Maybe the most controversial Olympics ever started officially today. Highlights from the opening ceremony were the drone globe and the almost perfect pictograms. That was pretty much it.

Missed it. Not really been enthused by the idea so far. I’m sure it’ll pick up.

Don’t know if it’s the most controversial. Moscow 1980 and LA 84 were pretty controversial in a different way. In hindsight at least, Berlin in 1936. Don’t know what contemporary views were.

Can never really get on board with the olympics, I’ll give it a look but too many things just don’t entertain me…

Just flicked over, why is the road race being done on a racing circuit? Literally the most boring road race ever…

Scrap that…they’ve now ventured in to the real
Roads…

Quoted from aldi_01

Can never really get on board with the olympics, I’ll give it a look but too many things just don’t entertain me…

Just flicked over, why is the road race being done on a racing circuit? Literally the most boring road race ever…

Scrap that…they’ve now ventured in to the real
Roads…

Lol Only the finish was at the speedway circuit.
Incredible course with some brutal climbing on the slopes of Mount Fuji.
Brutal humidity & temperature & just a 234km ride after many participated in Le Tour last week.

Quoted from Stadium

Lol Only the finish was at the speedway circuit.
Incredible course with some brutal climbing on the slopes of Mount Fuji.
Brutal humidity & temperature & just a 234km ride after many participated in Le Tour last week.

I was a bit miffed when I flicked over but it ended up being brutal…as you say, for those in the tour last week fair play. Very different beast too…

Quoted from KingstonMariner

Missed it. Not really been enthused by the idea so far. I’m sure it’ll pick up.

Don’t know if it’s the most controversial. Moscow 1980 and LA 84 were pretty controversial in a different way. In hindsight at least, Berlin in 1936. Don’t know what contemporary views were.

Of course there has been a few controversial ones before but hosting an Olympics during a pandemic lockdown after spending however much on the brand new infrastructure and then not letting anyone into it is very poor. They should have just bumped all the other Olympics back a full cycle and held this one in 2024 after the 17th wave.

I’m not massively into any of the sports (bar football and golf - which probably shouldn’t be Olympic events anyway as there are bigger competitions away from it) but I do enjoy the athletics.

Love the Olympics. Everything but the horse dancing.

Quoted from ska face

Love the Olympics. Everything but the horse dancing.

You what? Charlotte Dujardin winning olympic gold at London 2012 in Dressage was one of the greatest underdog stories ever. She was born into such extreme poverty that her parents couldn't afford a horse when she was a child. They could only afford to buy her a Pony. I'm surprised nobody has bought the film rights. Could be the next Chariots of Fire.

Big fan of the Olympics. London 2012 was probably the last great moment for the world. I would never usually have any desire to watch weight lifting but at the Olympics it becomes essential viewing.

I fell out of love with the Olympics decades ago, when the competitors started to change from being amateurs to semi-pro's and then professionals. To me, it took the spirit of the competition away.

Quoted from ska face

Love the Olympics.  

Yes .Interesting to hear during the opening ceremony yesterday as well the first olympics in ancient Greece was in 776 BC. Likewise before the advent of the established football competitions  today  the Olympic football event was the first big international footballing event  before the World Cup and European Championship took over.

Quoted from Manchester Mariner

Big fan of the Olympics. London 2012 was probably the last great moment for the world. I would never usually have any desire to watch weight lifting but at the Olympics it becomes essential viewing.

You have to be careful when googling it though. ‘Snatch and jerk’ didn’t lead me to Bulgarians on steroids, put it that way.

Watched the Doncaster lad Bradly Sinden reach the -68kg taekwondo final this morning to guarantee Britain's first medal of the Tokyo Olympics.

He will face Uzbekistan's Ulugbek Rashitov in the final, which gets under way at 13:45 BST.

Think the Uzbek lad will be all over him.

Great final, proper back and forth with the Uzbek lad pulling through in the last 30 seconds. Taekwondo is such a watchable sport full of dramatics.

The first Olympics I remember in detail was Rome 1960 and up until the 1990s I thought they were a pretty good representation of finding the best in each sport. Four things since then have put me off. The first is the ridiculous way opening and closing ceremonies turned into a competition of their own. The second was the way that the Games became political especially after 1976. The third is the inclusion of more and more “sports” that need judges to declare a winner. And the fourth is that cheating is rife, especially via drugs.

So now I am not really that enamoured apart from the odd heroic bit.

Yes doping is more prevalent in the Olympics nowadays, with the most sophisticated testing system on the planet, than in the 60s when cyclists would just openly take amphetamines.

Quoted from ska face

Yes doping is more prevalent in the Olympics nowadays, with the most sophisticated testing system on the planet, than in the 60s when cyclists would just openly take amphetamines.

That was child’s play compared to the gymnasts, athletes and swimmers from the Eastern Bloc and the US college system. There was something quite heroic when you saw someone like Ann Packer win against a stacked deck.

The glorious shamateur days of the Olympics and Rugby Union.

Quoted from KingstonMariner

The glorious shamateur days of the Olympics and Rugby Union.

True enough but is it much different to the training regimes of the GB cyclists for instance? And of course we swallowed the official line of small gains.

It still seems odd to me that GBR are such a medal winning machine these days. The youth of today must just take it for granted that we win medals including a stack of golds at Summer Olympics.

The first Olympics I watched were Barcelona ‘92 where we won just 20 medals including 5 golds. I can still remember each gold medalist (Linford, Sally Gunnell, Boardman, Redgrave and Pinsent & the Searle Brothers with Garry Herbert as Cox.

And then Atlanta. 1 gold medal, 8 silver & 6 bronze. Abject failure.

It’s the reason Britain used to love their plucky losers (like Mansell & Bruno before both became World Champions and countless others who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory) as it was a bit of a defence mechanism against endless failure and embarrassment.

When the athletics get going which will cause the most controversy, doping or trainers?

I got up early to watch Adam Peaty win gold in the swimming, not a patch as when I got up early in 2008 to watch Rebecca Adlington and Joanna Jackson to come from, behind to get gold and Bronze in Beijing

How the hell have the Russians got a surfing team?! Where do they go surfing? The Baltic isn’t “wavy” enough. The Arctic has surely got to be too cold. Don’t think the Black Sea is that ‘wavy’ either. That leaves Kamchatka.

Some rad waves in Vladivostock: https://www.surfertoday.com/videos/a-perfect-day-of-surfing-in-vladivostok

You’ve got to be committed if you’re from the European end of Russia.

Quoted from KingstonMariner

You’ve got to be committed if you’re from the European end of Russia.

Didn't know the Russians had asylums, I thought they sent them to Siberia!

I hope Simone Biles can look back on the decision she’s made today without regret in 20 or 30 years time and doesn’t suffer again then. Undoubtedly the best in her field but yet again the world has put the GOAT tag on someone very young and heaped huge pressure on them to perform.

We're doing really well at the games. Best ever medal haul at this stage of the Olympics, which is good.

Quoted from ginnywings

We're doing really well at the games. Best ever medal haul at this stage of the Olympics, which is good.

As that horsey woman presenter said yesterday, Brits called Tom were about 8th in the medal table.

“I enjoyed it immensely and am more than happy to get back to the day job of kicking people.” 😁

I’m not the only one who thought this bloke was a star. Shame the Beeb ruined his ‘life lessons’ the other night by playing the music too loud. Couldn’t hear what he was saying.

https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/29/lutalo-muhammad-it-is-inspiring-to-see-athletes-admit-they-are-human-and-suffer

Womens footy team snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against the Aussies. I bet they are gutted with the manner in which they lost this game.

Textbook shite penalty

Magnificent performance from GB in the mixed triathlon relay. A proper event as well too - no judges scores for that one just pure human endurance and athletic performance. Hopefully a great  start to another Super Saturday.

Fantastic swim to win the mixed relay gold and break the world record, especially as our lead swimmer got her start all wrong.

Oh that was pointed. The other two Jamaican women sprinters don’t like Thompson-Herah. Took them an age to congratulate her then it was a begrudging tap on the shoulder.

Quoted from ginnywings

Fantastic swim to win the mixed relay gold and break the world record, especially as our lead swimmer got her start all wrong.

I missed the start. Switched on when Peatty was chasing down the leaders. Great event. Keeps you guessing until late on when they go in different order of male and female.

Not surprised about a new record because it’s such a new event.

Gold for McKeown!



In the women’s backstroke.

I assume she's one of the Sammarinese medallists?  ;)

Quoted from KingstonMariner

Gold for McKeown!

Testimonial, now a gold. Got to be a promotion year.


(sorry for the edit)

Phenomenal from Max Whitlock in the gymnastics
Set the standard from the off.

A real Olympic moment just now, the Qatari guy asking if he can share gold with the Italian he had been equal jump to jump with rather than go into a sudden death jump off. I didn't even know that was even possible. Amazing scenes.

Quoted from Manchester Mariner

A real Olympic moment just now, the Qatari guy asking if he can share gold with the Italian he had been equal jump to jump with rather than go into a sudden death jump off. I didn't even know that was even possible. Amazing scenes.

That’ll start the “you’re not allowed competitive sorts at school any more” brigade off.

Quoted from Manchester Mariner

A real Olympic moment just now, the Qatari guy asking if he can share gold with the Italian he had been equal jump to jump with rather than go into a sudden death jump off. I didn't even know that was even possible. Amazing scenes.

I thought there were rules in place for them to carry on until one of them failed. Or do they just let the athletes make it up by themselves as they go along these days?

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

I thought there were rules in place for them to carry on until one of them failed. Or do they just let the athletes make it up by themselves as they go along these days?

I thought that was the case too, sudden death jump off. But no, it does seem to be within the Olympic rules that they can both get gold as they had identical records. The official confirmed just before the tears flowed, the official had a clipboard and everything. Either way, it was a heart warming moment.

Just imagine if that happened at the Euro's final? Although there was some crazytalk on here about how it should've been shared as nobody really won.

Holy $h!t!!!! 45.94s!!!!

Karsten Warholm obliterates the 400M Hurdles world record by 0.76s and has broken the 46 second barrier.

The 47 second barrier used to be a thing at 400m Hurdles before Kevin Young did it at Barcelona in 1992. But nobody has ever mentioned the 46 second barrier as it seemed totally impossible.

You have to feel for the American in 2nd place who broke the previous WR by over half a second and still losing convincingly.

Quoted from GollyGTFC

Holy $h!t!!!! 45.94s!!!!

Karsten Warholm obliterates the 400M Hurdles world record by 0.76s and has broken the 46 second barrier.

The 47 second barrier used to be a thing at 400m Hurdles before Kevin Young did it at Barcelona in 1992. But nobody has ever mentioned the 46 second barrier as it seemed totally impossible.

You have to feel for the American in 2nd place who broke the previous WR by over half a second and still losing convincingly.

That’s some time to smash too…serious graft that.

A bit like the Germans in the cycling…they were like machines.

I thought the sharing thing was a good idea and if both athletes agree I can’t see an issue. They were literally identical and neither seemed arsed about carrying on.

Anyone see the article/snapshot information about rowing receiving millions more in funding than anything else? Can’t find it now but interesting nonetheless. Meanwhile, our amazing BMXer works as a TA and has done crowd funding to afford the chance to attend competition etc…

Super spikes, innit? Bolt reckons he'd have run under 9.5 seconds if he'd had the same technology in his prime.

That's not to say that Warholm isn't a bit good, but the times need to be taken into context. A bit like when the swimmers were breaking records in the pool the other year wearing their 'shark skin' costumes which I think were subsequently banned?

Oh, and the track isn't exactly the same as usual, either:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/03/tokyo-track-designer-reveals-boost-from-new-surface-as-records-fall-at-olympics

In fairness to Warholm he says that he doesn't use super spikes and seems dead against them.

"The Norwegian, who was speaking after winning gold in 45.94sec, a world record and a performance widely recognised as one of the greatest in history, said his great rival Rai Benjamin “ran on air”, adding: “He had those things in his shoes, which I hate.”


https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/03/karsten-warholm-slams-super-spikes-as-threat-to-track-and-field-credibility

Quoted from Manchester Mariner

In fairness to Warholm he says that he doesn't use super spikes and seems dead against them.

"The Norwegian, who was speaking after winning gold in 45.94sec, a world record and a performance widely recognised as one of the greatest in history, said his great rival Rai Benjamin “ran on air”, adding: “He had those things in his shoes, which I hate.”


https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/03/karsten-warholm-slams-super-spikes-as-threat-to-track-and-field-credibility

I hear he trains by leaping from fjord to fjord ……….. in the car park.

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

I hear he trains by leaping from fjord to fjord ……….. in the car park.

Troll!

Shame about KJT. First time we’ve not had a heptathlon medalist since before Denise Lewis in 96.

This bothers me. Some people have natural advantages over others in certain sports. Some people are taller, and if they have great hand eye co-ordination they make good basketball players. People with fast twitch muscles have a better chance at sprinting etc etc. That’s what sport is about. They’re not banned from entering races that they’re good at or made to run with their trousers round their knees. So why should a woman with more natural testosterone than an arbitrary level be banned from certain races if they don’t take drugs to make them worse?

Cries of “but it’s not fair” from athletes who are not as good don’t wash. I wasn’t good at football, but nobody said the good players had to have their laces tied together to give others a fair chance.


https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/sebastian-coe-christine-mboma-tokyo-2020-b1896611.html?amp