Anyone else up watching the opening ceremony? Great collection of culture to draw from. Could have found a more coordinated bunch of dancers at the Met though.
I'm looking forward to the cycling road race later on, should be very interesting with strong Aussies.
Yeh the dancers were all over the place. Good collection as you say, though I would have liked to have had a nod to the Royal Society when they were doing all the history stuff! Glad at least nerds got a nod with Tim Berners-Lee!
Hope North Korea do well. If their athletes are half as good as Kim Jon-Il was they'll grab a swag of medals. After all he invented most of these games and was the reigning world champ in half of them.
so how'd they light the flame? anything interesting
Yeah it was pretty epic - some youngsters lit 'petals'/'buds' of a huge thing/flower that then each rose/swivelled up to form the cauldron, very original.
As much as i love seeing the poms fall on their faces or get crushed on the sporting field i really hope that these games go off perfectly for them. Its a huge deal and ill enjoy watching them soak it up like only England can.
whoa, there's only a few seconds in the 100m sprint but the 100m freestyle is nearly double the difference. It doesn't look like they had those shark skin suits back in 1896.
I got a message from Bec this morning basically saying "We can't go to the opening ceremony because we have a World Cup round to race in France tomorrow"
Booo :/
She and Dan will get to go to the Closing ceremony though.
Lol at the massive fail for blocking vids. I am going to pretend to go out of my way now to make as much of my internet viewing of the Olympics from non official sources.
Edit: It is pretty stupid, as all you have to do is search youtube for Olympics and Mr Bean and you can watch it..
Are the people riding the bikes inline with the rowing there to taunt them? Look eight of you working your arse's off and I'm hardly peddling, just gliding along.
Also, what about that Irish gymnist guy. Had a tumour on his leg removed and there was complications and he ended up in a wheelchair and was told he probably wouldn't be able to walk again. 15 months later he was out of the wheelchair and back to training, then had an accident on the high bar and got brain damage and was AGAIN told he probably wouldn't walk again, now hes competing at the olympics. Guys got guts for sure
Enjoyed very much seeing Team GB come home empty handed in the road race, after geeing themselves up big time
i watched about an hour of the road race last night, didn't see the end though i got up to like lap 5
lul they were set up pretty well, i was loving the break away group and the small groups trying to psych them out by smashing it past them on the hills to form that second break away
nah there is nothing in the area.
just a white boundary fence like at a cricket oval
Dressage? Letters and number markers allover the arena?? It's all about horse control, preforming turns, different types of canter/trots, guiding the animal around the arena doing the set tasks without errors.. Eg going from a quicker stride to mark 1 then without breaking stride slowing it right down to just a slow walk etc..
Dressage? Letters and number markers allover the arena?? It's all about horse control, preforming turns, different types of canter/trots, guiding the animal around the arena doing the set tasks without errors.. Eg going from a quicker stride to mark 1 then without breaking stride slowing it right down to just a slow walk etc..
its a whole competition dude.. They'll do cross country next where they race against a clock to clear obstacles and earn points, jump over water crossings, barricades etc in an outdoors venue.. then the last part of the competition is the indoors show jumping... set barriers, set path inside an arena.
Dressage is uber shit! Shouldn't even be in the olympics. Next thing you know they'll have dog events.
The weightlifting coverage has been perfect! So glad I switched foxtel on for it. I haven't even bothered to see how stupid channel Nine's attempt of coverage has been, i'm sure it's nothing but swimming over and over and over.
Only annoying factor of foxtel coverage are the ads the moment something stops. The ads are over quick enough to look past it.
Have checked out some gymnastics, archery, air shooting and Basketball. Saw quick snippet of Judo but bored me after 10seconds.
Talking about ads, it is refreshing to watch a sporting event without a million adverts on everything, just the simple colours with london 2012 everywhere. Makes it look fresher and cleaner.
Digital TV is notoriously bad for clarity of anything moving on the horizontal axis. This includes tickers. It's the one area where analogue TV was superior, even at lower resolutions.
We seem to generally be doing rather shit though. The past two mornings I've watched the highlights in the morning before work and it just seems to be a reel of continuous losses. Watching beach volleyball teams get beat, then swimmers get beat, then the basketball team get beaten, then the water polo team get beaten, then our guys in the canoe slalom thing qualified 10th and the commentators tried to spin that into something positive. It made for a depressing morning's viewing.
And then they showed the medal tally, and even Kazakstan has more medals than us!
I generally don't enjoy watching sport, but the olympics is usually at least slightly interesting. But it is not. When I watch it I feel like it is a punishment.
Saw the Mary Poppins and Mr Bean stuff, and I think that's it for another four years.
Whoever was the producer on the opening ceremony that chose that fucking second to focus on the Queen should never work in television again - that was the same moment when she was checking her nails, right? What the fucking fuck?
I mean, as an end-user of the Internet I'm glad he did, because fuck me some of those pictures are hilarious. But HOW BAD WAS THAT TIMING?
I think the olympic spirit is dead or something. Look at all the poor losers on the Australian swimming team. These people have no backup plan, not ready for the mindset for not coming first. The media also are loving ripping into them. There is no "fuck yeah, you are fourth best in the world!" it's like... "wtf happened assholes!".
I think with online newspapers and stuff people just love the negative side and making everything out to be like tragedy. There isn't that sense of sportsmanship in the community. Everyone is a prick about it.
And we're only seeing it now because of the olympics... but these athletes... their whole life is this tragedy. The people around them are toxic, they have no choice but to win. They go in the TV commercials and say shit like "yeah well I'll have to swim faster than my personal best to beat the fast american guy... but I am a winner so I guess I'll have to." - They don't have a choice.
And there is so much bullshit surrounding these people, their families, their coaches, all the specialists... they will all have superstitions and stupid ideas about mind-over-matter and if their superstar loses it was something like... he didn't love his family or hated his country or some shit. The sponsors will pull out, no journalism/commentator job for you afterwards.
I guarantee a big part of why these atheletes compete in the olympics is out of guilt that has been laid on them repeatedly over the years. It's a really shit life - you might see moments of glamour on TV in the good times, but it's shit. They're guilted into doing it, and then the chances are that they will not get gold, which is not acceptable - and their world falls apart. I have seen swimmers literally chew the fucking flesh off their own bodies to avoid having to compete. It is fucked up.
therm, I think you are looking at swimming in Australia predominately, and you are correct. Swimming clubs and coaching has been on the decline in Brisbane in the last 10 years to the point that there are very few carnivals, in house swim meets and even just club events left on the calender. I think everyone just got lazy, parents mostly. Or maybe other sports are just so much more popular as they dont require the amount of training and commitment it requires to be a swimmer. + swimming will cost you more than all the footies and even if you make it pro, you aint going to make shit unless you are the best in the world.
When I was a kid there was easy 4-5 kids of the same age group competing for every swimming club. My sister is a swimming coach out of work hours now, and at her club she cant even fill every age bracket. And as for swimming carnivals she has maybe one meet per month. It used to be every week in the early 2000's with 100 kids to compete.
Its disappointing to see a sport crashing out of popularity, but I dont think it will be the last.
As for the other sports we really don't start collecting medals for a few days yet when the team sports come into play, so dont worry about us being behind kaskastan yet.
Where's faceman - I'm sure he'll be blaming the carbon tax on both of these.
In other news - foxtel coverage is pretty excellent - enjoying watching a bit of everything at night, but the foxtel commentator last night during the swimming pretty much said 'yeah the chinese team are cheats and are on drugs' it was a surreal wtf did they actually say that moment
Just chiming in to say that twitter and facebook cost me gold at the olympics aswell.. and silver, and bronze.. Chips and beer have alot to answer for.. They denied me a chance at the world championships! Tv cost me the nationals and porn cost me the state titles...
I find that whole badminton situation kind of funny because yes they were trying to lose their matches, but only to increase their chances of actually winning the whole thing by getting into easier groups.
Reminds me of the time Steve Waugh deliberately scored slowly against the Windies in the 1999 Cricket World Cup to keep the in form New Zealand team out and the out of form Windies side in.
The Australian commentary is getting annoying now. When they chuck on the UK commentary it follows: "Well looks like the UK has been knocked out, there will be a few disappointed people in the crowd, but congratulations Germany, well won, look at the control and.." The Australian commentary is more" Germany was always going to win, but the real race was for sixth position, lets watch the Australians lose 20 times and ignore what was happening infront of them"
Shame you guys can't watch the BBC coverage, I've been really impressed so far, clean, crisp, no advertising, really good and balanced commentators with some great sports pundits. I'm loving Johnson's views.
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