By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(Our travels have kept us from posting our weekly roundup by about 21½ hours. But we wanted to pay tribute to our Missouri athletes who were in Paris and had to wait until now to find time to go through the posting process.)
(PARIS)—A few won medals. More will come home to tell their grandchildren they participated. Let’s run down how Missourians of one sort or another did in Paris during the last couple of weeks:
Rajindra Campbell, who was part of the Missouri Southern track team for three years, 2018-2021, won the bronze medal in the shotput, representing Jamaica. He’s the first Jamaican to win a shotput medal and the first former Missouri Southern athlete to win a medal in the Olympics.
Napheesa Collier of St. Louis, a member of the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA, was a member of the gold medal-winning women’s basketball team.
Jayson Tatum of St. Louis, a member of the Boston Celtics, won gold with the men’s basketball team.
Another gold medal went to Kansas City’s Quincy Hall won gold in he 400 meters.
Kansas City’s Chris Nilsen, a silver medalist in 2020, was 11th in the pole vault in Paris.
Freddie Crittenden II, a St. Louis native, was 6th in the 110-meter hurdles.b/
Tyler Downs of Ballwin was 8th in the three-meter springboard.
St. Louis native Brendan Miller was 17th in the 800 meter run.
Patrick Schulte of St Charles was a member of the men’s soccer team that lost to Morocco in the quarter-finals. He’s with the Columbus Crew of the MLS.
Emily Sisson of St. Louis County was 23rd in the women’s marathon.
MU alum Karissa Schweitzer was 10th in the 5000 meters and 9th in the 10,000.
Another MU alum, Mikel Schreuders, competing for Aruba, was 26th in both the 50 and 100 meters. He was the country’s flag bearer in the opening ceremony.
Another MU alum, Clement Secchi, competing for France in swimming events, won bronze in the 4×100 relay and was 14th in the 100 meter butterfly.
Staff Sgt. Rachel Tozier of Pattonsburg was 18th in the women’s trap shooting.—
(BASEBALL)—Both of our teams started the week with losses. But the Royals are still in the playoff standings, two games upon Seattle. The Cardinals are now only one game above break-even and are not a playoff team, a game and a half behind the Mets.
(FOOTBALL)—Ready or not, here it comes. Football. The Chiefs have played their first exhibition game, losing to Jacksonville 26-13.
We are 16 days away from the first Missouri Tiger game. The AP’s preseason poll has the Tigers 11th.
Sports with motors:
(NASCAR)—Austin Dillon won the 400-miler at Richmond but he and owner Richard Childress might be the only people happy about it. Dillon Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin on the last lap of the first overtime session to take the win. NASCAR says it is reviewing the whole scenario. Normally, it announces penalties on Tuesdays but it delayed any announcement this week.
(INDYCAR)===IndyCar will run is first post-Olympics race within driving distance of a lot of Missouri fans—-at Worldwide Technology Raceway just across the river from St. Louis. It’s a Saturday evening race. Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden have won six of the eight races at WWTR since IndyCar returned to the track after a long absence. Pato O’Ward has been a bridesmaid but never a bride in his five career starts there, with top five finishes in all of the races and runnerups three times in the last four years.
(FORMULA 1)—F1 is enjoying its mid-year break—which coincided with the Pris Olympics. The season has surprised some observers by how competitive it has become, especially in the last half-dozen races or do.
Four different teams have racked up wins this year, seven of them by Red Bull, the long-dominant team in the sport. But Red Bull has not been the dominant force recently, with McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes moving to the front. Red Bull drivers have seven wins. Mercedes has three (in the last four races) with McLaren and Ferrari posting two wins apiece. It is the first time since 2021 that four different teams have won races in a season. Seven drivers have posted wins this year.