2016 Summer Olympics

If Australia wins, New Zealand has to become a State
 
Yessssss go you Pearls goooo
 
US Volleyball seems to be trying to corner the market on service errors, both men and women.
 
Also this means the US' 92-year reign as the most recent Olympic rugby champion is over
 
A huge disappointment around the US, I assure you.

What is rugby?

The thing the US somehow won in 1924 with France and Romania the only competition.

The US actually finished fifth, beat France in the 5th place game. Their mens and womens sevens teams are actually pretty good and usually finish around there in the annual tournament series, partly because sevens is a lot more accessible for pure athletes (of which the US has a massive surplus) than traditional 15-a-side. The US men's team for example has a bloke called Carlin Isles who would be easily the fastest in the tournament and for any other country would be an olympic-qualification level sprinter.
 
I'm not expecting much this year in the men's basketball, there's too many players who would have been needed that are still very young or injured. 2018 FIBA and Tokyo Olympics should be the target for medalling, once Exum and Simmons are up and about and maybe Thon Maker gets both good enough and qualified for the Boomers. Right now the bench is mostly NBL players.
 
The thing the US somehow won in 1924 with France and Romania the only competition.

The US actually finished fifth, beat France in the 5th place game. Their mens and womens sevens teams are actually pretty good and usually finish around there in the annual tournament series, partly because sevens is a lot more accessible for pure athletes (of which the US has a massive surplus) than traditional 15-a-side. The US men's team for example has a bloke called Carlin Isles who would be easily the fastest in the tournament and for any other country would be an olympic-qualification level sprinter.

That's kinda funny, since sports are typically thought of as maturing when they start attracting higher calibre athletes (who make it their first choice) rather than just people who naturally fell into that particular sport.
 
America is weird with most sports. It's so huge it's got a massive surplus of athletes with nothing doing after college. Hell, even the Australian Football League has a project recruiting large Americans via an annual draft combine simply because there's such a deep pool there.

I mean regular rugby is very mature, in terms of international competition it's probably the fourth or fifth biggest international sport in the world after soccer, cricket and ice hockey (I'd have it ahead of basketball as an international event, the Rugby World Cup is probably a bigger deal than the FIBA championships just due to its competitiveness and the fact that the NBA is clearly the dominant spectacle in that sport). But America can be vaguely competitive at most things just by simple virtue of being nearly the size of Europe.
 
I've been trying to watch a few things I don't usually watch and have been pleasantly surprised by whitewater canoing and rugby, which I've never been really familiar with. Quite fun to watch! And more exciting than either form of football.

Also very impressed by the Iron Lady. She's a beast.

But Americans can be vaguely competitive at most things just by simple virtue of being nearly the size of Europe.

FTFY [emoji6]

(American, btw)
 
Judo is highly recommended just for the emotional brutality of people's Olympic dreams ending in a fraction of a second with an ippon.
 
Rowing fascinates me because I don't think there is any sport where human beings are more called upon to turn themselves into machinery.


And water polo is probably the most savage team sport in existence, but you need to read up on the rules to have any idea what is going on.
 
Hope those parents aren't too disappointed that their son only won an Olympic medal. Clearly they wanted him to be a porn star when they named him Steel Johnson.
 
Canada just topped Brazil in men's beach volleyball. ...ahem, um....what??
 
'murca

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After my endorsement I saw that today the Aussie women's water polo team was a highlight today. I thought that might give water polo some traction here since we have plenty of Australian membership. Unfortunately the only way the Russians could put up less of a fight is if they started unilaterally drowning themselves. Even I can't watch.
 
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