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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 28, 2024 17:41:41 GMT -5
It was inevitable that NBC would no longer stream events for free. I guess I'll have to decide whether I care enough to go to the trouble of doing a free trial and the cancelling.
The coverage on Peacock is pretty good. The actual live coverage. They are streaming everything live. And the replays are usually available within an hour after the events have ended. This is helpful for me, because a lot of the events are at 2am local for me. They do this even with big ticket events like Gymnastics and Swimming. And I know I have watched back some Volleyball, Rugby, Fencing, etc immediately after the live was over. Well, within an hour, give or take.
For the first time in a while, I haven't paid for a VPN to access the BBC coverage. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 28, 2024 17:42:39 GMT -5
In other news: Woooooooo! Léon Marchand! WOOOOOOOOOOOO! Wow, that was everything I wanted to see. I cannot imagine how incredible it must feel to win a gold medal at an Olympics held in your home country.
Edited to add: Watched it again. Ahhhhhh, that was beautiful. Ah, I wish my father was still alive. My father was a competitive collegiate swimmer. He taught me how to swim before I could walk. He loved Olympic swimming. He loved watching Michael Phelps, especially in slow-mo. He could explain all the technical physical movements.
He would have absolutely loved watching a 400IM swimmer with such technically perfect strokes.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 29, 2024 0:44:32 GMT -5
It might seem strange, but Marchand's backstroke was actually slower than it was during the World Championships. In this Olympic race, he really pulled away from the field with that stroke, but it was slower than he's been known to swim it. His freestyle was also slower than normal. However the Fly and Breaststroke were faster.
If you don't know this, Marchand is still at least claiming he's going to try something really insane at these Olympics. He's going to try to swim both the 200M Butterfly and 200M Breaststroke. These two races are the same day. No one has ever medalled in both events. In fact, this year, his coach, Bob Bowman, got the organizers to move the Breaststroke final to later in the session. They used to be back-to-back races. So, it was essentially impossible to swim both. Now they are separated by about an hour.
However, the prelims and semis are ALSO on the same day. Which means he'd have to swim 4 times on Tuesday just to make the finals. Then, if he can actually make the finals, he'd have to swim two Olympic finals within about an hour. And then the 200M IM is I think the day AFTER all of that.
People who follow swimming are still skeptical that he's actually going to try this. I've never even seen him compete the 200M Breaststroke! I don't even know what his normal times in that are. I've seen him do it on a collegiate short course, but not on the Olympic long course. I know he has times to be competitive in the 200M Fly, but Hungary's Milak is the World record holder in that event, and I'm unconvinced Marchand can beat him. I literally have no clue how competitive Marchand would be in the Breaststroke.
So, he could be attempting to do this crazy thing, and certainly he wouldn't be the favorite to win either of those races. I guess we'll know Tuesday if he's really going to try this. It is all kinds of insane to attempt this.
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Post by Nudeviking on Jul 29, 2024 3:28:25 GMT -5
Watched the Korean ladies take their 10th straight gold medal in ladies team archery last night. It was pretty great but there was something weird that happened during it. I don't remember if it was a thing at the last Olympics that I'd forgotten about or anything but they had those girls hooked up to EKG readers so we at home could see who was stressed the fuck out and who was keeping cool under pressure. I don't know if I really needed to know that Jeon Hun-young's heart beat went from 75 to 89 beats per minute while she was setting up for her shot. Seems kind of invasive.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 29, 2024 8:22:00 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. I am fascinated by the wide variety of bodies involved in track and field. The men tend to be tall and muscular but not too bulky; the women vary in height but are lean and ripped ... and then there are the field athletes. Like, the shot-putters are just WALLS of human beings; not necessarily fat but just big, muscular people. And some of them do have visible paunches or bellies. Apparently as long as you can heave a heavy metal ball halfway across a stadium, your physique is not very important. It's funny - I found myself thinking the same thing at the track and field trials this year. So much so that I had to double-check the date on the above post. Anyway. Yay Olympics! Watched a ton of gymnastics yesterday and man, the poor French women just .... could not keep it together. So many falls and stumbles. Brazil is really good.... but we're better. I love Simone Biles. |
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Post by The Stuffingtacular She-Hulk on Jul 29, 2024 11:18:13 GMT -5
I discovered yesterday that the cats LOVE watching gymnastics. It must be all the quick movements and bright colors.
Also, I agree with you, PET. The French team almost made me feel bad for them...but not that bad. Brazil was good. But they definitely don't have Simone Biles, who is my favorite!
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Post by ganews on Jul 29, 2024 21:05:24 GMT -5
The kid with glasses on the US men's gymnastics team is what Peter Parker/Spider-Man would look like in real life.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 29, 2024 21:49:43 GMT -5
The kid with glasses on the US men's gymnastics team is what Peter Parker/Spider-Man would look like in real life. He’s the cutest little nerd! I love him! |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2024 0:03:12 GMT -5
The kid with glasses on the US men's gymnastics team is what Peter Parker/Spider-Man would look like in real life. He’s the cutest little nerd! I love him! I like how social media is making the Clark Kent/Superman jokes, since he takes off the glasses to perform the Pommel Horse. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2024 1:00:52 GMT -5
I cannot stress this enough, please watch the events in the LIVE coverage, whether LIVE on NBC daytime, or LIVE on Peacock. You can also watch the LIVE replays on Peacock. Avoid NBC's Primetime coverage like the plague. (Or obviously, please watch the CBC/BBC or some other competent sports broadcaster who has Olympic rights.)
Today, I was actually scorekeeping during Men's Gymnastics Team final, so I watched the live stream, then wanted to spot check something, so went back to the replay. The replay was actually an entirely different stream, like, different commentators, different video feed. The live focused on the Bronze medal battle between USA/Ukraine/GB, while the replay was heavily focusing on the Gold medal battle with China/Japan. Both were great.
How did NBC Primetime do? I checked. They showed 4 full routines from China/Japan TOTAL, 2 partial routines from them, and about the same from Ukraine/GB. They didn't even show all of team USA! In Primetime coverage, it doesn't even look like a COMPETITION. You have nothing with which to compare for team USA. You cannot tell if they are doing better or worse than the other teams. It is so deeply silly. Their coverage showed a fall for Japan and two falls for China, so it would be fair for that audience to wonder why Team USA only got Bronze. Just ridiculous coverage.
Anyway, if you didn't watch the Men's Team Final, it was INCREDIBLE! WOW! Sooooo dramatic! Nailbiting! It came down to the final two rotations for everything. The USA Team pushing hard to hit everything, knowing they needed to do this for the Bronze medal. China utterly stomping on Japan through about 4 rotations. Then in a shocking twist ending, China just blew it on the High Bar. (Vault didn't go great for them either.) OMG, I couldn't believe it when the final scores posted and Japan snatched the victory by .5 point. That was CRAZY!!!
I was so impressed by the incredible sportsmanship of China's best gymnast, Zhang Boheng. He has looked incredible in competition so far. I think he's going to win the All-Around. It was his teammate who fell on Vault and Floor and cost them the Gold Medal. But afterwards, you could see him going over and putting his arm around Su Weide, and saying things to support him. He looked so disappointed to lose the Gold medal but was still so supportive of the gymnast who'd actually made the mistakes. Ah, what a great athlete. (You won't see any of that on NBC Primetime!)
For one more note on China: Liu Yang's Rings routine is insane, and that might be the most impressive piece of Gymnastics performed at the entire Olympic games. (Sorry, Simone Biles.)
I also loved when the USA Men's team knew they'd won the Bronze medal and celebrated like total maniacs. It was as if they'd won the Gold medal. I love it at the Olympics when people are so thrilled to win the Bronze medal. (To be fair, Japan also had a huge celebration for winning the Gold medal.)
I know it was incredibly hard work by the USA Men's Gymnastics organization to accomplish this turnaround. The USA was way, way, WAY out of contention in 2016 and 2021. They weren't doing difficult enough skills to contend. From what I understand, it is harder in Men's gymnastics to do more difficult moves, because most of the USA National Men's team are in college and college gymnastics has a different scoring system, in which these more difficult moves are not done. And yeah, they are still far behind Japan and China. But this was proof that they are finally moving in the right direction. (It also helped that Russia was banned.)
Anyway, great job Japan, China and USA.
Other stuff: Are any of you watching the Surfing coverage? This looks incredible! OMG, I now want to go to Tahiti just to witness in person these huge waves. This surfing looks incredibly hard, and simultaneously this event looks like so much fun. My father was a lifeguard on the beaches in Los Angeles. He tried to teach me how to surf, but I was never great. Watching this makes me wish I had tried harder.
I also watched some of the Women's Beach Volleyball. I like that the Olympics are now allowing women to wear leggings instead of bikini bottoms. It's nice that they have this option now. I enjoy this 2-person per side Beach Volleyball format much better than normal indoor Volleyball.
The Swimming today was also fun. It is wild that the two 400IM races were the biggest blowouts. And that everyone knew that was going to happen. I wonder how two people became so much better in this event than all their competitors. The Men's 200M freestyle had a super close finish. That was really fun to see. 100M Men's Backstroke also had a close finish. The Women's 100M Breaststroke also had a heartbreaking 4th place finish for a USA swimmer, by something like 2 hundredths of a second.
Anyway, Tuesday morning we will find out if Léon Marchand is really and truly going to attempt this insane swimming double. The prelims for both the 200M Butterfly and 200M Breaststroke are tomorrow morning. Separated by about an hour and a half.
And I was wrong above, I realized I have seen Marchand compete a 200M Breaststroke. I watched him do it for French Olympic trials. It didn't look that fast, and he said he was really struggling. Because, of course, the 200M Butterfly final had happened only about an hour earlier! But when I checked the Olympic Qualifying times, I think his time is in the top 4.
It will be so crazy if he manages to get a medal in both these events. No one has ever done that. This is only even possible this year because Bob Bowman convinced the organizers to move the 200M Breaststroke to almost the end of the night.
I still cannot make myself believe that he's going to try this. But I'll know it when I wake up in the morning, since the 200M Butterfly prelims are at 2am local. I also cannot wait to see what Hungary's Milak will do there. There's a whole story behind him which I won't go into. I suspect the live commentators will mention it. I don't think Marchand can beat him, but wow, I'd love to be wrong.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2024 1:13:03 GMT -5
The kid with glasses on the US men's gymnastics team is what Peter Parker/Spider-Man would look like in real life. He’s the cutest little nerd! I love him! Before the Team Final, he posted to Instagram a video showing that he'd solved a Rubik's Cube in less than 10 seconds.
He is a true nerd hero!
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Post by Nudeviking on Jul 30, 2024 3:51:48 GMT -5
Have any other Olympics done the gimmick of having the sports venues right outside national monuments before that Paris is doing this go 'round. Like you'll be watching beach volleyball and the Eiffel Tower's right behind them and the archery competition is just on the lawn in front of Les Invalides. I kind of think it rules though I don't know how inconvenient it is for the average Parisian.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 30, 2024 8:59:28 GMT -5
He’s the cutest little nerd! I love him! Before the Team Final, he posted to Instagram a video showing that he'd solved a Rubik's Cube in less than 10 seconds.
He is a true nerd hero!
Hopefully this will embed properly, I love this... https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-B4dBqsmkf |
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GumTurkeyles
AV Clubber 
$10 down, $10 a month, don't you be a turkey
Posts: 3,065 
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Post by GumTurkeyles on Jul 30, 2024 12:53:36 GMT -5
The kid with glasses on the US men's gymnastics team is what Peter Parker/Spider-Man would look like in real life. If Spider-Man were skilled in Gymkata. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2024 15:23:21 GMT -5
Have any other Olympics done the gimmick of having the sports venues right outside national monuments before that Paris is doing this go 'round. Like you'll be watching beach volleyball and the Eiffel Tower's right behind them and the archery competition is just on the lawn in front of Les Invalides. I kind of think it rules though I don't know how inconvenient it is for the average Parisian. I also love this, and more countries should try this.
Los Angeles can't because there are no spectacular landmarks there. And I say that as someone born and raised in Los Angeles.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2024 15:36:36 GMT -5
OMG, Léon Marchand really is attempting this insane Double. What a lunatic! I'm in awe.
Came in 2nd in the 200M Butterfly Semifinals and Qualified 1st in the 200M Breaststroke Semifinals.
He doesn't even normally compete the 200M Breaststroke. Let me repeat that: He doesn't normally compete the 200M Breaststroke!
No one has ever won a medal in both of these events at the same Olympics. Most swimmers don't even compete in both of these strokes.
I still think there is no way he can beat Kristof Milak in the 200M Butterfly. Milak is crazy good in that. Got a good laugh out of the morning commentators saying that Milak, "took time off for mental health". Well, that is one way of putting it. I love Milak, and I love how much he hates his coaches and tries to humiliate them at every opportunity. Ye gods, it will be so funny to see him win the Olympic gold after his coaches were whining about how he was lazy and wasn't even training. Like, 6 weeks ago his coaches were saying that. LOL
Anyway, much respect to you Marchand for attempting to win medals in two different strokes during the same competition session. We'll see how this goes tomorrow.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 30, 2024 17:48:37 GMT -5
NBC confirmed in the evening session: Marchand is the only person to ever make the Olympic final in both the 200M Butterfly and 200M Breaststroke. It will be amazing if he can medal in both events. I can't even wrap my brain around that. I wish my father were alive to see it. (My father swam the Butterfly.) The schedule has helped here, as these events are frequently held literally back-to-back. Bob Bowman asked the Olympic organizers to move the Breaststroke to later in the evening. Also helping is the addition of the Women's 1500M freestyle, which was held in between the heats this morning.
Edited to add: The Women's Gymnastics Team final wasn't nearly as fun as the Men's Final was. As expected, the USA team stomped on everyone else. Congrats to them.
Loved seeing Brazil's Rebecca Andrade get a team medal. Brazilian gymnastics has great improved over the last decade.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 31, 2024 14:41:45 GMT -5
OH. MY. GOD. Leon Marchand! You are a STUD!!!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jul 31, 2024 15:41:11 GMT -5
OH. MY. GOD. Leon Marchand! You are a STUD!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
HOLY SHIT! WHAT AN OLYMPIC PERFORMANCE!!! |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jul 31, 2024 16:58:23 GMT -5
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 1, 2024 0:17:18 GMT -5
This is like the third time the Olympics have fucked up something about Korea this year. |
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Post by Frohman on Aug 1, 2024 14:07:57 GMT -5
WWII alt-history timeline |
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monodrone
Prolific Poster 
Come To Brazil
Posts: 2,565
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Post by monodrone on Aug 2, 2024 8:32:34 GMT -5
This is what happens when you fuck around listing by total medals instead of golds. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 2, 2024 15:43:13 GMT -5
Leon Marchand, thank you for justifying my support of a French athlete over ones from the USA. I greatly appreciate this.
Knew this guy would be an Olympic superstar when I saw him dominate both the NCAA Championships and World Championships in 2023. If possible, he exceed expectations.
How incredibly awesome would it be to win one gold medal in the Olympics in your home country? Now imagine winning FOUR gold medals in your home country Olympics. Mind boggling.
Last year there was an article in the local paper about how he and Hubert Kos (also a gold medal winner) could walk around campus and be completely anonymous. Marchand mentioned how much he liked this. Ha! This guy will not get to walk anywhere in France and be anonymous.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 3, 2024 2:57:28 GMT -5
Oh my goodness, I just really want to gush about how awesome Léon Marchand is. After he won that 4th gold medal today, the camera caught him flashing the ASU "Forks Up" hand sign. This is before he flashes the 4 fingers showing his 4 gold medals. It was very brief, but I saw it on camera. I have a screen shot saved. He's been flashing the #ForksUp sign after all his races. People in my office have been commenting about it. He has already left college. He has turned pro and moved to Texas. So, wow, him flashing his college sign after winning Olympic gold medals is a heartwarming sign of respect and love for his college program. Not gonna lie, this made me tear up a little bit. Let me break this down so you understand this. To preface this, it is in the Charter of my university that we "want to measured by who we INCLUDE rather than who we exclude". After Michael Phelps retired, his coach Bob Bowman really wanted to coach in the USA college system. But none of the universities with the big swim programs would hire him. The conventional wisdom was that he got lucky with Michael Phelps. He got turned down by some very big programs. Bowman decided that what he needed to do to demonstrate his skill was take a university with a bottom-of-the-barrel swim program, and turn them into National Champions. At the same time, my university was close to shutting down its swim program. Bowman saw this and called up. The Athletic director hired Bowman in a last-ditch effort to save the program, thinking a big name coach could buy it a few years. Bowman then brought all his professional swimmers with him to train here. And slowly, slowly, the university swim program began to climb up the national rankings. This took years and years and years. Like, after a couple years they managed to climb to something like 60th place. So, a few years ago they reach the top 30 programs. At this time, this 18 year old French kid named Léon Marchand is told by his parents that he needs to train in the USA if he wants to win an Olympic medal. He applies to all the top swim programs. He gets accepted by Cal-Berkeley, the then-best men's swimming program. Unfortunately, Cal only offers him a partial scholarship. As an international student who doesn't have rich parents, he cannot afford to live in California's Bay Area and pay tuition at Berkeley with only a partial scholarship. So he starts looking around for another school which might give him a full scholarship. He sees my school and notices Bob Bowman is the coach. He knows Bowman was Michael Phelps' coach because Marchand idolized Phelps. So he cold-emails Bowman, asking if he'd be interested in having Marchand on his college team and whether the school would be able to offer a scholarship. Bowman gets hundreds of emails from young swimmers asking him to coach them. He normally ignores these. But he saw this one and recognized Marchand's name, because his father Xavier Marchand, was an Olympic swimmer who Bob remembered. Bowman looked up Léon's times and immediately said yes. Sent back an email saying yes, only about 15 minutes after Marchand sent the original. Mere months after this Marchand qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. Marchand said he wanted to come here after the Toyko Olympics. In 2021, Marchand, age 19, made an Olympic final at the Tokyo Olympics. He then came here to start school for the 21-22 academic year. He immediately started winning. In 2022, he won 2 individual races at the NCAA Championships, and was named male swimmer of the meet. Later in 2022, he went to the World Championships and won the 400IM and 200IM and came in 2nd place in the 200M Butterfly. In 2023 he won 5 titles at the NCAA Championships and broke a bunch of college records. (3 individual and 2 relay. The NCAA only allows swimmers to swim in 3 individual races.) He was named collegiate male swimmer of the year. At this point, Bowman had brought the university swim program to a national ranking of 6th. At the 2023 World Championships, Marchand won the 200M Butterfly, 200IM and 400IM. In the 400IM he smashed the world record held by Michael Phelps. And I mean SMASHED it by around 1.5 seconds. in 2023-2024, instead of taking the year off to prepare for the Olympics, Marchand again competed in college. He again won 5 NCAA titles at the NCAA Championships, smashing more college records. Bob Bowman then finally achieved his goal: the university won the NCAA Men's Swimming championship, beating - you guessed it - Cal-Berkeley. Marchand was again named collegiate male swimmer of the year. To sum this up, my university offered Bob Bowman the chance to coach when no big name swim programs would. We accepted Léon Marchand and provided a full scholarship when the top school, Cal-Berkeley would not. Apparently these guys were not good enough for the big name, competitive swim schools. Bob Bomwan indeed took the university from a program which was almost dissolved to the NCAA Championship. Immediately after that, a big name swim school came calling. Texas asked him to take over their top tier program. Ha! Now they believe he's a good coach! Marchand and all his pro swimmers are following him to Texas. And Léon Marchand, who got refused a full scholarship by Cal (a school with a LOT MORE MONEY than ASU), went on to win 4 Olympic gold medals. After each of these gold medal wins, Marchand is flashing the ASU Forks Up sign. In his social media posts following his gold medals, he is tagging the university swim team. He doesn't live here anymore, he has turned pro, the coach who brought him here has moved. But he's still showing thanks for the college that helped him get there.
So yeah, it has been so great to see Marchand win 4 gold medals. Ha! Suck it, Cal!
Also, want to throw this out there:
Bob Bowman is coaching for France at these Olympics. This is because USA Swimming would not allow him to also coach his international athletes, if he were coaching for the USA. However, France's Swimming organization would allow him to work with all his swimmers, no matter which country.
Presented with no further comment: Bob Bowman international men's swimmers in Olympic men's individual races: 5 gold medals (Léon Marchand, Hubert Kos) USA Men's swimmers in individual Olympic races: 0 gold medals.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 3, 2024 13:17:32 GMT -5
Gymnastics Apparatus finals have started.
Congrats to Carlos Yulo of the Philippines for winning the first Olympic gold medal for any Philippino man. In any sport! Yulo won the gold medal in the Men's Floor final.
Women's Vault went as expected. Gotta say, Men's gymnastics events are far more tense, and drama-filled. Women's gymnastics events play out as expected because there is such a wide gulf in difficulty levels between the women's gymnasts. Congrats to Simone Biles, Rebeca Andrade and Jade Carey.
Men's Pommel Horse had some crazy good Pommel routines. Wow, Ireland's Rhys McLenaghan did a phenomenal pommel routine right before Stephen Nedoroscik went up. Nedoroscik nailed his routine for a Bronze medal. That will be the only individual medal won by any of the USA male gymnasts. Good job, Stephen, our nerd hero!
I also caught up on some of the kayak/canoe events. I love watching these because this looks incredibly difficult. Apparently there is a new event here this year called Kayak Cross where 3 or 4 people compete against each other in the white water kayak event. This is SO FUN to watch! Wow! Highly recommended.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 3, 2024 13:26:54 GMT -5
I'm also reading reports today about the terrible organization of drug testing going on at the Olympics this year. Apparently the group doing the drug testing cannot keep track of where the athletes are. This is because many of the athletes are avoiding living in the Olympic village due to the terrible beds, food and lack of AC.
So, for instance, Léon Marchand missed a scheduled drug test because the testers went to the Olympic village, even though he had notified them of the apartment where he was staying outside of the Olympic village. This was an early morning test, even though he'd already tested at midnight the night before. So, if this were being competently done, it would certainly be quite thorough!
Other athletes are saying that the drug tests aren't happening at the times they are scheduled, that the testers are showing up incredibly early, waking them up, instead of the later times when they were supposed to be there. Or showing up too late, after they've left.
Meanwhile, the Chinese swim team is essentially getting followed around by the drug testers and being tested all the time.
Y'all? We want everyone to be tested at the same frequency. Get it together! Yeesh, and you wonder why fans are skeptical about this?
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Aug 4, 2024 15:08:27 GMT -5
There have been some really nail biting finals today, but none more so than the men’s 100m! Damn!
Also, just to live up to my username, people from the Philippines are Filipino (I do not know why it’s spelled with an F but it is).
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Aug 5, 2024 21:34:42 GMT -5
Mondo Duplantis! That was amazing!
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Post by Desert Dweller on Aug 6, 2024 0:55:25 GMT -5
Okay, so I watched all of the Kayak Cross. This is incredibly fun event. Highly recommended.
It is really starting to drive me crazy that the medal presenters are hanging the medals backwards on some of the athletes. Saw them do this to Leon Marchand in one of the ceremonies, and he immediately took the medal off, flipped it over and put it back on correctly. Yet more reasons to love Leon Marchand! Saw the Kayak Cross medal ceremony, and the presenters put the medals on backwards on all three men's medalists. They put the medal on backwards on the women's Silver medalist, and she also immediately took it off and flipped it around the correct way. (She was also French. So, French athletes definitely not letting this happen!)
Now watching the surfing finals. First of all, I cannot get over how stunningly beautiful Tahiti is. Wow, wow, wow, wow! I like watching the surfers who do all the turns. This is different than earlier rounds where they were trying to get inside the waves. The waves today weren't big enough to do that, so there were some very fun twists and turns through the waves. The men's winner did get a pretty big one that he was able to get inside. That looks so cool. The women's winner - Caroline Marks from the USA! - only got one like that.
edited to add: I spoke too soon! There did end up being some good waves in the finals. I skipped over the Women's semifinals, but the Men's had some of the smaller waves that they could do those cool twists and turns. The Women's final didn't have any cool big waves that they surfed through, but the Men's ended up having a few.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the surfing competition.
I also watched the Gymnastics finals from this morning. Wow, I thought the Balance Beam final was tough. When there is more than one gymnast falling off the apparatus, you know it is a bad day. Good for the Italian gymnast, Alice D'Amato for her gold medal routine!
But if that apparatus was tough, wow, the Men's High Bar was a complete blood bath. Only 2/8 gymnasts had a clean routine. Three of them fell off the bar. And the other three fell face first on their dismount. The Bronze medal had a tie, with two guys who fell onto their faces on the dismount.
I cannot believe China's Zhang Boheng is leaving the Olympics without a Gold medal. That is so crazy. He was easily the best male gymnast at these Olympics. I liked seeing 17 year old Angel Barajas win a silver medal on the High Bar. Did not like the announcers mispronouncing his name. Ugh.
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