2016 Summer Olympics

[EgonSpengler]

Interested in any of the Olympic sports? Taking a look at the listing of events, I'm looking into judo, rugby sevens, soccer/football, and wrestling.


Kayla Harrison is 26 years old, from Middletown, Ohio, and competes in judo at 78kg. She is the defending Olympic champion, winning the 78kg Gold Medal in London 2012. She is the first American to win a gold medal in judo. More recently, she won bronze at the Judo World Championships in 2014, gold at the Pan American Games in 2014, and gold at the Pan American Judo Championships in 2015.

Carlin Isles, also 26 years old and from Ohio (Massillon) is sometimes called "The Fastest Man in Rugby." Olympic rugby is rugby sevens, btw, not 15-man union or league code. Before moving over to rugby, Isles was a mid-table sprinter with a 100-meter time of 10.24 seconds. He also played American football in college, for a Div-II school. In rugby, he's The Flash.


Link to video.


And going into the Olympics, Jordan Burroughs (28 yo, Camden NJ, 74kg freestyle) and Helen Maroulis (24, Rockville MD, 55kg freestyle) are each ranked #1 in their weight class by United World Wrestling. (Maroulis will be competing at 53kg in the Olympics.)

 

[EgonSpengler]

Men's football/soccer: U-23 squads, with 3 overage players allowed.

Group A: Brazil, South Africa, Denmark, Iraq
Group B: Sweden, Colombia, Nigeria, Japan
Group C: Fiji, South Korea, Mexico, Germany
Group D: Honduras, Algeria, Portugal, Argentina

Women's football/soccer: No age restrictions, full int'l squads.
Group E: Brazil, China, Sweden, South Africa
Group F: Canada, Australia, Zimbabwe, Germany
Group G: United States, New Zealand, France, Colombia

2012 gold-medalists in bold.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Rugby Sevens will be premiering at the Olympics this year.

Group A: Fiji, United States, Argentina, Brazil
Group B: South Africa, Australia, France, Spain
Group C: New Zealand, Great Britain, Kenya, Japan

Fiji are the current World Sevens Series champions, and of course New Zealand are rugby titans, with 12 World Sevens Series titles to go with their 3 World Cups.

Here's the Kiwis doing their haka at the 2011 World Cup:


Link to video.

I thought the French should have carried the "oriflamme", the flag of St. Denis, onto the field as a response to the haka. The oriflamme is from medieval France, not modern France, but supposedly it was raised on the battlefield to indicate "no quarter, no prisoners" to the French troops. I think the oriflamme was raised at Poitiers and at Agincourt (of course, those may just be the two Medieval French battles that I can name off the top of my head ).

And yes, for sevens, England, Wales and Scotland set aside their rugby differences to represent the crown as a single squad.

 

[EgonSpengler]

This also gives me an excuse to post this.


Link to video.

 

[Serutan]

I would be interested, except that NBC's coverage is unwatchable for me.

 

[classical_hero]

This could be the worst Olympics ever.

 

[ThERat]

In Singapore they don't even show this live any longer as the ever increasing greed of IOC made it simply unattractive to buy the TV rights.

I am happy about this as I couldn't be bothered any more about such sport events. I mean, I have to suspect that any of the top athletes is on drugs, no matter how much they tell you that they swear they are clean. 10 years down the road, when analytical tools have caught up with the latest drug methods, we all know better.
I wonder who likes to watch this show of the best of pharma 2016?

 

[dutchfire]

Yeah, I'm also feeling bad about the level of drugs that's going to be present, and the hypocrisy around it. The entire Armitstead affair right now would be so different if it was an athlete from another country.

I am probably going to watch some of it, most likely the cycling (where doping is a certainty) and maybe some of the Rugby. I haven't yet figured out which events will actually be aired during the day here.

 

[Commodore]

Yeah, I'm also feeling bad about the level of drugs that's going to be present, and the hypocrisy around it. The entire Armitstead affair right now would be so different if it was an athlete from another country.

I am probably going to watch some of it, most likely the cycling (where doping is a certainty) and maybe some of the Rugby. I haven't yet figured out which events will actually be aired during the day here.

I don't know. I've gotten over the whole outrage over performance enhancing drugs thing and don't really have a problem with it anymore. I don't think an athlete on PEDs really cheapens the competition or the achievements of the athletes at all. Drugs or not, at the end of the day, those athletes' bodies were still able to achieve great feats of human strength, speed, and endurance that the average person couldn't ever hope to accomplish.

What I'm trying to say is maybe all sports need to back off on the whole "PEDs are cheating" line and just let these athletes compete however they want as long as they are showing good sportsmanship when actually competing.

 

[Arwon]

I would be interested, except that NBC's coverage is unwatchable for me.

All the Americans in my Twitter feed are reacting to the Opening Ceremony on about a 90 minute delay.

 

[Dachs]

the BBC announcers have been the most stereotypically patronizing dickhead Brits I've ever heard

Rwanda: not just a country of genocide!
mentioning Sierra Leone in the same sentence as Ebola
bringing up Serbia's role in the outbreak of the First World War

jesus

 

[Arwon]

One thing we get okay here is that the lead commentator in Australia seems to know things about every second goddamn athlete.

So the comments about each country are lesser and mostly not too bad. A near reference to our use of Nauru as a gulag which he left at "in the news a lot" and an awkward joke about Swaziland's repressive absolute monarchy probably the only odd ones.

He still called them "judoka players" though.

 

[Yeekim]

In a bit of adorable news, first ever triplets to participate in Olympics (women's marathon):

 

[Timsup2nothin]

One thing we get okay here is that the lead commentator in Australia seems to know things about every second goddamn athlete.

So the comments about each country are lesser and mostly not too bad.

Pretty much the same here, with the addition that being USA not number one in geography we had to get a map and full description of where all these countries are. I was taken aback by Dach's comment about the British coverage. Do they really use it as an opportunity for national condescension? Petty, but so very European so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[shadowplay]

Man, CBC took so many commercials during the opening ceremonies that I missed large chunks of it. Worst of all, unlike NBC, it wasn't tape delayed - meaning, we missed large sections of the performance so CBC could show us commercials telling us to watch the Olympics. I was trying to, dammit! It was incredibly frustrating, and very surprising, since one of the things CBC is usually very good at is coverage of major international events like the Olympics. It was so bad I actually watched the NBC coverage later in the night to catch the parts I missed. While they had commercials, the tape delay at least allowed them to pick back up where they left off when they returned.

CBC, you suck. You really dropped the ball here. Completely inexcusable to be beaten by NBC at Olympics coverage.

 

[Zelig]

I dunno, the opening ceremonies aren't an event, like their entire point is commercials. I never watch them.

 

[Dachs]

Link to video.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I am totally amused that every time there is a replay challenge in the volleyball arena they play Darth Vader's Theme from Star Wars during the delay. Apparently if there is an overturn decision the deathstar will blast the offending player out of existence.

 

[Arwon]

Lol no, America, that's not how it works.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Man, CBC took so many commercials during the opening ceremonies that I missed large chunks of it. Worst of all, unlike NBC, it wasn't tape delayed - meaning, we missed large sections of the performance so CBC could show us commercials telling us to watch the Olympics. I was trying to, dammit! It was incredibly frustrating, and very surprising, since one of the things CBC is usually very good at is coverage of major international events like the Olympics. It was so bad I actually watched the NBC coverage later in the night to catch the parts I missed. While they had commercials, the tape delay at least allowed them to pick back up where they left off when they returned.

CBC, you suck. You really dropped the ball here. Completely inexcusable to be beaten by NBC at Olympics coverage.

I only half-listened to it. Completely boring.

The last time I was impressed by the Opening Ceremonies was the Barcelona games. Before that, it was Calgary.

This is probably a good time to see what's on Netflix.

I dunno, the opening ceremonies aren't an event, like their entire point is commercials. I never watch them.

They can be, though. My grandmother wanted as much of the Calgary opening ceremonies on tape as possible. I ended up switching back and forth among 4 different channels because they did their commercials at different times.

Yes, I suppose the fact that this was the first time any of my family had watched Olympic coverage and the fact that I knew someone who performed in the opening ceremonies contributed to why I put myself through that marathon VCR session.