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Axios at the Olympics: Getting set for men's gymnastics

26 July 2021
Dan Ackermann

TOKYO – The men's gymnastics team final kicks off shortly, so here's a quick guide to help get you started, whether you are watching live or waiting for NBC to show it later tonight.

Why it matters: The U.S. is among eight countries going for the gold today. Other competitors are China, Japan, Ukraine, Switzerland, Great Britain, Germany and athletes from Russia.

How it works:

  • The men compete on six different apparatus: Floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and horizontal bar (aka the high bar). Each country will be paired with one other through the six rotations.
  • The United States team is paired with the Russian athletes, who are competing under the Olympic flag and not their own due to a doping ban.

How to watch: The action kicks off at 6 a.m. ET, though NBC is airing it in prime time, because they have to pay off those pricey TV rights some how, 13 hour time difference or not.

Be smart: Remember when Nadia Comaneci got the first 10 in 1976? (Me either, I was 18 months old.) But I do remember the scoring system going up to 10, including when Mary Lou Retton got the perfect score on the floor exercise in the 1984 Olympics.

  • That’s no longer the way things work. Athletes can still get a perfect 10 for execution, but the overall score ends up being something like 14 or 15. (More details here.)

Fun fact: Ariake Gymnastics Centre, the site of the gymnastics competition, is a temporary venue, eventually to be replaced with a 12,000 seat sports arena. That explains the unfinished wood seats which make this look like the worlds biggest (and most complicated) IKEA set.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.