The Knarfmo Report: Competition Days 5-7

10 October 2009

Hello from the land of the green and orange!

We've had seven days of competition, and Ainkien is miraculously 3rd on the medals table even though we had a dismal run in the rowing events. It used to be that we were pretty good with oars, but there is a lot of competition from all around the world. Hats off to Oonte Rotocco, New Gelderland, Escambia and Buesti & Ravoi for winning rowing golds on Day 7. In fact, looking at all of Day 7's finalists, there is no one nation dominating things: a couple of placings by Roanoke Island, Norvegia and New Gelderland, but definitely more competitive than in the past.

At the velodrome, Ainkien took a surprise bronze and a surprise 5th place finish in the Keirin. It's not a popular discipline in Ainkien, but such is the nature of sport: you could point all of your effort in one event and not place, but an unheralded athlete could come from nowhere and win gold. That's what makes it interesting. Congratulations to Buesti & Ravoi and Myon for winning the gold and silver in this event.

A couple of random thoughts:
Isporos is, overall, a significant Simlympic swimming power, but I'm seeing them branch out from the swimming events a bit. They are doing well in the sailing events, and I'm expecting them to actually win some non-swimming medals in the games.
As far as I know, Tenshi remains the only African nation in the Simlympics, and I think they are do fairly well in the games. Though at this point they are toward the middle of the medals table, I've seen the Tenshi flag showing up quite a bit in finals. We make a big deal out of medals in the Simlympics (and Olympics), but I think it is an accomplishment to just make the finals in these events. This is supposed to represent a world championship and 8th place out of, well, 6 billion, isn't bad. But I'll save my full lecture on this for another time.

-knarfmo