(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Monday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE Cincinnati Reds 6, Toronto Blue Jays 3 NY Mets 4, Baltimore Orioles 3 Texas Rangers 4, Pittsburgh Pirates 3 San Diego Padres 5, Minnesota Twins 3 Chicago White Sox 3, San Francisco Giants 5 Seattle Mariners 0, LA Dodgers 3
AMERICAN LEAGUE Houston Astros 5, Boston Red Sox 4 Kansas City Royals 5, LA Angels Tampa Bay Rays 0, Oakland Athletics 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE Arizona Diamondbacks 9, Miami Marlins 6
(NEW YORK) — Three former world record holders, Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, USA’s Katie Ledecky, and Canada’s Summer McIntosh fell well short of their best times in the women’s 400 freestyle event at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Saturday.
In contrast, none of the eight swimmers in the men’s competition on Sunday would have finished better than eighth at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
World-class swimmers rarely get slower in their prime and technology constantly improves, so why aren’t we seeing records drop like usual? Can a pool really be responsible for slowing down the swimmers?
Jud Ready, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Material Science and Engineering, teaches a class on engineering in sports and says a pool can be slow. He spoke with ABC News’ “Start Here” about the difference in this 2024 Olympics pool compared to others.
Ready and his alma mater, Georgia Tech, know about pools. The school hosted swimming competitions in the Atlanta 1996 Games and still boasts the so-called “fastest pool in the country.”
So what makes a pool fast? According to Ready, pool engineers obsess over keeping the water calm.
“You want to not have the other swimmers impact each other,” Ready said. “So any sort of waves or wake or splashing or anything like that, you want that to not impact the body next to you.”
When you’re dog paddling, a few splashes might not make a big difference. However, elite swimmers create waves when they thrash. Some swimmers describe riding the wake of others around them. Some of those waves travel downward, and as they bounce back up, it’s like swimming through ever-so-choppy water.
And the depth of the pool plays a critical role, Ready says.
Well, it turns out that the pool in Paris isn’t very deep. The tiles on the bottom are about 2.2 meters underwater, which is about 7 feet deep. Which is not very deep, according to Ready.
According to World Aquatics, the minimum depth for long swimming must be 2 meters (6.5 feet), but a recommended depth of three meters (9.8 feet) is advised to provide the best environment.
While some experts say 3 meters is the best, others say 2.5 is ideal. But none suggest 2.2 meters.
“And if the pool is deep enough, it’s two and a half,” Ready said. “Somebody has done some calculations to determine that two and a half seems to be a magic number where that energy [of thrashing] has dissipated.”
The differences are slight, but they could explain the slightly slower times in the Paris pool. Other factors at play in pool design include gutters to keep water from ricocheting off the sides, lane dividers to dampen the effect from your neighbors, and jets that affect water movement.
“If we were to do that in an Olympic-sized pool, the current to recirculate many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per hour would create either a current favoring you in one direction or opposing you in another direction,” Ready said.
Ready says modern pools recirculate water from the bottom, pushing swimmers upward. He also mentions that world records were once influenced by full-body swimsuits that made swimmers more buoyant and streamlined, but these swimsuits are now banned at the Olympics, much to his disappointment.
“I want materials to make everything better,” Ready said. “We’ve got technology to make better swimsuits. But some (have) there’s opposition to that. And I’m like, well, let’s go back to swimming in wool swimsuits then, if you’re worried about that.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has not yet responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly one week into the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Team USA has a breakout star.
Stephen Nedoroscik, a 25-year-old pommel horse “specialist” on the U.S. men’s gymnastics team, was crucial in helping his team bring home a bronze medal in Paris, the men’s team’s first Olympic medal in 16 years.
In the final rotation of the team competition on July 29, Nedoroscik scored high enough, 14.866, in his only rotation for the team event to put the U.S. men in third place in the final standings.
“I just stayed in the moment for the whole routine, hearing [my teammates] just cheer me on the whole time,” Nedoroscik told ABC News Tuesday of his medal-winning routine. “By the time I got to the dismount, I thought to myself …, ‘If I put this dismount up and stick the landing, we get a team medal.’ So, literally, as I’m in the air, falling to my feet, you can see the smile already coming to my face, and, man, was that a moment I’ll never forget.”
Here are four things to know about Nedoroscik:
1. He has become known as ‘Mr. Pommel Horse’
Nedoroscik’s skill on the pommel horse, a difficult event that requires extraordinary strength and coordination, has earned him nicknames including “Mr. Pommel Horse,” and “pommel horse guy.”
After completing his 40-second pommel horse routine twice in the team competition, Nedoroscik will perform it again on Saturday, where he’ll have a chance to win an individual gold medal in the pommel horse final.
Nedoroscik told the Washington Post he knew there would be criticism of him only competing in pommel horse, and not the other five apparatuses, and he was prepared.
“I was completely aware of it,” Nedoroscik said. “I really wanted to make the Olympic team, and I knew that there was going to be backlash to it. I do one event compared to these guys that are phenomenal all-arounders. And I am a phenomenal horse guy. But it’s hard to fit on a five-guy team.”
According to his USA Gymnastics biography, Nedoroscik, the current U.S. pommel horse champion, is tied for the most U.S. pommel horse titles in history, at four.
He is also a past world pommel horse champion.
2. He competes with limited vision
Nedoroscik has also gained the nickname “Clark Kent” for the way he takes his glasses off when he competes, a la Superman.
The 25-year-old has shared on TiKTok that he has an eye condition called strabismus, or crossed eyes, which is a misalignment of the eyes that can lead to vision problems, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
He has also said previously that he has coloboma, an eye condition that people are born with in which a part of the tissue that composes the eye is missing, according to the National Eye Institute.
While Nedoroscik used to wear prescription goggles when he competed, he now competes without goggles or glasses.
“I don’t think I actually use my eyes on pommel horse,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s all feeling. I see with my hands.”
3. He is a Rubik’s Cube pro
The pommel horse is not Nedoroscik’s only talent.
Nedoroscik is also a pro at completing the Rubik’s Cube.
Just before competing in the team all-around competition, Nedoroscik posted on social media that he finished a Rubik’s Cube in just over nine seconds.
After the competition, Nedoroscik showed his skill was not a fluke, completing a Rubik’s Cube again in record speed for ABC News’ Good Morning America.
“Where I go the cube go,” he commented beneath a video of the moment on Instagram.
4. Nedoroscik and his girlfriend were both gymnasts at Penn State
Nedoroscik, who originally hails from Massachusetts, graduated from Penn State University in 2020.
He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, according to his USA Gymnastics bio.
Nedoroscik’s girlfriend, Tess McCracken, was also a gymnast at Penn State, according to her Instagram account.
(PARIS) — U.S. women’s gymnastics star Jordan Chiles won two medals at the Summer Olympic Games.
Chiles joined ABC News’ Good Morning America from Disneyland Paris on Tuesday fresh off her bronze medal win in the floor exercise final.
“There were so many emotions, so many things going through my mind when I found out I got that bronze medal,” Chiles said. “I couldn’t be more proud of myself.”
After the finale event on Monday, which wrapped up the women’s artistic gymnastics competitions at the Summer Games, the U.S. women will leave Paris with eight medals total.
They won the team gold medal; Biles won two additional gold individual medals in all-around and vault, plus silver in floor; Sunisa Lee got bronze in both all-around and uneven bars; Jade Carey won bronze in vault; and Chiles earned bronze for floor.
Disney is the parent company of ABC News and “Good Morning America.”