I am sure many of you have been enjoying the Summer Olympics as they have been unfolding. It has been interesting to watch with the huge time difference (and no cable). Luckily we have found NBC's website to be fairly good with videos of various sports although not very wide ranging on their coverage of different athlete's necessarily.
I have always enjoyed watching the Olympics, especially in the Summer since I love seeing the swimming events, gymnastics, and of course synchronized swimming! This year, I had another event to watch that I had never even heard of a few months ago. My distant cousin, Evan Jager, was one of the American athletes favored to be going to the Olympics in the Steeplechase event.
For those of you who do not know, the event originated in Ireland. Horses and riders raced from one town's steeple to the next. The steeples were used as markers due to their visibility over long distances. Along the way runners inevitably had to jump streams and low stone walls separating estates. The modern athletics event originates from a two-mile cross country steeplechase that formed part of the University of Oxford sports (in which many of the modern athletics events were founded) in 1860. It was replaced in 1865 by an event over barriers on a flat field, which became the modern steeplechase.
It has been an Olympic event since the inception of the modern Olympics, though with varying lengths. Since the 1968 Summer Olympics, steeplechase in the Olympics has been dominated by Kenyan athletes, including the current gold medal streak since 1984 and a clean sweep of the medals at the 1992 and 2004 Games. A 3,000 meters steeplechase is defined in the rule book as having 28 barriers and 7 water jumps.
It looks like a pretty brutal event and I am so happy for Evan and his family!! I know they are so incredibly proud of him!! In case you didn't catch it, here are a couple clips of the event final.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/kipruto-wins-3000m-steeplechase-gold-evan-jager-silver
https://youtu.be/9gRd-fKONso
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