The COVIDLympics, Day +3

• A French marathoner is under fire for attempting to deny proper hydration during the race to other runners.  No one is buying his excuses either.  If this is true, he should be banned, and should've been DQ'ed mid-race.  Even the 2012 Olympic Champion could not complete half the race in those conditions.   
• It appears as if Barcelona and the Pyrenees may be about to drop out of the 2030 Winter bid.  The mayor of Barcelona is bowing to public pressure and will consult the public over the decision.  The other current bids appear to be Sapporo, Japan and two North American former Winter Games sites:  Vancouver and Salt Lake City.
• Given the coronavirus incubation period, the Games is still reporting new cases.  Over 200, now, since the Closing Ceremony.  The city of Tokyo reported a 15% week-to-week increase, to over 4200, of the current number of new cases on a daily basis.
• Today is the start of the Paralympic Torch Relay in Japan.  The 2021 Paralympics begin August 24th.
• Both beach volleyball and badminton professional event tours are having their world championships delayed due to the Rise of the Delta Variant.
• Belgium is paying out bonuses to any of their athletes who finished in the top eight of their events, and the Belgian Olympic Committee is negotiating with the government to ensure that no taxes are levied against those winnings.  The two solo gold medalists (heptathlon, women's uneven bars) will win 50,000 Euros each, the field hockey gold medal team will split 280,000 Euros, 12,500 each.  Silver medalists will get 30,000 Euros.  Solo bronze medalists, 20,000.  The equestrian team will get 5,000 each for their bronze.  Another 178,000 Euros will be split from 4th to 8th place finishers.  The money is coming from the national lottery.
• In opposition to the US's ratings for the Games, the BBC got record streaming requests for Tokyo 2020(ne).  Over 100 million such requests over the 16 days.

All of those points from Inside the Games.

• Speaking of the US ratings:  Sports Media Watch reports that the 2020(ne) Summer Olympics were the least-watched EVER in the United States -- SUMMER OR WINTER!  The average viewership for the primetime nights on NBC/USA was slated at 15.6 million for the Games, a 20% drop from the comparable 19.8 million for Pyeongchang (the previous low).
• It was a 42% total drop from Rio.  They've lost literally half the viewers they had in London.  And even the previous Summer Games low in Sydney, they were down 27% from THAT.
• Their late night shows, however, actually were slightly up from Rio.