Good Day For Dawn and US Olympians

My roomie Dawn bounced out of the house early this morning to compete in the 2008 Bluegrass Games fencing tournament. She came back home a few hours later with an overall silver medal in the open saber competition and a gold in the women's division.

In addition to that, while she was at the venue they were using for the fencing competition, the announcement was made to a cheering crowd that the US won their first medals of the Games courtesy of a US sweep in the individual sabre event. Mariel Zagunis beat her teammate Sada Jacobson 15-8 to sucessfully defend the championship she won at the 2004 Athens games.

In the bronze medal match, Becca Ward came back from a 6-1 deficit to defeat Russia's Sofiya Velikaya 15-14 and assure the US fencers of their history making triumph. It was the first time since Germany swept the foil medals at the 1988 Seoul Games that a nation had swept all the medals in an individual fencing event. Zagunis was also the first fencer and first woman to win back to back gold medals in her event.

I watched nervously as Team USA in their opening game versus the Czech Republic pulled out their bricklayer's union cards. The Czechs took advantage of their early shooting troubles to race out to an 11 point lead. After coach Donovan called a timeout, out came their pressure defense and poof, away went their deficit.

Big Syl came off the bench to score 16 points and snag 14 rebounds as Diana Taurasi led all scorers with 17 points to pace a 40 point 97-57 win. All 12 Team USA lady ballers scored and team captain Lisa Leslie grabbed 10 rebounds. It was Team USA's 26th consecutive victory in Olympic competition and got their quest to win a fourth consecutive gold medal off to a positive start.

Da Fellas play tomorrow against Yao Ming and the homestanding Chinese as the 'Redeem Team' begins their quest to claim our first men's baskeball gold medal since the 2000 Sydney Games.