What do we do now? 📅

THIS PAST WEEK ⏮️

Hardware Tracker 🥇

Sunday was the grand finale of the Paris Olympics. With the U.S. Men's and Women's basketball 🏀 teams clinching gold and the closing ceremony wrapping things up, we finally got a look at the overall medal count.

Some Interesting things we noticed:

👯 Same same - The top 10 countries by total medals and by gold medals are exactly the same. While the order changes, the inclusion does not.

⭐️ Gold-blooded - Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, and South Korea all ranked higher in the gold medal standings. This means they won more gold medals compared to silver and bronze—certainly not a bad problem to have.

Storylines

This Summer installment was packed with incredible stories and standout athletes (naturally). For the past couple of weeks, we've been rolling out data-driven, hand-drawn breakdowns of different events nearly every day. We'll be linking them all here for you to dive into ⬇️

🏊 Katie Ledecky Dominating in the 1500m race
🏃‍♂️ Noah Lyles photo finish
🏄 Why Olympic surfing isn’t in France
🏃‍♂️ Cole Hocker’s 1500m comeback victory
🧗 Sport climbing - the fastest Olympic event
🏃‍♀️ Sydney Mclaughlin-Levrone shattering records
⛹️ USA basketball nailbiters
🏃‍♂️ Jumping events are no joke
🥇 Medal count breakdown

What’s next?

We watched Olympic coverage from the moment we woke up until the moment we went to bed each day. The withdrawals have been real 🤒, which got us thinking about what's next on this year's sports calendar.

It inspired us to put together another breakdown of the pro sports overlap throughout the year 📅 and see what could pull us out of this hole.

While we're currently in the "dog days of summer" for sports, things are about to pick up quickly. The NFL season kicks off in a couple of weeks, followed closely by the NHL and NBA. By late October, we'll witness the sports equinox 🌓, when all four major U.S. leagues will be in action at the same time, which should cure our sadness.

THIS NEXT WEEK ⏩

Football is so back (almost) 🏈

Although the regular season starts in early September, people are getting their football fix with preseason NFL games. These games are all about preparing teams for the regular season and give coaches a chance to assess which players are the best fit for the team.

Winning is decidedly not important during the preseason so don’t worry if your team struggles on the field. In fact, a Reddit user did a quick statistical analysis 📊 on whether preseason success leads to regular season success. I’m no statistician but this doesn’t smell like a correlation to me.

Mid-Season Reset 🔁

The WNBA's three-week Olympic break has ended, and the season is resuming with just about a month left until the playoffs. Following an exciting Olympic gold medal win, we expect even more attention on the league which has already exploded with the Caitlin Clark effect.

So far this season, the effect has been monumental, as Joe explains how the league has more than doubled almost every performance metric this year. 🆙

We’re excited to see the final tallies roll in, especially since the growth has been undeniably real for months now.