Category — Countries

Judoka Irakli Tsirekidze won the second medal for Georgia following his countryman, Manuchar Kvirkvelia’s triumph in wrestling. Irakli defeated Algerian Amar Benikhlef to bag the judo men’s 90-kg title.

Related:
Manuchar Kvirkvelia Waves Flag for Georgia

Photo source: tvnz

Aha, another flag waver. Steeve Guenot, like the Georgian flag waver I blogged about earlier, certainly earned the right to wave his country’s flag [or mini-flags in this instance].

Steeve (did the civil registrar misspell his name when they had him registered?) won the gold medal in Greco-Roman Wrestling [66 kg.] making French President Nicholas Sarkozy very happy indeed.

Photo source: chinadaily.com

His country may be at war with Russia but this did not prevent Manuchar Kvirkvelia from emerging as the Olympic champion in Greco-Roman wrestling (74 kg). Bad Uncle Vladimir might not be happy with your flag-waving but he can’t do anything about it.

Photo source: getty images via beijing 2008

This is Alain Bernard’s happy version of The Scream. If I won an Olympic gold medal like he did, I will also be screaming like crazy. There’s no screaming [at least not the joyful kind] for Australia’s Eamon Sullivan [he of the Rice and Sullivan love team] because he had to settle for the silver medal.

This is France‘s second gold after Steeve Guenot’s gold medal winning performance in wrestling.

Photo source: beijing 2oo8

China crashed the U.S./Australia party in the swimming pool when Liu Zige won the gold medal in the women’s 200m butterfly with a world record swim of 2:04.18.

Should Americans be concerned that Chinese athletes are encroaching in their territory, the medal-rich sport of swimming? They need not worry now but they should worry in future editions of the Games.

Swimming is the main source of U.S. medals [seven of its current ten gold medals are from swimming] so it would be interesting to see what happens if China challenges the U.S. dominance of the sport.

Photo source: xinhua/beijing2008