leave.
Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas).
FX
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FX
We spend this day mostly with the people we know best: our three leads, along with Sugar, Tina, Marcus, and the rest of the staff — including Luca (Will Poulter), who has stayed around to keep working with Marcus. Jimmy is running around with Computer (Brian Koppelman) and a young apprentice of his named Cheese (Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade), trying to figure out what to do about his finances since it is Jimmy, and not just the restaurant, who’s out of money.
This day takes a while to get cooking, so to speak. The first three episodes of the season are slow, the first two in particular. It’s pouring rain outside, the lighting is dim, and the score maintains the same contemplative melancholy for a long, long time. For about two and a half episodes, it feels like one extended, low-energy scene.
But after that, there’s a shift in tone as the staff looks to get through service, and through seven episodes (FX did not make the finale available in advance for critics), the rest of the season is terrific. What you see is the core story of The Bear, which is people trying to serve food and overcome problems, but through the lens of everything that has happened over the show’s run: Carmy’s retreat from his obsessiveness, Richie’s expansive (and inspiring) discovery of his gift for hospitality; Sydney’s stepping forward from second-in-command to leader; Tina’s complex relationship with the restaurant and her grief over Mikey; Sugar and Carmy’s relationship with Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis); the arrival of Marcus as a high-end pastry chef.
The question the show asks over the last four episodes is: Given all those digressions and flashbacks, given all those visits with families and others, given everything we know about where all these people have been and what they’ve experienced, how does a high-pressure service — of the same kind we used to see in that first season — look now? How do they behave differently, and how does their behavior read differently? How are they the same people we have always known, but at a different juncture, in a different context? How do their wins mean more to them, and to the audience?
On the one hand, making a season this way, there are fewer surprising grace notes, like “Napkins,” the Tina/Mikey flashback episode in Season 3, or “Worms,” the episode in Season 4 where Sydney hung out with her cousin (Danielle Deadwyler) and her cousin’s kid. The Bear feels less daring and more conventional.
But oh, when they have victories under pressure? Victories, large or small? It is immensely, richly satisfying. There’s also more comedy other than just the goofy Faks family than we’ve had in a few seasons; Richie is perhaps the MVP of the season, and that’s partly because of how often he gets to be really funny. Ayo Edebiri continues to be the show’s best reactor, showing Syd eternally a little bit surprised (dismayed?) that she’s chosen to throw in her lot with these people.
There are a couple of questions yet to answer in the finale, both little plot items and broader character resolutions. Over these seven episodes, though, there is much to cheer.
Lifestyle
John Cena wanted to step away from the WWE ring before he became ‘too slow for the show’ : Wild Card with Rachel Martin
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: First a confession: I have never watched a WWE match in its entirety. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the athleticism and the performance, it’s just not my thing. But there is something about John Cena I’ve never been able to shake.
Yes, he is a wrestling legend, but he has built a career as an entertainer that transcends the ring. The first time I saw him lead a cast was the 2019 family movie “Playing with Fire” and his rapport with kids in that film didn’t seem like acting at all. The man contains multitudes!
He co-stars with Eric Andre in his newest film, “Little Brother.”
Xie Miao and Yang Enyou in The Furious.
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Norachai Kajchapanont/Lionsgate
There have been some fantastic movies released this year, and we know you can’t see them all. So we’re recommending four recent movies we missed that you should add to your watchlist: The Furious, Tuner, She’s The He, and Heresy.
If you need a few more fun film recommendations, check out these episodes:
Fun movies you may have missed
Our favorite movies on Tubi
We debate the best movies to watch on an airplane
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