Welcome to this week's episode of the Sports Curious podcast where we're answering the questions that you have too, right? How do you make the US Olympic team? Now I heard one of the broadcasters during the Olympic trials for track say that it's harder to make the US Olympic team than it is to win a gold medal in the Olympics. So if that provides you some perspective, we have a lot to talk about today.
And here to join me to talk about all things Olympics is my co -founder, my co -host, my favorite brother, Scott, Scott, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. We're here to discuss some of the very stringent qualification processes for the Olympics. Different sports have different standards and it's kind of can be confusing.
So we're here to break it down for Yeah, it's almost like I feel like I need a family tree version of some sort of graph out because everything is just a little bit different and I'm sure every country is probably just a little bit different too. I want to start us off with one that we typically don't get professional athletes in sports when it comes to basketball or hockey and those kinds of things.
So we typically don't get professionals, but when it comes to Team USA, are all professional athletes. They are all NBA players. And that's something that really hasn't been around for a long time. was what, 1989, that they finally allowed professionals to play the Olympics and America and Russia voted against that proposal, which I thought was interesting. So 1989 till now, 2024, we have some NBA players on our team. And before that, we always sent amateurs or college players to the Olympics.
I think it's very funny that we as Americans voted against that rule that basically allowed us to go and dominate the Olympics for many decades, sending NBA players when no other countries had the skill level to match our Michael Jordans and Larry Bird's and Charles Yeah, it's kind of interesting because you think that's probably why they don't include professional athletes because it's a distinct advantage if you're a country like the US that really cranks out these athletes.
let's be honest, basketball is competitive because there are so many players from all over the world that play in the NBA. I we just saw what three of the top 10 draft picks in the NBA draft were from France. Yep. I think the 1992 dream team, which was, think was the first professional team we had was something that inspired all these other countries to really pick up basketball and start, you know, getting into it and teaching techniques and things like that.
And we've seen France dominate the draft we've had. I want to say six or seven of the past NBA MVPs have been foreign. So it's been. Quite a whirlwind since 1989, since professionals were allowed to compete in the Olympics and now they're giving USA a run for their money. It's not a guaranteed gold medal anymore, unfortunately. No, but it's interesting because on the women's on the women's basketball side, they have eight consecutive gold medals and that's made up of WNBA players.
It is, I think that it took the other countries in men's basketball, what, 20, 30 years to catch up. And I think women's basketball has exploded so much in the past few years that it's going to take some time, but it will eventually get there. But for the time being, our USA women's basketball might be the most dominant sport slash team we have in the Olympics. Well, so the team itself is coached by South Carolina coach and former Team USA coach Dawn Staley.
And she and her coaching staff, they all basically you get an invitation as a basketball player and you come to training camp. And based on your performance at training camp, they may pick you to be on the Yes, there's no like other sports.
There's certain when you go through qualifying, you get scores and they pick like the top three or the top five and they automatically make the team as opposed to where men's basketball, they pick a pool of 41 guys to start and then just narrow it down until they get the roster. And the women's is kind of the same thing. They pick a group and then they just, it's based on the coach's decision on who makes it. And based on who was in training camp, how they performed against the other players.
I thought it was interesting. don't know why they did it this way, but they had their last training camp, which conflicted with the women's final four this year. And I know that was a very big controversy of, know, Kaylin Clark and Angel Reese did not make Team USA. And a large part of that was, you know, a of these women were playing in the final four, so they weren't even able to attend the camp. So yeah, Kaylin wasn't able to attend.
And that was probably one of the main reasons she did not get the invite. Well, what's, that, right. That's actually what I was, what I was thinking. Like maybe they've never come across someone like an Angel Reese or a Caitlin Clark where they're like, Whoa, we need this person fresh out of college basketball to be on this Yeah, think they're moving the needle in so many ways in women's basketball that a lot of changes come up.
know, WNBA has charter flights now and I think this is probably the first time, like you said, that someone was really coming out and really pushing to make the team and now they'll adjust moving forward. I certainly assume. Yep, that's my guess too. Well, it's interesting because we talked about how like the world has caught up on the men's basketball side. They haven't caught up on the women's basketball side, but where we've definitely seen them catch up is on the women's soccer side, right?
The US women's national team came through and dominated for years in the Olympics and in the World Cup. And last year we saw them have such an early exit in the World Cup. And we're rolling into this, you know, the Olympics. are sans Alex Morgan, which... I mean, I'm not going to lie, I'm a little sad about because I just I'd love to see her and some of these familiar faces and we've already don't have Megan Rapinoe. But talk to me about how we get those the women for the soccer team.
So I was actually, I didn't realize this, but researching for this podcast, 1996 was the first time women's soccer was even in the Olympics. And we won gold. And from there on until what, the past few years, US women's have pretty much been dominant over all the countries. And I think we forced other countries to invest in their soccer programs and, you know, really put a lot of effort into their women's because we know so much effort goes into the men's already.
to where the USA men's team is not necessarily top tier. So a lot of these countries have put a lot of effort into their women's teams to catch and they got rid of their coach, right? We just found that out recently that they got rid of their coach. we have a new coach for the men's team for the World Cup that will be in the United States here shortly. And so for women, I mean, there is so many different leagues and WSL is so popular here in the United States.
So a majority of our team plays in WSL and they just pick a of players, much like basketball, and then narrow down from And I'm imagining there's so many sports we look at. The WNBA takes an Olympic break. In the Winter Olympics, hockey takes an Olympic break typically. So that'll be interesting to see how that impacts their overall game. Now, the women don't really have a criteria in a sense, right? They get picked by a coach, a team. But what about on the men's side?
Men's, this is actually one of the big differences between men and women's sports in the Olympics. Women, professional players can play no matter how old they are, but on the men's side, it's considered under 23. So only players 23 and younger are allowed to play, except for three, they get three like wild cards that can be over 23 years old. So I'm assuming we should probably see, I'm guessing we'll see Messi playing for Argentina.
And I don't, I don't believe so because of Copa America and the Euros. We had this conversation with some soccer people, like how are they going to go from Euros or Copa and then go to the Olympics in two or three weeks and play. And the majority of they won't be playing, especially at, you're not going to see Ronaldo or Messi probably at their age. So that's why, that's why it's, I was confused. Why would they do these tournaments, you know, and then play Olympics a few weeks later.
Yeah, we won't be seeing the marquee names, which kind of, think, hurts the men's soccer a little Sure. Absolutely. Because if I tune in, I want to be able to see these players that we know their names. But you're right. We're wrapping, Euro Cup and those. But mean, tennis is kind of like that too, right? Tennis, I mean, they're rolling off of, they just played at Roland Garros for the French Open, what, month and change ago?
And they'll be back there playing again and you have, I mean, they're all rolling right out of Wimbledon. And I mean, it's fresh. And for in tennis, we've seen an impact, think tennis the most because of the way the schedule structure, you said, Roland Garros and then Wimbledon and then Paris. So they're going from, you know, clay court to grass court and then back to clay because it's in Paris and that's, you know, where clay is prevalent.
And that's a lot of time overseas for these tennis players. Like. that like your Airbnb budget has got to If you're an American, you've probably been, you know, in France and England since what? May to get ready for clay court with, you know, with the French open. So they travel so much already. So it's kind of, it's impacted both the men's and women's sides. So we'll see, but, you know, I feel confident in our, women's team is looking pretty strong.
hopefully some of these other players dropping out, we still have our top women, which is nice. So who are we, we can talk about how they get there, but who are we looking at for women from the US side? So women, have Coco Golf, which, you know, she's, think she's number two in the world right now. And she's playing well, early exit of Wimbledon, but that might not be the worst thing for the Olympics.
And then Jess Pagula, who's had a few injuries this year, but she's kind of coming on strong now. And Danielle Collins, who announced before the season, she's retiring at the end of the season. And I think that took a lot of stress off her and she's probably had the best year of her career, which is kind of crazy. picked up lot of wins and then Emma Navarro, who's also come on pretty strong in the past two months, she had a pretty good run at Wimbledon.
So we have our women looking pretty strong. That's great. in reading in the research for this is the women can't have to be over 15 years old and the men have to be over 14 years old to qualify. That's like the minimum basis, right? Obviously. And then they pick them off of rankings essentially for the, they narrow it down to V of rankings.
Then they narrow that down even further because there are singles events, there are 64 players in the first round, but you can only have a maximum of four athletes. So for a nation like the US who has eight women and seven men ranked in the world's top 60, this means we'll still have people who are very, very qualified that will not make the US Olympic team for tennis. It's a good problem to have, right?
So, I mean, and you have to anticipate some would drop out and they still might drop out, who knows, depending on kind of how things go after Wimbledon for some of these players with injuries and things like that. And I was going to say the men's side, have some highly ranked players as well as Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul. They're highly ranked and they both had pretty good runs in French Open and Wimbledon. We'll see how they recover the next few weeks and if they're still able to play.
Yeah, I'm curious. I didn't look at the schedule to see where tennis falls because you know, have, we have three, was about three weeks of Olympics and we typically do swimming and I think like gymnastics are all upfront and then track and field sort of takeover is like the big events and the other ones are sort of not as big as those two, those two events because they probably use the venues for other things I'm assuming.
But it's, it'll be really interesting to see and to pay attention to how some of these. Some of these, how you get there, right? I was looking up some of these events. We have archery, have sport climbing, breaking, skateboarding, BMX freestyle. So breaking is brand new this year. It's a brand new sport. Now sport climbing, surfing, skateboarding, skateboarding has been in a while actually, I'm missing one. Sports climbing, breaking, I'm missing one and I can't remember what it is now.
But they have their own sort of qualifying. qualifier series and that was in China earlier in this year. But it's, I mean, it's very interesting on how there's a point system. Like those are the ones where, you you're qualifying based on your score, based on your merit. Same with things like archery and surfing. Like sure there are actual qualifications like surfing in a, in the WSL, which is a world surfing league championship tour. And so it's kind of, it's fascinating.
And they only take two men and two women per country in surfing. And I think it's, I feel like it's almost better that way that people are qualifying based on, you know, actual scores and merit as opposed to some other sports where I'm not going to say politics play a huge role in it, but politics play a huge role in it. When you go strictly by numbers, it's easy to make that happen. Well, it's like the Oscars, right?
Like for so long, the reason you weren't hearing about certain movies was because your production house is the one promoting you. And with the relationships and all the other things, right? There's so much that goes in on the back end. It may not be that great of a movie, but you have the right people making the right phone calls. So I'm not saying that you're not qualified with men's basketball team because you're certainly more qualified than I am, let's be honest.
Yeah. And with NBA, there's so many great players. There's going to be great players left off no matter what happens. mean, you're taking, I think it's 14 guys and there's, there could be 40 to 50 guys that could easily make that roster and play. And we had recently had some controversy. don't know if you're aware of it. Kawhi Leonard from the Clippers was named on the original roster and he's just been hit by injuries for the past few years.
So was kind of confusing while they picked him in the first place. But then he dropped out right before their first exhibition game. And there was a lot of controversy on who replaced him. who replaced So Derek White from the Boston Celtics. So he's more of a role player slash defensive player. And I think they picked him for that reason, as opposed to maybe picking a superstar who might not get the same amount of minutes.
I know that the Celtics teammate, Jalen Brown, who was the finals MVP, was not picked. it's caused quite a stir in the sports debate community, why he wasn't picked and Derek White was. Interesting. But didn't Derek White have a decent, like, he had a decent NBA finals? Like, it's not like he's, he's not, it's not like throwing me on the roster, okay? no, he can, he can hold his own. He's very capable and he's the one that broke his tooth in the final game.
And you saw him like smiling in the finals pictures with his front tooth broken. did not see that. must have turned off the coverage by then. That's really funny. I did not notice that. Now, and I did see speaking just to basketball really quick and we can move on to, I want to talk a little bit about golf, but I did see that Jason Tatum was wearing Kobe Bryant's jersey number, USA jersey number 10. That's cool. It's very cool.
know he was always, he was a mentor to Jason and holds a special place in his heart. I assume USA basketball wasn't just going to give it to anybody. I'm sure it was, you know, well thought out. So we know well, after coming off the largest contract in NBA history, I'm sure Jason will make that number proud. That's really cool. So let's wrap this up by talking a little bit about golf.
So golf's one of those that, to be honest, I sometimes forget it's an Olympic sport because it's so global as it is, right? Like you're having these guys and girls are playing against each other all the time anyways. So to me, sort of just seems like their professional career is the Olympics because they're already doing it. But golf kind of goes the same way, right? They're off of rankings as well with only two eligible players per country.
Yeah. So they go off rankings, basically, you how you finish the tournaments and, know, all your scores throughout the year. And it has given some controversy this Olympics with the LIV players. they don't, because of the format of their tournaments, which are different than any other tournament, they don't receive rankings in the world golf rankings, which leads to basically none of their players being eligible.
And so we have Bryson DeChambeau who just won the last major, probably one of hottest golfers in the world right now is not eligible to be on the team. Which I mean, I guess makes sense, If you're not putting good parameters around your qualifications and your rankings, or you don't have rankings, then it sure makes it hard to go by rankings. Yes. So I don't know if they'll adjust that for next Olympics or they'll just leave it how it is.
I mean, we still have some very, very good golfers on both sides qualified. So I don't think we'll be in too much trouble as the USA. Yeah, and it goes back to the Caitlin Clark thing. Like maybe they weren't ready for that at this point because they didn't know it existed. And so it's one of those where they may tweak that. And we have, I'm excited because we do have some great golfers.
Obviously we have Scottie Scheffler and Zander Schauffele, but who apparently is a defending Olympic gold medalist. I did not know that. But on the women's side, I'm really excited to get to watch Nellie Korda. who's the defending gold medalist, but the world number one ranked female golfer. And she has just killed it this season. So it'll be really cool to be able to watch her just on a different stage. On the world stage, yeah. I mean, she's had one of the best years of any golfer.
I think she's won like six or seven tournaments in a row at one point. And I think if you watch her swing, I think it's one of the best swings in golf. It's just so smooth and pure. So I think it'll be nice to see her on the world stage. Cool, those are things I would never watch because I don't golf. her swing is smooth. You want talking points. Nellie Korda's swing is smooth and pure. And then, well, I mean, that's an understatement. It's way better than mine.
My swing is typically good at the 19th hole. It's usually eating french fries and drinking wine or something. Yeah. Basically, that's how it works. Now, obviously, the Olympics, we start, we're just around the corner. We start on July 26th with the opening ceremonies. We have so much Olympic coverage. We're gonna do probably three -ish, maybe more podcasts around the Olympics because there is so much to talk about.
There are so many cool, fun things happening, including one we'll do that's an Olympic crash course. But is there anything else you wanna leave us with on making the Olympic team before we sign Can we just go over gymnastics real quick? Because I think that's one of the hardest teams to make based on their qualifications. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's very tough to make the team and Simone was not guaranteed just because she was a past gold medalist.
So first you have to qualify for the USA gymnastics trials to even be considered. And then from there, what is it? Only the top two scores are guaranteed to go to the Olympics. And then the remaining spots specialists and alternates, Yes. Yes. Actually, I apologize.
It's only the only the Olympian or the competitor with the highest score is guaranteed and then Yes, and then the remaining four spots are selected by the committee Right, because what they're trying to do is they try to bring in, let's say you're a specialist on the bar and the beam and I'm a specialist on the floor and we're hedging our bets on where we need to fill in the blanks to make sure we have the right recipe for gold.
Yes, because there's so many different events and everyone kind of specializing in something different. Although Simone can pretty much do it all. And she of course was, she of course was the top point getter. So she's guaranteed. amount, yeah. Well, it's interesting because track and field, like not to total delineate, but track and field is kind of like that, right? You qualify with numbers, but then there's some things that are different.
So it's like, we mostly go by this rule, but there's some exceptions. yeah, there's some distance, long distance runs that don't necessarily do that. And I think the USA qualifying times to qualify for USA are actually higher than the Olympic qualifying times. So you could have a better time than like the standard Olympic qualifying time and still not make the team because the USA is so competitive. And that's a good thing. I mean, it's pretty incredible.
Like I said in the beginning, like we'll bring a full circle that it's harder in many cases to make Team USA than it is to win a gold medal, which is why you see a lot of athletes who maybe they have dual citizenship and they choose to compete for a different country than in US because they have a better Yeah, I can't blame them to be honest with you. If you have the opportunity, it's better to make the Olympics than not. Absolutely, absolutely. So very, cool. This was really interesting.
I really enjoyed researching this. So shout out to our intern team who came up with this idea, which I thought was really great. And so hopefully you liked it too. If you want more about the Olympics, obviously stick with us every Wednesday at lastnightsgame .com and here on the Sports Curious podcast on your favorite platforms.
But of course, if you have questions, you have concerns, there's things you want to know about the Olympics, send us a note because we really want to be able to incorporate. all of your questions and make sure that you get those answers. So lastnightsgame .com. Obviously we are on social and you can DMS on all those platforms. So thanks for being here, Scott. I appreciate Thank