PARIS SUMMER OLYMPICS CREATED SOME NATIONAL HEROES

Of course Leon Marchand is now a national hero of France. But there were others totally capturing the imagination of their home country.

For the USA, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Ryan Crouser have long been heroes.

Crouser? Sure, he won his third straight Olympic gold medal in the shot put.
Cole Hocker, winner of the 1500 meters in Olympic record time deserves special mention, and so does the bronze medal Womens' Rugby team.

As does Noah Lyles who, won a gold in the 100 meter race, but also got bronze for the 200 meter event while suffering from COVID-19. A gold is better than a bronze, but there are certain circumstances, such as those, where the color is besides the point.

Then there are those from places of war:

Israeli athletes won a best-ever seven medals, including Tom Reuveny’s gold in men’s iQFoil sailing, despite some antisemitic protests at events where Israelis competed.

Ukraine won 11 medals including golds in fencing (women’s team saber), track (Yaroslava Mahuchikh in the women’s high jump) and boxing (Oleksandr Khyzhniak in men’s middleweight).

27-year old javelin gold medalist Arshad Nadeem went home to 238 million cheers.

This was Pakistan's first gold medal in 40 years. Their last medal was bronze in 1992.
He once trained with eucalyptus branches.
Victory was especially rewarding, for the silver medalist was Neeraj Chopra (right) of India, who won the gold at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics.

Went home through Lahore to the rural village of Mian Channu. Here with his mother.
He also was rewarded with $897,000 worth of gifts, including a new car with license plate PAK 92.97, his throw in meters, breaking the Olympic record. His coach got $18,000.

The Caribbean was especially productive in a different way during these Games.

Dominica is a nation of 70,000 people.

90% of the homes were damaged by Hurricane Maria and 31 died. This would be the equivalent of 148,357 being killed by a deadly hurricane in the U.S.

They had one female representative, Thea LaFond. She won a gold medal in the triple jump, the first medal ever for the country.
Actually, she left the Dominica (note, not the Dominican Republic) at the age of 5, in time competed for the University of Maryland, and is still living there.

Competed in the Rio Olympics, where she met Aaron Gadson, who became her coach, then husband. He changed her jumping technique. Maybe as important, he learned that a storm was soon to come, so he told her to go for it in her second jump, which won the gold for her birth nation, as the wet ground later made it impossible for competitors. Helped that world-record holder and Tokyo Olympics champion Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela was injured.
Her gold brought cheers to the Navy football preseason practice session, where her younger brother Chreign is a defensive end for the Midshipmen.

And speaking of the Dominican Republic, 27-year old Marileidy Paulino won the gold in the 400 meters to become the first woman from that country to win an Olympic gold, breaking the Olympic record. She won two silvers in Tokyo 2021.
Julien Alfred of St. Lucia (180,000 population) got the gold in the 100 meter dash.

On the night when LaFond won, Alfred's was also the first medal ever for the country.
She also won the silver medal in the 200 meter dash.
She graduated from the University Texas and had a sterling NCAA track career.
There are no track and field facilities for the island. Much of her early training was running barefeet. She hopes that her win will result in something. A track for sure, but someday, maybe prime minister?

Probably the best photo of the Games came from Tahiti when Brazil's Gabriel Medina was caught in this pose with his board.

You will see this photo again and again, as follows.

Here is one version of the six worse moments of the Paris Summer Olympics.
Another of the top moments.
What about a few viral moments?
Top ten memes.

What is a meme? Something that goes viral.
Comes from the Greek mimema, meaning something that has been imitated.
From Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene.

Here are the 27 most impressive photos. This is worth 8 minutes of your life. Finally, in 20 minutes, the top 20 unforgettable athletes of Paris 2024.
Now, on to Los Angles 2028.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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