Purplereign
Loungeroom Dancing Queen
mens 4 x 100m relay; let's just hand it over to jamaica now yeah? that heat was nuts!
The Olympics were a financial disaster for Montreal, as the city faced debts for 30 years after the Games had finished. The Quebec provincial government took over construction when it became evident in 1975 that work had fallen far behind schedule; work was still under way just weeks before the opening date, and the tower was not built. Mayor Jean Drapeau had confidently predicted in 1970 that "the Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby", but the debt racked up to a billion dollars that the Quebec government mandated the city pay in full. This would prompt cartoonist Aislin to draw a pregnant Drapeau on the telephone saying, "Allo, Morgentaler?" in reference to a Montreal abortion provider.
However, I wonder how they'll deal with the female athletes, particularly the beach volleyball players.
Given that Turkey is one of the prime beach vacation spots in that part of the world, I don't think it's going to be much of an issue.
The Olympics would be so much better if rhythmic gymnastics, sychronised swimming, and dressage were just cut from the programme.
Gold to New Zealand in the women's 470 class sailing!
That's four golds - apart from when we scored eight in 1984, we've never passed three golds before. So this is our most successful non-boycotted Olympics ever!
Let's ponder the Dutch women hockey team instead. True champions!
I might let boxing stay on the basis that it's a competitive amateur discipline with a long historic record that was included in the original Olympics
Yeah but leave speed walking and ping pong.
we need to expand and reflect the times we live in
gaming should be added next, it takes real endurance and skill to prevail at that
and just like the original games were a way of nation states to come together and compete in friendly war games,
wars these days are being fought with technology like gaming,
not with bows, spears (javelins) and hand to hand combat.
He split 43.58 in the 4x400 in a Jamaican meet back in 2010. You'd probably want to add 1.2 seconds or so to that for estimating his (more or less untrained) time in an open 400, but even so it's certainly suggestive of potential for greatness. He famously loathes 400 training though (who doesn't!), so my guess is he'd put seriously working on it off until he and his coach figure he's past his peak for the shorter sprints. I had read that he's expressed interest in the long jump, and he would indeed seem to have the assets for it. He'd be in some very good company expanding into either or both events, too (Carl Lewis, Jesse Owens, Michael Johnson, FloJo).He is really built for the 400 and there have been many coaches and athletics commentators who have long held that the 400 would be his best discipline if he actually ran it. Would be interesting to see, in any event. He could probably also be spectacular in the long jump - in fact there was somebody who built a computerized model based on Bolt's running speed, size, length of legs, etc and maintained that he'd be easily be the world record holder if he tried.
cobl04 said:I'm trying to find a clip of The Late Show's Istanbul Olympic bid but it's not on youtube
Table tennis is awesome to watch. "Walking" is a fucking joke. The judges are like the parking inspectors of the Olympics.
It looks as though Ireland will finish with our best medals tally since 1956, and possibly best ever. Which sounds great except when we discover that our total medals tally of 5 isn't so hot when compared to New Zealand's 12 medals - plus there was some element of home advantage for us, I assume. In the eight Olympic games since 1984, New Zealand have averaged almost 9 medals per games, compared to an average of just 2 for Ireland.
I think NZ is the best model for Ireland if seeking to building on our 2012 tally and set those 5 medals as the new minimum threshold benchmark, with a target of, say, 12 - we have very similar population, similar stage of economic development, are island nations somewhat in the shadow of larger (and, obnoxious and arrogant to go with it ) neighbouring island nations, culturally relatively similar, and minority sports face huge challenges in competing with massively popular field team codes - rugby for you, GAA games + soccer, and rugby in recent years also, for us.
I think Istanbul is almost guaranteed. No way does Tokyo get it after the winter games in South Korea and that soon after Beijing. Madrid is from a country that might need 3 bailouts before now and then so unless the Germans want to pay for those Olympics, don't see it happening.
"Walking" is a fucking joke. The judges are like the parking inspectors of the Olympics.
Here's a great photo of Bolt near the finish
all they're showing on 9 is the fecking walking it's not even good in a point and laugh way ~ just awful; my 'I'll watch anything remotely sports related' hublet is struggling with it tonight, just said he'd rather watch the diving !
Axver said:Wish they'd stop chopping between the walking and diving - the diving's actually entertaining. Thank god Sydney vs Collingwood just began, so I could flee Channel 9.