The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, this is Josh Levine.

I'm Slate's sports editor and the host of Slate's sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen.

It's August 18th, 2016, and this is your Hang Up and Listen, Olympics Extra.

On Wednesday night in Rio, three American women, Brianna Rollins, Naya Ali, and Christy Catlin,

swept the medals in the 100-meter hurdles, the first time ever that women from the U.S.

had taken all three medals in any Olympic event.

And the silly thing is, as David Epstein mentioned on yesterday's Olympic Extra,

another American, Kendra Harrison, just set the world record in the 100-meter hurdles,

even though she did not qualify for the Olympic team. American women are good at jumping over things.

Evan Jager of the U.S. won a silver medal in the 3,000-meter steeplechase,

the first American to get as high as a silver in the high hurtling and water-jumping event

since Horace Ashenfelter in 1952, you could kind of tell it was probably a long time ago,

Horace Ashenfelter.

Jager, who has long, flowing tresses, had loaned a

hair tie to fellow steeple chaser Emma Coburn the previous day, and Coburn went on to win a bronze.

After the race, he tweeted at Coburn, I'm not going to lie, I used the hair tie for the race

today. I needed some of that good juju, to which Coburn responded,

it's not the hard work and training in years of preparation. It's the hair tie. The Olympic

Taekwondo competition began on Wednesday, and the mat looks different than it had in previous

years. It's now shaped in an octagon, a la mixed martial arts ultimate ultimate fighting because millennials love things that are shaped like octagons.

The president of the World Taekwondo Federation said the octagonal mat is more athlete focused and engaging for fans.

...