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A whole lotta golds 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇

Rachel G Bowers   Paste BN

Your Olympics essentials.

  • What happened yesterday: A whole helluva lot! Katie Ledecky won her ninth Olympic gold, fourth straight in the 800m! Simone Biles won her seventh gold, second on vault! Ryan Crouser won his third straight gold in shot put! Sha’Carri Richardson won silver in the 100m! Pommel horse guy Stephen Nedoroscik won bronze … on pommel horse! Jade Carey won bronze on vault! The USWNT beat Japan to advance to the semis! The U.S. men’s hoops team beat Puerto Rico in their final group stage game! Check out all the day’s highlights.
  • What’s happening today: Noah Lyles runs in the 100m! Suni Lee goes for a medal on uneven bars! The U.S. women’s hoops team plays Germany in their last group stage game! More track and field prelims and finals! Last day of swimming! Follow all the day’s action.
  • The latest medal count: Entering Sunday, the U.S. held the lead in the medal count with 61 (14 golds, 24 silvers, 23 bronze), although China led the gold medal count with 16.

Your pommel horse guy memes? He saw ‘em.

Minutes after Stephen Nedoroscik won a bronze medal on pommel horse, my colleague Tom Schad got up from his seat to head down for interviews and said: “This is my Olympics,” making me and our colleague Nancy Armour laugh. Tom has covered Nedoroscik probably more than anyone else on the scene. And I wanted to know if the man we’ve dubbed pommel horse guy saw all the memes. Oh, he sure has.

"I'm glad that people are making memes of me. I think it's so funny,” he said. “It's almost surreal to finally wind down after a day of workout and go on TikTok and see someone made a meme of me."

Nedoroscik was likened to Clark Kent, the nerdy alter ego of Superman, and hailed as an American hero. An eyewear brand gave him an endorsement deal. He solved a Rubik's Cube in front of the television cameras on NBC. Author John Green, who wrote "The Fault in Our Stars," even tweeted about it. ("That was insane," Nedoroscik said with a smile.)

By Friday, Nedoroscik decided he had to stop scrolling through all those memes and cut off media interviews, to focus on the competition. He prioritized monotony to stay sane, trying to repeat the same pre-competition routines and maintain the little things he's started doing in Paris − all the way down to what he eats for breakfast. ("Six pieces of green apple," he said "with a chocolate muffin.") But after two bronze medals, what’s next?

"For the next month of my life, it's going to be: Let's chill," he said. A reporter asked jokingly if, after that month, he'd be hosting "Saturday Night Live." Nedoroscik laughed. After the week he's had, it seems like anything is possible.

The Paste BN app brings you every Team USA medal — right when it happens. Download for full Olympics coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and much more.

Other highlights from yesterday.

  • Trinity Rodman played the hero in the USWNT’s victory over Japan — even if she doesn't remember.
  • USA Basketball's Anthony Edwards threw down a windmill dunk and “ignited” his team last night.
  • Ryan Murphy (backstroke), Nic Fink (breaststroke), Gretchen Walsh (butterfly) and Torri Huske (freestyle) combined to win gold in the 4x100m medley relay.
  • Team USA rowing picked up its second medal with the men's eight team winning bronze.
  • Vincent Hancock won gold in the men's individual skeet shooting event, becoming just the seventh Olympian in history to earn four gold medals in an individual event, and is just the fifth American to do so (joining Ledecky, Michael Phelps, Carl Lewis and Al Oerter).
  • How’d that USA bronze count get so high? Here’s a few more for ya: Jasmine Moore won bronze in the women's triple jump; Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul won bronze in men's doubles tennis; Paige Madden earned bronze in the women's 800m free; Melissa Jefferson won bronze in the women’s 100m dash.
  • In another mixed relay, this one on track, Netherlands' Femke Bol had a helluva kick to steal the 4x400 mixed relay win from Team USA.
  • In beach volleyball, Chase Budinger and Miles Evans won their lucky match. Now, they get to face the reigning Olympic champs.
  • Alex Walsh was disqualified from the 200m IM for not completing the backstroke leg fully on her back. Her U.S. teammates were “heartbroken” and “devastated” for her.
  • Jamaican star Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was scratched from the women’s 100m just before her semifinal race due to an injury she sustained during warm-ups.
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