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The Best Names of the Olympics

By John Dewan
August 22, 2016

The 2016 Summer Olympics are complete and etched into our memories. The Olympics represent all that is good about sports. Yes, there are some controversies, but, in the end, all the good outweighs the bad.

One of the things we do is record all the medal winners at the Olympics, and, in that process, we discover so many wonderful names that come from all around the world. Here are my favorite names among all the medal winners in 2016.

* Virginia Thrasher of the U.S. won a gold medal in Shooting: Women's 10m air rifle – what a perfect name for a champion

* Joseph Schooling of Singapore won a gold medal in Swimming: Men's 100m Butterfly – he schooled Michael Phelps

* Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon of Kenya won a gold medal in Athletics: Women's 1500 – you gotta have faith!

* Migran Arutyunyan of Armenia won a silver medal in Wrestling: Men's Greco-Roman 66kg – he certainly dished out his share of migraines

* Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica won a bronze medal in Athletics: Women's 100m – and a medal for the most hyphens in her name

The musical names of the Chinese are so cool:

* Song Yu of China won a bronze medal in Judo: Women + 78kg

* Jinjie Gong & Tianshi Zhong of China won a silver medal in Trampoline: Men's event

* Jingli Duan of China won a bronze medal in Rowing: Women's Single Sculls – not to mention her name sounds the same as mine!

* Ning Ding of China won a gold medal in Table Tennis: Women's Singles

* Cancan Ren of China won a bronze medal in Boxing: Women’s Flyweight

And the best of the musical names:

* Dong Dong of China won a silver medal in Trampoline: Men's event

But the best overall can be none other than:

* Usain Bolt won a gold medal in Athletics: Men’s 100 meter, Athletics: Men’s 200 meter, and Athletics: Men’s 4 x 100 meter relay – are you insane, Usain? You are as fast as a bolt of lighting.

Hats off to Usain and his triple-triple with the same set of three gold medals in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympics. And to the other athletes who won three or more gold medals at the 2016 Olympics:

Michael Phelps, USA, swimming: 5 gold, 1 silver

Katie Ledecky, USA, swimming: 4 gold, 1 silver

Simone Biles, USA, gymnastics: 4 gold, 1 bronze

Katinka Hosszu, HUN, swimming: 3 gold, 1 silver

Jason Kenny, GBR, cycling: 3 gold

Danuta Kozak, HUN, canoe sprint: 3 gold

Ryan Murphy, USA, swimming: 3 gold

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COMMENTS (6 Comments, most recent shown first)

rjlesch
I'm surprised a baseball writer wouldn't appreciate the name of US sabre fencer and silver medalist Daryl Homer!
7:35 PM Aug 30th
 
flyingfish
I'm afraid I'm with mauimike. The Olympic Games seem designed to enrich a few at the expense of the many. At least, if they aren't designed to do that, they clearly aren't designed NOT to do that. This last one seems to have been a major disaster for Rio and indeed for Brazil. Money was taken from important civic projects to pay for and maintain the games; now everyone has left and all the things that should have been paid for and weren't are still there, perhaps worse. Brazil had major economic problems before the games that haven't got one whit better as a result of them. But I bet that some Brazilian officials did very well, and also some IOC officials. Yes, there are some heartwarming individual stories and some wonderful achievements, but the context is terrible. I am so grateful that Boston won't be saddled with one of these horrors.
3:41 PM Aug 26th
 
sansho1
"Virginia Thrasher of the U.S. won a gold medal in Shooting: Women's 10m air rifle – what a perfect name for a champion" -especially considering she hails from West Virginia. If there's ever a border war, she'll be on the front lines....
6:54 PM Aug 24th
 
mauimike
In Hawaii, to Shi Shi, is to urinate in Japanese. Not a bad term. Just descriptive. "I have to go Shi Shi."

I saw little of the games. On Sunday at my brothers house in Vegas, I saw two Mongolian coaches strip down to protest a call by the referees, who cost their wrestler a bronze. Later at a bar, playing slot poker, I lost forty, and I had one good Bloody Mary, and one mediocre, Bloody, it was my Mom's money, so I didn't care, I saw a 30 point spread between the USA Basketball team and some white guys from Europe. USA won. I heard about some swimmer, who was robbed, then he wasn't, and then he apologised, and then maybe, he wasn't totally at fault.....

And then I read that the closing ceremony had 50% less viewers than London and I thought, it couldn't get much worse.

Then I read John's article about names and I thought, is that all you got? The Olympics have been dead for me for a long time. It's time to stick a fork in it.

It's done.

Let's shi shi on it.
2:31 AM Aug 24th
 
chuck
The women's 3M springboard diving had a Shi & He taking gold & silver:
gold for Shi Tingmao and silver for He Zi.
12:39 AM Aug 23rd
 
MarisFan61
Nicely done!

I think the musical roster is better than a musical team we could make of major league players. I once did my best attempt at that, but I guess it wasn't very good because it seems I threw it away.
9:50 PM Aug 22nd
 
 
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