Be Excellent To Each Other

Impressive thread necromancy

Wise fwom your gwave…..

This is…. Different!

Not sure I like the cutting from the athletes to the performances repeatedly

I can see what they were hoping to do, but this opening ceremony isn’t working.

I imagine walking round the stadium isn't wildly interesting. But the athletes are doing an extraordinary job at making a slow roll down the river look like the source of excitement. I hope they're not stuck on those boats for too long once they've been on camera.

Why are there Minions in my Olympic Opening ceremony?

No, it might drive them in ("NO" - all)

Don't know if it's just me, but the French National Anthem pictures and audio are way out of synch

The audio is all over the place, and the noise of the rain is annoying.

I really don't think that having the athletes standing in the rain breathing in all those sprays from the Seine is a good idea.

I gave up. It was not good

I need to see who the Masked Parkour Person is. I'm in it to the end!

It's a resurrected Marie Antoinette.

This part is going on a bit...

Tuned back in for a bit

I don't think we're going to find out their identity

Ezio Auditore

I haven’t seen any of the opening ceremony yet but it sounds chaotic and I’ve seen pictures that they initially raised the Olympic flag upside down?

This explains everything.

Papa Smurf, why do you have no clothes on?

Olymprick.

Is this Ari Aster's next movie?

I’ve read from a few people that this was cut from the U.S. broadcast because the producers thought it was making a mockery of The Last Supper. They also apparently cut two men sharing a kiss in front of a big heart.

Avatar 3 looking fuckin' FIRE.

We didn't watch any of it. If I need my arse boring off, I can think of other ways that don't use any electricity.

I did accidentally see a tiny bit of it when channel hopping and it was some bloke in a boat, holding the torch with a look of bewilderment, like he hadn't been properly briefed on what to do with it. I didn't wait to discover the outcome.

We might watch a bit of the actual games, but not a lot.

I found the whole debacle of the pre-games footy match between Morocco and Argentina absolutely mind boggling. Pitch invasion 16 minutes into extra time, 16 (?) yellow cards, a delay of over 90 minutes to clear the crowd from the stadium, a VER decision that an equaliser was offside, and the remaining few minutes played in an empty stadium. That's a great start.

And then there was Sandro Bazadze of Georgia in the fencing, screaming ludicrously when he thought he'd won, only to scream at the officials when he was ruled to have lost. Then again his opponent lost the plot when he learned he'd won. Arseholes.

Bloody hell Andy, that was intense

We’ve just finished watching the opening ceremony. It’s taken us three days to get through it and if I’m brutally honest I think it is the worst opening ceremony I’ve ever seen. Everything was so drawn out. Like the laser display that went on for eight hours. There were no stand out bits. Everyone looked confused.

I've never really watched much basketball, but the game between 'Straya and Spain was engaging and entertaining.

Getting into something, that I'd never normally be into, for a short space of time is one of the great things about the olympics for me.

Swimming is a good watch, some good dramatic moments too. I enjoy some of the small little things, and especially liked when someone's swim cap fell off and sank so some poor chap had to strip down to his swimshorts and dive in to retrieve it. He wasn't in bad physical shape but was a bit middle-aged blokey, and I felt for him having to do this around a whole bunch of olympians that are understandably in incredible shape.

i wanted to watch some badminton, but Lady T fancied the horsey stuff yesterday, and that left me cold. I'm not fussed at all by equestrian events and find them very much uninteresting.... apart from the one moment when the camera audio caught a little girl in the crowd piping up loudly "LOOK! It's a HORSEY" which was really cute.

I wonder how he'll get on today. I suspect he may have an unfair advantage.

His four hand?

We took gold in the Men's Trap Shooting just now, with the Olympic record being utterly smashed in the process. Nice.

Quadraphonic? Surround sound?

WTF is going on in the tennis (Nidal/Alcaraz and those Dutch guys)?


The chair person getting out of her chair to go and point at where a ball landed, if it was out but not called by one of the line judges. What year are we in, 1924?

I'm not too proud to admit that for fairly long sections of this morning, I decided rowing and triathlon are very boring and watching the athletes and teams finish in the obvious order they've been in for some time doesn't help.

I have been wrong before, but rarely as wrong as this.

oh yes.... I watched both.. Work was done today..

I was in the office (my one day of the month), someone said "put it on the big screen". Um, sorry - made the most of the big air from the BMX. Much as I loved the rowing and triathlon finishes, though, gold of the day for me was Guatemala's in the shooting. Spoiled someone-I-saw-quoted's niche stat totally - before the bronze in the men's, they were one of a handful of places with more nobel prize winners than olympics medals (2-1). They accepted it was equal then, but now they're 2-3.

Watching the discus final and the Lithuanian athlete did this:



But when they went to measure they did it from here:



Which seems generous

It's alright, the Jamaican Stona just beat him

I saw that too, Malc. Brock Lesnar got a few free inches

The COVID infection rate event has really got me hooked, I've never really been an Olympics person before.

Nice to see a story arc being introduced.

"COVID: crippling 2 generations of Olympians so Tonya Harding doesn't have to"

Etc.

Tipsy. Stopping now.

The Australian breakdancer is receiving A LOT of heat on the socials.

I have quite contrasting views. It was both really shit and also not that bad, at the same time.

I saw a little bit of that and wasn't impressed with the two performers I saw, one of whom was the Ozzy. I don't think it should be in the Olympics, it's not what I'd call a sport.

Breakdancing is ludicrously demanding of physical endurance and fine motor control., and mental acuity.

But then I have to agree because all the nonsense of floor and horse gymnastics with "artistic" arm flapping can get bent.

Not enough people are talking about the awesome Gojira performance during the opening ceremony. I almost missed it.

"Flag football and squash have been approved as first-time additions in Los Angeles, while baseball, softball, lacrosse and cricket [have been added/readded]. Breakdancing has been removed."

Quick work, IOC member Warhead.

Ain't no thang.

WTF is Flag Football? Don't tell me, I'll Google it.

An ex-colleague of mine posted on Facebook that she'd been watching the track cycling, and enjoyed the Madison, but couldn't understand what was going on.

I began to explain, but the more I wrote, the more there still seemed to be to complete it, so I kept it brief and posted a link to a cycling site in case she really wanted to know the full 9 yards.

Sounds like a very short race, must be over in a flash.

I wondered who I'd catch with that. Tick VG.

I never did Madisons myself, I did sprints, pursuits and devils at the old Reg Harris stadium in Manchester when I was in my teens. Concrete track that shredded your skin if you fell off.

There was a similarly treacherous concrete track at the long demolished Clairville Stadium in Middlesbrough. Terrifying just to walk on. Can't imagine rocketing around there at 30mph with just some spandex on