Another late monthly SI Calendar wall post coming your way. There’s no real excuse other than I found the Paris Olympics addictive. With my new man cave set up, I start my morning coffee with three big screen TVs showing live feeds from France. Four or five hours later and I realize I haven’t got much done. I have managed to get most of 2024 season logistics out of the way, but that is about it.
Accordingly, I kept the calendar theme the same as last month – the Olympics. Like my brother the guest picker last month, I do have one cover that doesn’t match at all. It’s one with a rich Vanderbilt trying to shake up the horse racing business. It’s an awful cover and I just wanted to get it used. Other dubious covers include one on autographs (which I assume they do a lot of in the Olympics) and on Phil Knight of Nike (whose products are ubiquitous at the Games). There are also a few covers where the sport is or was (Baseball – Pete Rose) an Olympic sport. Very weak connections I know.
Let me guess, he’s from the U.S. or Australia?
Leon Marchand aside, if there’s someone fast in the pool, it is likely to be an Aussie or American. Jeanne Stunyo was an American silver medalist as a diver in the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. Australian Murray Rose was a six-time Olympic medalist, four gold, one silver, one bronze. Rose swam for USC and if you watch the Olympics, the NCAA is a very popular training ground for athletes from other countries. From swimming to gymnastics to track and field, you can’t throw a stick in the Olympic village without hitting a current or former U.S. collegiate athlete, foreign or domestic.
All the old familiar faces
Not surprisingly, many of the covers are recognizable U.S. stars of the past. Michael Phelps and Carl Lewis have almost as many covers as gold medals. Current Paris favorites Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky are omnipresent. It is a shame that SI is now monthly because the U.S. 2024 performance should have warranted some more covers. The track and field team in particular has been dominant.
That’s all I got, enjoy all the great athletes of the Olympics and congrats to Paris for putting on a fantastic Games.