The first week of the Rio Olympics is coming to an end, and as I promised in our last podcast, there are a bunch of really great stories coming out of Rio that even non-sports fans can love. Here are some of the best.

• Rugby 7s made its debut in the first week of the Rio Olympics, and in addition to the Canadian Women’s Team earning a bronze medal, the event boasted the first Olympics Proposal of these games. The cherry on top? The proposal was between two women. Yay, LGBTQ representation!
• The Olympics reminds us that great strength and power can come in very small packages. Take the utterly dominant performance by American Artistic Gymnast, Simone Biles, who stands just 4′ 9″ tall. Her tumbling passes are baller.

  

• For more on what a game-changer Biles is, check out this engaging read from Dvora Meyers. Biles’ undeniable dominance is changing the nature of elite gymnastics, and with that comes a conversation about race and athleticism that is absolutely worth engaging in. 
• I can’t be the only person who watched the Artistic Gymnastics competitions for men and women this year and noticed just how damn sexist they are. Women must have dance elements in their floor routines, men just do strength and tumbling skills. Boo. Here are more sports where this divide occurs. The good news? More and more of us are noticing and talking about it.
• Unfortunately, sexism is a very common aspect of reporting in sports, and Cosmopolitan has documented some particularly egregious instances of it so far. Let’s do better, journalists!
• How can we do better? Here’s a handy guide for talking about Olympic Athletes (who happen to be female). It includes gems like, “women are fully-formed, autonomous people who do things. We are not pets or gadgets or sex-baubles.”
• We published a ranking of the Team USA’s gymnastics leotards over the past twenty years. It’s obviously great, and if you liked that, you might also enjoy this rundown from the Jezebel team classifying the different Epochs of Olympic Fashions.
• Remember when I said the Olympics can do good things for social progress? Here’s a great example from Week 1 of Rio. Simone Manuel became the first black woman to win a gold medal in swimming for Team USA. And here’s a good piece from the BBC on why that matters. 

  

• It’s fun to watch the Olympics for the amazing feats of athletic achievement, like when Canada’s 16 year old swimming phenom Penny Oleksiak won a gold medal for the 100m Freestyle last night (it’s been 24 years since Canada has had a swimming gold medal, kind of a big deal for us).
• It’s also fun to watch them for when people fall down. This YouTuber feels the same, and his call of a 3m diving attempt gone awry is thoroughly entertaining. “If this was a big splash competition? Nailed it!”
• There are plenty of Olympics left, and it’s not too late to track down some of the very weird events that are left. The good folks at LifeHacker compiled a list of videos documenting many of them. Watch the Steeplechase one, particularly (below). It’s solid gold.

• At this point in a Lauren Cheal post, you would usually have seen a whole bunch of gifs. Too many, maybe. So why are there none here? It’s because the news organizations have been banned from posting GIFs of the Rio Olympics (as if you can stop the internet from being the internet!). The Olympics were tailor-made for the glory that is a GIF. This is unacceptable, so I’ll add my voice to those calling for this ridiculous ban to be lifted.