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Post by ganews on Jul 24, 2021 21:13:55 GMT -5
Do you like watching dudes with belly tattoos falling down while attempting tricks like snowboarding, but slower and less visually impressive? Skateboarding is for you!
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Post by Nudeviking on Jul 25, 2021 20:20:07 GMT -5
Do you like watching dudes with belly tattoos falling down while attempting tricks like snowboarding, but slower and less visually impressive? Skateboarding is for you! It was great. I liked how most of the dudes were all high fiving with each other and seemed genuinely happy when one of them, regardless of where he was from, actually managed to land a trick. True embodiment of what the Olympics are supposed to be about right there. |
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Post by ganews on Jul 25, 2021 22:13:38 GMT -5
Do you like watching dudes with belly tattoos falling down while attempting tricks like snowboarding, but slower and less visually impressive? Skateboarding is for you! It was great. I liked how most of the dudes were all high fiving with each other and seemed genuinely happy when one of them, regardless of where he was from, actually managed to land a trick. True embodiment of what the Olympics are supposed to be about right there. Yeah but that seems to apply to every sport (except fencing where it never gets better than "not a dick"). |
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Post by Nudeviking on Jul 25, 2021 23:00:38 GMT -5
It was great. I liked how most of the dudes were all high fiving with each other and seemed genuinely happy when one of them, regardless of where he was from, actually managed to land a trick. True embodiment of what the Olympics are supposed to be about right there. Yeah but that seems to apply to every sport (except fencing where it never gets better than "not a dick"). Most of the team sports are at best a begrudging handshake at the end of the game too and all the combat sports (of which I'd include fencing) are "at least they weren't a dick" at best. |
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monodrone
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Post by monodrone on Jul 26, 2021 6:37:13 GMT -5
Sports are good.
Currently watching the Men's Team Gymnastics event and it's heating up between the Russian Athletes From Russia but not 'Russia', Japan and China for the top spot and similar to what you said about the skateboarders supporting each other you can hear the other gymnasts hootin' and hollerin' in the arena when they see someone do something amazing on the big screen. So far today I've seen some Taekwondo bouts and synchronised diving having watched the men's triathlon before I fell asleep last night. What a time to be alive.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 27, 2021 8:12:45 GMT -5
SPOILERS for women's team gymnastics, which happened this morning but will probably be featured on the prime-time NBC broadcast.
Apparently Simone Biles dropped out after her vault - first folks thought it was an injury, but then there were reports she was dealing with a mental health issue. Which sucks either way, and it also means the "Russian" team won (that whole thing is pretty dumb too). I feel for Simone, she has the weight of the team on her and she's talked about how hard a lot of this is - she decided it was her responsibility to come back, after the sexual abuse scandal, and ... that's a lot to put on a 24 year old! Just a rough situation all around.
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Post by ganews on Jul 27, 2021 10:03:24 GMT -5
I've never cared for watching long-form racing of any kind but I found the triathlons to be surprisingly engaging.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 27, 2021 10:17:38 GMT -5
I've never cared for watching long-form racing of any kind but I found the triathlons to be surprisingly engaging. Seeing the woman from Bermuda win last night was pretty cool, they only sent two athletes to the games! And the American man who came in 6th is from the area and beat cancer in high school. |
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Post by Not a real doctor on Jul 27, 2021 12:15:36 GMT -5
Widespread use of drones compared to previous Olympics gives some pretty cool camera angles. Watching the womens' mountain biking event now and the wide angle overhead shots are nifty.
Also: any spectator with a whistle at the games should be sprayed with bear mace.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Jul 27, 2021 13:00:57 GMT -5
I've never cared for watching long-form racing of any kind but I found the triathlons to be surprisingly engaging. The end of the men's bicycle road race was surprisingly engaging too, but I I wouldn't have wanted to sit and watch the whole thing. Also enjoyed watching the girl from Alaska pull off the big upset in the 100 meter breastroke, especially since they had a camera set-up at her high school to capture them losing their shit. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 28, 2021 10:16:18 GMT -5
This is completely random, but I saw a recap of the surfing results yesterday, and then the commentators noted that for 2024 - the Paris Olympics - the surfing will be in Tahiti. Which, I totally get that there is no surfing on the Mediterranean but wow that's nowhere close.
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Post by Lurky McLurk on Jul 28, 2021 11:19:54 GMT -5
This is completely random, but I saw a recap of the surfing results yesterday, and then the commentators noted that for 2024 - the Paris Olympics - the surfing will be in Tahiti. Which, I totally get that there is no surfing on the Mediterranean but wow that's nowhere close. I was wondering how we managed it in London for 2012. And the answer is... we didn't. It's new for 2020. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 28, 2021 11:48:54 GMT -5
This is completely random, but I saw a recap of the surfing results yesterday, and then the commentators noted that for 2024 - the Paris Olympics - the surfing will be in Tahiti. Which, I totally get that there is no surfing on the Mediterranean but wow that's nowhere close. I was wondering how we managed it in London for 2012. And the answer is... we didn't. It's new for 2020. Yeah, it's a brand-new Olympic sport. |
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Post by ganews on Jul 29, 2021 10:17:20 GMT -5
Of all the various implosions I've seen this Olympics, badminton has been the most brutal. The US athlete had progressed farther than anyone ever for the US playing to go to the quarterfinals, and she already had one set won against China in the best-of-three. Then one bad step crunching on an ankle and she has to withdraw in tears. People like Biles and Osaka, by comparison, are already major champions who don't need to prove themselves.
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Post by Not a real doctor on Jul 29, 2021 20:35:23 GMT -5
They showed a short clip of Rowdy Gaines watching Caleb Dressel in the 100 and he was just hilariously losing his shit.
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Post by Lurky McLurk on Jul 30, 2021 5:37:26 GMT -5
Of all the various implosions I've seen this Olympics, badminton has been the most brutal. The US athlete had progressed farther than anyone ever for the US playing to go to the quarterfinals, and she already had one set won against China in the best-of-three. Then one bad step crunching on an ankle and she has to withdraw in tears. People like Biles and Osaka, by comparison, are already major champions who don't need to prove themselves. For British people of a certain age, Derek Redmond tearing his hamstring and leaning on his dad's shoulder as he limped his way over the 400m finish line remains the iconic moment of Barcelona 1992. Far more so than, say, Linford Christie winning the 100m gold. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2021 22:11:11 GMT -5
First of all, NBC still makes it incredibly difficult to stream the Olympics if you don't have any sort of tv subscription. You'd think their own Peacock streaming service would do this. But no! Not even the paid version! Astounding. Like, I would definitely pay $10 for just the 2 weeks of NBC streaming to get the Olympics. This is wild that NBC doesn't do anything like this. Anyway, I do want to say that I've found their live event coverage seems to have improved over the 2016 and 2012 coverage. It isn't quite so "Rah Rah America!" as it used to be. And NBC is doing a better job of treating sports competitions like sports competitions instead of hazy inspirational stories. The Men's Gymnastics live coverage was a MAJOR upgrade as it finally occurred to NBC that the USA is not in contention for medals, so maybe they should cover the teams/gymnasts who are! In 2016, NBC's Men's Gymnastics coverage barely acknowledged the existence of Kohei Uchimura. It was crazy. I had to use YouTube to find feeds from other countries' news agencies to actually watch him win the All Around gold medal. This year NBC properly covered the nailbiter Team final and did genuinely showcase the top 4 or 5 competitors in the Men's All Around. Very good. Caveat: I have no idea what their primetime coverage is like. But there, I feel, they have more of an excuse to turn it into "heartwarming tale of athlete overcoming the odds" since what they are showing is often 15 hours old anyway. Onto the actual sports, as mentioned, I am quite enjoying the gymnastics coverage this year. Simone Biles being out is actually making the Women's gymnastics more exciting. I always love to watch Olymmpic swimming and that has been great, of course. I've really enjoyed watching the diving competitions this year. It was exciting to see Tom Daley finally win a gold medal. I've also really enjoyed watching the rugby matches. Rugby at this level somehow seems more fun than it does when I've watched it at the local club level. I also got sucked into watching Table Tennis one night. This event is almost hypnotizing. It is crazy how good these players are. I've also really enjoyed the Kayak/Canoe events. The Canoe slalom course looked really tough. I quite enjoyed watching the athletes navigate that. Again, somehow this all looks more fun at Olympic level than I imagine it would be to actually do. Finally, here is my ongoing list of stuff I've heard about Olympic athletes that makes their performance seem insane: 1. Russia's Artur Dalaloyan competed in Men's Gymnastics. He came in 6th in the Men's All Around. He tore his Achilles tendon and had reconstructive surgery 3 months ago. Not even sure a Russian doping program alone could get that result. 2. Italy's swimmer Gregorio Paltrinieri won the silver medal in the Men's 800m freestyle. He got diagnosed with Mono in June 2021.
And one for the "Girl, you're crazy to keep doing this" file 3. Brazil's gymnast Rebeca Andrade has torn her ACL three times. She won the silver medal in the Women's All Around.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2021 23:59:12 GMT -5
Update: Wow, USA's Katie Ledecky and Australia's Ariarne Titmus are incredible freestyle swimmers. Ledecky has to be the best long distance swimmer I've ever seen. My dad swam freestyle and butterfly on his college team. I never competed, but I loved swimming.
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Post by Not a real doctor on Jul 31, 2021 20:25:56 GMT -5
I've also really enjoyed watching the rugby matches. Rugby at this level somehow seems more fun than it does when I've watched it at the local club level. I played club rugby for 10 years or so. Watching the Olympic matches with ms notarealdoctor: "why didn't your games ever look like that  ?" |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 31, 2021 23:27:56 GMT -5
Wow, the final night of swimming was amazing. The 50m Freestyle races were great. Caeleb Dressel, wow, I don't remember seeing someone win the 50m by that much. Emma McKeon looked amazing. She's won a boat load of medals at this Olympics. She is great. The women's 4x100m medley relay was a nail biter. Video here. That was amazing to watch. Love to watch these Australia vs USA relay races. Australia women's swim team looked so great at these Olympics. I remember the Australian media absolutely ripping their swim team to shreds a couple Olympic cycles ago for their "underperformance". It was brutal. Bobby Finke gets double gold in the distance events. His closing kick is unreal. NBC has the video of his final 100m of the 1500m that he won tonight. He's in 3rd when he hits the wall for the final 100m. He ended up winning by over 1 second. His final 50m was CRAZY. Just looked it up. His final 50m was 25.78. That's an entirely different gear than the other 1450m that he swam. Crazy stuff. He also had a crazy come-from-behind win in the 800m. In that race his final 50m was 26.39. When an NBC reporter told him his final 50m split tonight, he looked shocked and said, "I thought I was coming home a lot slower than I did in the 800m. Oh my God." Finally, the 4x100 Medley relay was amazing. USA wasn't the favorites, but they win and set a WR. Video here. This was going to be tough for the USA team, since Adam Peaty was going to beat their breaststroker by at least 1 full second. In fact, Peaty beat the USA breaststroke swimmer by over 2 seconds. Yikes. Caeleb Dressel came through again, putting up a monster butterfly leg. USA wins this relay for the 10th time in a row. Wow, these relay races are so freaking fun!
This last relay had the benefit of having a fairly large cheering crowd. It was the last swimming event so essentially every member of each country's swim was sitting in the stands. HUGE contingent of USA swimmers cheering them on. It is nice to hear a cheering crowd at the Olympics.
Wonderful swimming at these Olympics. Debating on whether to stay up for the gymnastics event finals or not. They start at 1am local. But Suni Lee doesn't go in the Uneven Bars until 3:30am. My work schedule on Monday is going to be crazy busy. It isn't a good time to be throwing off my sleep schedule. USA has realistic medal chances in 3/4 event finals today. Don't think Yul Moldauer can medal on Floor unless some crazy stuff happens to about 5-6 other gymnasts. Ugh, cannot wait until the 2028 Olympics which will finally be in my own timezone. Hate it when the events I want to see are all at 3am, the absolute worst possible time. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Aug 1, 2021 8:25:43 GMT -5
Desert Dweller Bobby Finke was so much fun to watch in the distance events. That 800M win was crazy! He just really knew when to turn it on.
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Crash Test Dumbass
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Aug 1, 2021 9:36:16 GMT -5
I watched some of the weighlifting while work was slow in the morning and holy shit Olympic weighlifting is crazy and awesome.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 1, 2021 22:02:21 GMT -5
Desert Dweller Bobby Finke was so much fun to watch in the distance events. That 800M win was crazy! He just really knew when to turn it on.
Saw an interview with him today where he explains that at the University of Florida ALL of the long distance swimmers always sprint the last 50m and turn it into a competition. The coach encourages this so as to train the swimmers how to access that different gear they may need in long distance swimming.
So, he actually TRAINED that insane closing sprint. Which definitely helps to explain how he could have done it twice in the Olympics. I cannot believe that 25.78 final 50m split from his 1500m race. Thomas Dean won the 200m freestyle race. His final 50m - the 4th lap - was 26.84. Everyone in the 200m swam a slower final 50m. Bobby Finke swam faster than this on his 30th lap! He's only about one second slower than the 100m finalists were on their second lap!
Wow, I wish my father were alive to see that. He was a competitive freestyle swimmer. This would have blown his mind.
Anyway, I haven't watched any coverage today as I had to work OT. Although I did stay up to watch the Women's Vault and Men's Floor exercise gymnastic finals last night. The Men's Floor was a crazy competition, with most of the finalists having big misses. Russia's Nikita Nagornyy actually pulled off a TRIPLE pike. He barely landed on his feet and bounced out of bounds, but still. That's crazy stuff.
This Men's Floor Exercise had a tie for the high score. And for some reason either FIG or the IOC has a tiebreaker rule. This seems wrong to me. If they both score the same, why do we need a tie breaker for the gold medal? What? And in this case, they had to go the second tiebreaker rule because both of the athletes still tied on the first tiebreaker rule. Honestly, FIG/IOC, just give them both gold medals. WTF? The American in the final had an inexplicable error on one of the easier elements in his routine that caused a deduction AND a downgrade of difficulty. Yikes. The American Men's Gymnastics program already has a problem of not training their gymnasts at higher difficulty level. This is why they are constantly coming in 5th/6th place in everything.
The Women's Vault was pretty fun except for the half second when I thought Jade Carey was about to severely injure herself. OMG, I saw her start this ful out sprint towards the vault, then sort of skip and stutter step, and suddenly I had a vision of her trying to do a roundoff onto the vault and miss due to timing, and, like, crash into the vault, or miss the springboard or something. It was terrifying. But, she managed to pull it together and at least do a flip off the vault to get some score. Yeesh, her timing was WAY off.
And THAT is why Simone Biles should not be competing in these Olympics. Carey here barely managed to pull something together and not crash and burn. And that was with her being fully aware of what she was doing. If Biles has lost spatial awareness then it is far too dangerous for her to compete.
Anyway, cool to see Rebeca Andrade win the gold medal. First ever Gold Medal for a female Brazilian gymnast. Also very cool to see MyKayla Skinner take advantage of the opportunity she was given and win that silver medal. Wow. Incredibly great ending to her long, mostly disappointing Olympic history. I am so happy she ends up with an Olympic medal. (She's a local athlete and the press has covered her story for years.)
I was going to stay up to watch the Men's Pommel Horse, but UK's Max Whitlock went first and put up a jaw dropping awesome routine that I knew no one could beat. That took all the drama out of it, and it was 2:30am, so I went to sleep. Unsurprisingly I saw when I woke up that he won the gold medal. Wow, that was an INCREDIBLE pommel horse routine. Wow. |
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 2, 2021 20:59:49 GMT -5
I've also really enjoyed watching the rugby matches. Rugby at this level somehow seems more fun than it does when I've watched it at the local club level. I played club rugby for 10 years or so. Watching the Olympic matches with ms notarealdoctor: "why didn't your games ever look like that ?" That has some very similar energy to my child who has taken swimming lessons for I think 8 months now declaring "That's so easy!" while watching swimmers smashing Olympic records while doing Freestyle swimming races. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Aug 3, 2021 10:36:41 GMT -5
Desert Dweller I have to thank you for alerting me to Tom Daley's knitting instagram which is an absolute delight. Nice to see Jade Carey do so well yesterday, looking forward to seeing Simone Biles tonight (and yes of course I already had the results spoiled). I also got to watch some men's springboard diving during the day, and there were two noteworthy bad moments - the guy from Germany (I think?) balked a bit, stopped his dive on the board and started over -- only when you do that, they deduct 2 points from each score, so he ended up with like a 35. And then there was the dude (I forget what country) who just lost himself mid-dive and landed on his back. Ouch.
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Post by Lurky McLurk on Aug 3, 2021 11:46:47 GMT -5
I played club rugby for 10 years or so. Watching the Olympic matches with ms notarealdoctor: "why didn't your games ever look like that ?" That has some very similar energy to my child who has taken swimming lessons for I think 8 months now declaring "That's so easy!" while watching swimmers smashing Olympic records while doing Freestyle swimming races. Similarly my daughter during the gymnastics: "I can do that!" *demonstrates roly poly* |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 3, 2021 13:40:11 GMT -5
Desert Dweller I have to thank you for alerting me to Tom Daley's knitting instagram which is an absolute delight. Nice to see Jade Carey do so well yesterday, looking forward to seeing Simone Biles tonight (and yes of course I already had the results spoiled). I also got to watch some men's springboard diving during the day, and there were two noteworthy bad moments - the guy from Germany (I think?) balked a bit, stopped his dive on the board and started over -- only when you do that, they deduct 2 points from each score, so he ended up with like a 35. And then there was the dude (I forget what country) who just lost himself mid-dive and landed on his back. Ouch.
Ah, more people to enjoy Tom Daley's knitting projects, which are adorable. He has been knitting doggie sweaters at the Olympics. This is what the cameras keep catching during the diving events. I guess this is a good way to avoid stress. He still has another diving event in a couple days.
Yes, I was so happy to see Jade Carey win that gold medal. She has been treated poorly by USAG. The local news has been following this for a while. Glad to see her strategy pay off.
As for the Springboard diving, in the synchro event I saw a Russian diver nearly belly flop after screwing up his Springboard jump. That, too, looked very painful. Haven't watched the solo Springboard diving yet. Couldn't get a live stream last night, alas.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 3, 2021 13:53:22 GMT -5
I played club rugby for 10 years or so. Watching the Olympic matches with ms notarealdoctor: "why didn't your games ever look like that ?" That has some very similar energy to my child who has taken swimming lessons for I think 8 months now declaring "That's so easy!" while watching swimmers smashing Olympic records while doing Freestyle swimming races. Meanwhile I'm sitting here still wondering how the hell Bobby Finke swam a 25.78 in lap 30, which seems like it should be impossible. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Aug 4, 2021 7:33:20 GMT -5
I had the results spoiled for me 12 hours before it aired in prime time, but it sure was nice to see Simone Biles back in competition. She's been through so much and I find her truly amazing.
I also saw some of the open water marathon swimming and man, those people are nuts.
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Post by ganews on Aug 4, 2021 23:07:03 GMT -5
The most conventionally attractive athletes must be in the men's decathlon/women's heptathlon. All-around athletes whose bodies aren't inclined to be warped toward a specialty like disproportionately long arms, particularly massive muscle bulk, and so forth. Plus they tend to be older so it's not so weird to observe this.
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