For this week's Tuesday women's sports & performance newsletter, we're sending you a version of the live updates we've been delivering from Paris. We'll be back to regular Feist newsletters after the Games!

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"When I go home, I’m like ‘Oh, I’m gonna do this.’ And then I get on the track and something is going on with me. Maybe I have some issue. I should test my brain. I really want to cry before the race, I am so under pressure – like, ‘How am I going to do this? Why do I put myself through this?’ I think I’m just crazy.'"

- Sifan Hassan on her plan to triple in the 5,000m-10,000m-marathon at the Olympics — which started with a bronze in the 5,000m last night

🇫🇷 From the ground in Paris

NBC says it's averaging 34 million viewers/day (which is up 79% from the Tokyo Olympics), but it's not the only broadcaster seeing huge numbers. In general, these Olympics are back. Big vibes, big numbers. The Games are officially cool again

Partially, it's the time zone — which is more conducive to N. American and European audiences. Partially, it can't be overstated how much people like to watch beautiful landscapes and iconic landmarks, and the Paris Games made a huge bet when they opted to put so many venues in historic spots. It's paid off.

But arguably, it's largely that the Games have finally fully understood and embraced the viral meme-ness of athletes. Instead of limiting what the athletes can post from the Village or from behind-the-scenes, broadcasters and officials are encouraging it. These are their biggest and best spokespeople! (They even give the athletes on the podium a phone to take an official selfie).

NBC and the IOC have brought in huge amounts of influencers, spun off social media jokes and IG-perfect clips (done by fleshing out the staff of those departments), and revamped the mainstream TV coverage to use the best of both instant streaming *AND* gold medal moment whip-arounds *AND* nightly primetime recaps.

Here are some of the favorite internet main characters and coolest Olympians.

Also, though: It's the female star athletes driving this show. Do men even like do the Olympics?

Understanding what's happening in boxing 🥊

Whew. 

Here at Feisty, we're never fans of using individual female athletes as political talking points instead of appreciating the nuance and details of them as people. And the controversy around women's boxing seems to be one of those cases. While it actually hasn't come up much here in Paris and even the boxing spectators seem to simply be focused on the sport itself, it's certainly a huge issue outside of Paris. (Text messages from people at home have shifted from questions about the water quality to questions about women's boxing...)

In short... 

• Two female boxers (one from Algeria and one from Taiwan) were DQ'd late into last year's world championship competition by the international boxing federation 

• The boxing federation will not say what "gender tests" the two athletes failed — but that it was not elevated testosterone, nor will they release any specifics of the tests

• It is implied that the athletes may have a difference of sex development, such as a non-performing additional choromosome, which they would not necessary have been aware of nor that necessarily infers an advantage (though it could)

• The two women are not trans women; they are believed to have always identified as women and competed as women and been assigned female since birth. They have also been beaten by other women plenty of times, too

• Part of the complications are because the international boxing federation lost its right to oversee the sport (which is now run by the IOC) because of concerns about prize money and judging and corruption; the IOC argues that the opaque nature of the tests was "sudden and arbitrary" (we no longer use chromosomal tests to determine gender) and that there was no reason for the women to be banned

• Even the other boxers are feeling kinda bad for them right now whatever you think about sex testing in sports

Worth a thought: Do future Olympics become a hunt for who is different?

It's a good time to listen to: Tested — the podcast series from NPR & CBC on the (flawed) history of sex testing in the Olympics

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A lot of Paris highlights 👑

• 🤸‍♀️ Women supporting women: The first all-black gymnastics podium
  
  

• 🏄‍♀️ Worth the re-watch: Caroline Marks takes the gold in the exciting surfing final
  
  

• 💜 Amazing moment: Cindy Ngamba won the first ever medal for the Olympic Refugee team — the boxer had to leave her home country of Cameroon after coming out as gay because homosexuality is an imprisonable offense there. 
  
  

• 🙁 Not-so-amazing moment: Sha'Carri Richardson & Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce appear to have been turned away from the athlete entrance before their 100m semi-finals and were told the rules had changed and they needed to walk around the stadium, nearly making them late. (We told you the barricade situation here is crazy!)
  
  

• 🏝️ But shoutout to the small islands winning their first medals: St. Lucia — a Caribbean island nation near Barbados — has a population of 180,000. And the island's Julien Alfred upset Sha'Carri Richardson for the 100m title. (The home crowd back in St. Lucia went crazy.) And then Thea LaFond, from Dominica, also won the triple jump—also that country's first medal ever.
  
  

• At the track, it was also a fast and exciting 5,000m — but then Faith Kipyegon's silver was taken away from her AND THEN GIVEN BACK! What!?
  
  

• 🚲 On the road, we saw a historic and exciting American victory in the cycling race — from a rider who wasn't even necessarily supposed to be on the start line.
  
  

• And, holy hell, it was a dramatic 24 hours. The mixed team triathlon relay came down to a sprint photo finish (!) after the favorites France crashed out on the first leg.
  
  

• 🏊‍♀️ In the last swim event on the last day of swimming, the U.S. women set a blistering new world record in the 4x100m medley relay (3:49.63!). There haven't been many world records this Olympics, with concerns about the pool being slow (due to its shallow depth), but the women got the job done in stunning fashion.
  
  

• 🤺 Lee Kiefer & Lauren Scruggs led the U.S. to their first-ever team fencing gold
  
  

• 33-year-old Bryony Page had taken silver at Rio, bronze in Tokyo, and was shocked then when her score topped the podium for gold here in Paris. It was a nail-biter!
  
  

• 🏹 Azerbaijani archer Yaylagul Ramazanova is seven months pregnant — and she said she felt her baby kick right before she shot a perfect 10 in her round of 32. 
  
  

• 💸 What's the best sponsorship? The gymnast who has a parmesan cheese deal. Or the sprinter who has a toilet paper partner.
  
  

• Get to know the athletes who aren't necessarily here to medal: The Afghan cyclists who had to flee Kabul. The runner from St. Vincent who was homeless. And the many athletes who are their countries only Olympic representative. 
  
  

• Is this the best idea for the Olympics? Let the athletes try other sports at the end of the Games.

📺 Your Feisty recs

What to listen to: Our daily quick morning podcasts from Paris

What to watch: Come with us inside the Team USA House

What to read: How the Olympians destroy their bodies

What to mark on your calendars: The make-or-break soccer semifinals today —  U.S. v. Germany @ 12:00 p.m. ET+  Spain v. Brazil @ 3:00 p.m. ET ⚽

🤝 Thank you to our Paris sponsors

The Feist is written by Kelly O'Mara and edited by Millie Perry. Ads by Ella Hnatyshyn

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