More Olympic news

 Lots of fencing, soccer-ing, judo-ing, tennis-ing went on in Paris yesterday, and speaking of fencing, how about that Japanese guy, Kano Koki, in the men's individual epee?  

OK, so maybe you missed that. So did I, but I heard it was something. OK so I didn't.

Anyway, sports happened, including gymnastics and swimming, and the Blob was paying attention to some of it. And of course I have a few thoughts:

* After explaining to some friends why the men's Olympic basketball tournament wasn't just going to be a walkover for Team USA, on account of there are great players spread around the globe now, Team USA walked over Serbia in its Olympics opener.

Won by 26, Team USA did. Kevin Durant, who didn't even start, led the scoring with 23 points and didn't miss a shot. LeBron was LeBron, with 21. Nikola Jokic, one of those great players spread around the globe, led the Serbs with 20 points, five rebounds, eight assists and four steals. It wasn't nearly enough.

So, maybe I was wrong. If you can bring Kevin Durant off the bench and not even play Jayson Tatum (for which Team USA coach Steve Kerr called himself a big ol' dummy), and you can still beat Nikola Jokic by 26 ...

Well. I may have to reassess how much I know about basketball.

* Speaking of dominance, the U.S. women's soccer side crushed Germany 4-1, which just goes to show if you couldn't beat us in two world wars, you ain't gonna beat us in women's footie, either. Or, you know, something like that.

Anyway, the win pushed the Americans into the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament, and in two games now (both wins) they've outscored their opponents 7-1. This suggests their heralded new head coach, Emma Hayes, deserves the heralds. She has, after all, had this team less than two months, and already they look like the U.S. women's juggernauts of old.

Hayes, of course, said Sunday her ladies played like goofs at times, which means she's still got a lot of work to do. You gotta like a coach who says that after a blowout W.

* More news from women's soccer: The Canadian side (2-0), caught red-handed spying on New Zealand, beat the home team, France, 2-1. They insist they're not spying on anyone anymore and aren't, aren't, aren't a bunch of slimy cheaters, but ... 

Well, OK. If they say so.

* In the shooting sports, a Chinese guy won gold in the 10-meter men's air pistol, and a South Korean won on the women's side. The U.S. did not medal in either.

This comes as a shock considering how much we like to shoot at stuff here in America, including presidential candidates, schoolkids and random strangers. Every other American these days, it seems, is walking around ordinance-ed up like an Army Ranger. And we know it's not just for show, because people keep getting shot and the funerals keep piling up.

Proper sport shooters don't behave that way. So maybe we should develop more of them, and fewer psychos. It's a thought.

* In the pool, the U.S. continued to stack medals, but the race to watch was the men's 100 breaststroke, in which Adam Peaty of Great Britain was trying to win three straight golds. He failed by (choose one) an eyelash, a fingernail or an eyelash on fingernail.

It doesn't get much closer than losing by 0.02 seconds, but that's what happened. In fact, gold medalist Nicolo Martinenghi of Italy, Peaty and Nic Fink of the U.S. touched practically simultaneously. Peaty and Fink actually did touch simultaneously and shared the silver.

So Peaty missed out on history because he didn't let his fingernails grow a bit. Your grooming tip for today.