Rio Olympics Blog — Day Twenty: History is made

Wednesday was light day, but a pretty awesome one.

I just had one assignment for the Northwest Daily, a paper in Illinois. They wanted me to cover Evan Jager in the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase final. All I knew about him was that he was maybe a medal contender, but not more than that.

I had no issues getting in to the stadium, and even after the race I had very brief issues getting into the mixed zone (a smile goes a very long way here). But the race itself was incredible. Jager paced himself in second for the first two laps of the race and then made his move into first for four laps. I spent a good portion of the time thinking I was covering a gold medalist.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. He was passed in the last lap, but still hung on for second. Nice. But it got even better. I hadn’t realized it, but thanks to a reporter asking a question to another U.S. runner in the race I learned that Jager was the first American to medal in the event in 32 years. That made the game story so much better.

So said game story didn’t take me too long to write. I had the scenes, the background and good quotes. It’s the best one I’ve written so far here at the Olympics. You can read the story here.

I headed back to Olympic Park for lunch, took care of a few things and went back to the apartment. It was nice to finally get to enjoy some down time after a long week-and-a-half. I also managed to fix the wifi in the apartment, which was nice considering we didn’t have internet here for a few days.

Thursday will be another light day. I only work for the website in the afternoon/evening and have no newspaper assignments. Seems like a good day to do a bit of souvenir shopping.

Miles walked today: 6.67

Total miles walked: 120.14

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