Olympics 2012

Hah... you reminded me of that swimmer from the USA named Misty Hymen. Anyway moving right along...

The press here are talking up James Magnussen big time. He is the 100m freestyle swimming world champion and has been setting some cracking times in the lead up to the games in both 100m and 50m. But given that he is so well known I doubt you will get a great price on him. Also the Aussie press aren't exactly the most objective lot!

Usain Bolt has been struggling with a bit of a hamstring injury and was just beaten in the Jamaican olympic trials in both the 100m and 200m. There might be an opportunity for a good price on him now if you think he will come good in time.

re the sunglasses - looks like we had an over-eager smiley filter!

I'm not sure I share Usain's optimism about smashing the world record. There's an interesting graph on his wikipedia page down near the bottom that shows he has not run under 9.8 since he ran that 9.58. And he has been injured. I'd love to see it but my gut is telling me it isn't going to happen. Lets hope I am wrong!

I heart that some kinds of games are popular in Belarus and they prepare strong forces for gold medals!
We'll see 🙂

I'm going to quote myself here from the end of the Euros thread where we started talking about the Olympics:

CL-Ed wrote:

Brazil and Spain surely? The Japanese have a lot of good young players these days. It wouldn't surprise me to see them do well.

Last night it was Japan 1-0 over Spain.

And no I had forgotten that they started early so I didn't get a bet on! :'(

Boxing. Refereeing.
It's a shame. Refereeing kills sports. Savon junior, Petrov... Englishmen need to be won only a knockout?
More "surprising" than it only refereeing on fencing - ''4 attacks per second''. (women, a semi-final, the German vs. the Korean).

Of course, Khytrov , not Petrov.
Englishman Ogogo received two knockdowns from 2011 World's champion Khytrov. And Ogogo "won". Das ist phantastisch!

Man, Michael Phelps is on a roll again this Olympics. I thought he wasn't going to do very well, but he keeps showing up.

Good for him.

Yes there are several stories about the boxing here today. A Japanese boxer knocked his opponent to the floor 6 times during the bout ... and then lost! The referee was almost holding the other guy up against the ropes because he couldn't stand up himself when they gave the decision to him. Farcical. But then again it is boxing, so no surprise something funny is happening there.

It has been a fairly controversial Olympics so far. Eight badminton players kicked out for trying to lose, the Americans accusing the Chinese of doping their swimmers, a South African swimmer in the breast stroke using an illegal kick in his dive but allowed to because swimming does not check the underwater cameras, and today a British cyclist admitted he crashed on purpose after a slow start so his team could start again in the track sprinting and they ended up winning gold. So much for the old Olympic spirit eh?

Phelps is a a medal collecting machine. He's a magnet. There's nothing much more you can say really. What a swimmer.

Australia's only real hope in the men's swimming was Magnussen and he swam really slow in the relay they were expecting to win (finished 4th I think), then he finished 2nd by the width of a bee's knob in the 100m by 0.01 seconds, and then he missed the 50m final. There is lots of anger and disappointment from the naive mob here who expect Australia to win everything. We're catching loads of silver at the moment and the stupid media here is beating it up as if the poor athletes are failures. And the "at least we're beating England" straw they were clutching at for a while is well and truly gone now.

The track and field starts today which is a relief as I am sick of seeing only Aussies swimming and rowing over and over which is about 75% of what the jingoistic channel 9 here shows. The 100m is tomorrow. I've read a few more articles recently predicting Usain Bolt won't win. But he's still favourite with the bookies. Yohan Blake at 2.98 on Betfair looks like good value to me seeing as he has beaten Bolt in qualification recently. And Tyson Gay, the next "favourite" is paying 19. That seems a crazy price for the 3rd favourite but it looks like everyone thinks its a two man race between the two Jamaicans. That 19 would plummet if either of the 2 pulled out with injury or false started like Bolt did at the world championships. Something to consider...

Highlight of the Olympics so far for me is my daughter. She is five years old and we were watching some of the girls doing gymnastics when she turned to me and said "dad I want to learn to do gymnastics, but not with my bum hanging out like that." Gold gold gold!

Anyone see the giant guy from Guam in the Judo? 216kgs. And he threw a guy to the floor and flopped on him. It was like an angry walrus with really good judo skills.

216kgs?! His rival remained is live?

Phelps is God's miracle on Earth.

As to the Olympic spirit... It is already good that there arrived Syrians, North Koreans and Iranians. It is good that there is neither boycott, nor sanctions for athletes.

Here is Blas, the huge judo guy from Guam doing his flop on his poor opponent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-qVTodW1X8

I agree about the lack of boycotts. Too often sport and politics are mixed and the only ones that suffer are the athletes and the spectators.

Looks like Great Britain smashed it in the athletics last night. Australia is flying up the medal table - we are 4th in the world for silver medals now! Gold is so 20th century ... silver is the new gold!

My favorite sport of late has been beach volleyball: both women's and men's.

I love watching them dive and sacrifice to pop the ball back up. It really is one of the more action packed sports I've seen during the Olympics.

Oh, and the women's uniforms don't hurt either. 🙂

CL-Ed, thanks for link. The duel impresses.

Australia... The Australian swimmers were trained before by Russian coaches, isn't it? And now the Australian coaches train the Chinese athletes. But what swimmers (world record-holder Sun)!

I think they may have been trained by Russians in the past but not for a long time now. It is true that the Chinese would fly their swimmers in to Australia to train with the Australian coaches for a few months then fly back to China. The coaches are paid 5 times as much by the Chinese.

And what about Usain Bolt? He is simply amazing. He didn't get the world record but he was so close. He looks so graceful and makes running fast look so easy compared to all the others. Incredible.

Bolt is Windman. He is in the prime of life. Let's look, whether he can surpass "Carl" Lewis. Besides, I would like to mark Oscar Pistorius. He wasn't born an athlete - he became the athlete.

In the late 80th - the beginning of the 90th years some Soviet coaches on swimming trained local swimmers in Australia. The best foreign coaches plus local talented guys... As a result, coaches earned money, and the place of Russian athletes on a podium was occupied by Australians.
By the way, you noticed success of the South African swimmers? They are trained too by the former Soviet coach (he is Ukrainian).
This process of internationalization belongs to the most different types of sports and coaches and teams from the different countries. Look as world football (soccer) changed! The competition among athletes grows and fight for gold becomes more interesting.

US sprinter Manteo Mitchell led off the men's 4X400m relay with fracture of fibula of the left leg. 'I didn't want to let those three guys down, or the team down, so I just ran on it. It hurt so bad.' No comments.

I would just like to gloat a little about how good Great Britain - sorry "Team GB" 🤢 - is doing. What has happened to Australia??!?!?

😂

I think Australia is doing really well. I'm not buying into the jingoistic pissing contests about the medal tally!

Seeing the dumb reaction to this olympics by sports "journalists" and media here and in England (calling silver medalists failures and stuff like that) has actually annoyed me. After taking my kids to school and sport and seeing how much we have to pay for all that stuff, lets just says that seeing pampered athletes and officials who have had millions spent on them by taxpayers just so they can indulge their sporting dreams cry and demand more money when they get silver doesn't sit well with me. I'm sure pumping the millions into grass roots kids sport would be a far better use of the money even if it means the sit-at-home armchair experts don't get to feel so proud about what "we" did every four years.

RusCasinoTester wrote:

US sprinter Manteo Mitchell led off the men's 4X400m relay with fracture of fibula of the left leg. 'I didn't want to let those three guys down, or the team down, so I just ran on it. It hurt so bad.' No comments.

I read about that guy. What a superman. That shows real team spirit and guts.

barbadosslim93 wrote:

My favorite sport of late has been beach volleyball: both women's and men's.

I love watching them dive and sacrifice to pop the ball back up. It really is one of the more action packed sports I've seen during the Olympics.

Oh, and the women's uniforms don't hurt either. 🙂

You are such a naughty boy! lol Too bad you couldn't have watched THAT in 3D, right? lmbo! 🙂