Be Excellent To Each Other

It popped into my head what with Simone Bikes, Naomi Osaka, and Ben Stokes all saying recently that their mental health is a big issue and how competition can affect it.

I just looked through the male skate boarders, all but 5 were in the 20s.

there were two 17 year old's an 18 year old, and a nineteen year old.

then there were two 46 year old's!

One of the Athletes is older than me!

https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic ... dallas.htm

https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic ... g-rune.htm

Although the Danish bloke does not look as old the South African dude. I wasn't going to stay up and watch the men's competition, but I almost want to see what these old guys manage to bring to park!

KJT

Arse (achilles but, you know).

They were talking about her recovery and how it has affected her performance. I think her and Dina both suffered from this not being held last year

I guess I can just watch Thiam now in awe, without any guilt

Wowzers Talakhadze can lift.. Two Wr and OR records...

Just watched Japan's robot dance in the Women's Assisted Swimming. Eurovision levels of awesomeness and fun!

I’ve just looked up ‘assisted swimming’ and I’m not sure I understand what it is. Do you have an explanation that a five year old might understand for me to try and grasp what it is?

I assume it autocorrected from Artistic

Yes. And we're all still calling it synchronised anyhow.

Ohhhhhhhh…

Caught up on the pairs ‘artistic swimming’ (is this a name change for the Olympics or for the sport entirely?)

The best element will forever be the bit they do before they even get in the pool. From ‘the walk’ to that whole vogueing dance breakdown bit.

I saw the Japanese robot act. I misread it. I thought you meant the Japanese dancing robot (the actual robot) was entertaining people between swims. I did think it’d be odd to have it near a pool…

Russell spent the entire program looking up the camera technology for the above and below waterline shot.

50km walking race on now. Absolutely ridiculous, might as well have egg and spoon and sack races in there.

Yeah, I was reading up about it, some posh Victorians wanted to gamify their walks, cut forward 150 years and here we are.

Although is it really any more silly than say back stroke or breast stroke?

It looks sillier for sure.

As long as we have Prancy prancy horses, everything else is fine

The 50km walking race people are at my fastest 10km pace per km

Me too but at least I don't look like I'm dashing to the bog while desperately trying to hold in a shit.

When’s the 1500m Mince Relay?

We used to have a speedwalker that used to train past our flat, and the thing I always wondered was whether it gave the athletes any hip problems in later life?

There's not a huge amount of impact, but all that rotation must cause wear and tear

Really enjoyed the various cycling events this morning, especially the Thrilling Heroics on the women's ominum.

Golf in the Olympics is a weird one. There are literally 120 "athletes" competing for 2 gold medals. One for the men and one for the women. It takes 4 days to get a fair result, loads of staff and dedicated facility, albeit one that already exists. Seems like a lot of effort.

That's one of my biggest gripes about the Olympics, the disparity of how many medals each sport has an offer and the relative effort needed for each one.

A really good freestyle swimmer can potentially win like 8 medals in one games. A sprinter could win 4 if they also do the long jump, Carl Lewis style. But most of the team sports are basically one and done.

If you're a footballer and you don't even get brought on do you still get a gold medal?

A sprinter can get a gold medal in under 30 seconds. Marathon runners hate them.

According to the official Fifa rules document, yes.

https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/5397cc284 ... gz-pdf.pdf

Oooh, a diploma! Nobody ever mentions the diploma. Are medalists Doctors of Olympics?

It's like a swimming certificate from school!

I think I'd have used Brush Script for the competitor's name and perhaps Papyrus for the title. Needs a bit more clip art too.

I can't see an example for other places, I wonder what text they use. "Winner of 8th place". "First loser, there in fourth, ooh.". "Thank you for coming".

I'd still put it in my 'National Record of Achievement' folder.

Erant citius - erant altius - erant fortius

Rio Example

I've just learned about the Participation Medal for non- competitive team members.

"My dad went to the Olympics and all I got was this T-Shirt" t-shirts?

https://olympic-museum.de/pmedals/olymp ... s-2012.php

A bit nicer

Only the best swimmers etc etc

Really been enjoying the cycling events this year. The Men's Madison final just now was really tense, especially given how long it is.

Why do TV producers think athletes are able to string a coherent sentence together when they've just come off the track or pitch? Give them a chance to get their breath back!

(Although I'm not complaining when some are sweaty and in various states of undress and ["Enough" - Ed.])

My main issue with the coverage this year. We all know the BBC are only allowed to show 2 things live at the same time, one on TV and one on red button/iPlayer.
So maybe they should spend more time showing the live events when they are allowed to, rather than talking about it in the fake studio...

Quite tense to see who comes 4th in the medal table.

As far as I can see Russia (sorry the ROC) have 23 chances of getting further gold ( Hand Ball, Rhythmic Gymnastics and Women's Omnium Cycling) and so does Team GB (Boxing, Women's Omnium and Men's Keirin)

They both currently have 20 golds, but ROC has more silvers, so team GB needs to win more golds to finish higher than ROC.

Jason Kenny! Wow! What a guy! Amazing

Hopefully his wife can pull off the impossible!

No miracle for Laura. But no gold for ROC in the cycling or rhythmic gymnastics either.

It comes down to if Lauren can win her boxing match and/or ROC women can win their handball match against France! Tense stuff!

I'm off to bed, will catch the boxing on replay when I wake up.

Before I do, Kipchoge was pretty damn awesome in the men's marathon. And the Benelux 2/3 was pretty epic too.

Oh, one final thing. This final boxing medal, I think, takes team GB to 65 medals. The same number won in 2012, and only 2 fewer than 2016.

Nice!

I really enjoyed these Olympics, I went in with cautious, but high hopes. I was worried, that all our 2012 heroes might now be passed their prime, and we would return to pre Beijing levels of mid table obscurity. Thankfully that did not happen.

Top 10 disappointments:


10] The BBC not being able to show more than one thing at a time. - Discovery/Eurosport did an okay job, but there were times watching when I missed the Beebs Commentary team
9] Half the stuff was on at silly hours in the morning (I know this can't be helped if you are watching in the UK, but the tournament is in Japan)
8] Not watching as much niche sports as I would have liked
7] No medal in either of the Rugby Sevens
6] Laura Kenny missing out on the Omni
5] Knocked out of the Football after not capitalising on early chances (such a familiar story)
4] The amount of stories I heard about the lack of funding/organisation etc in the build up to these games. I know there's been a pandemic, but surely we can do better?
3] What on earth happened in the Rowing!
2] Injuries to our some of best Track/Field Athletes (KJT/Dina Asher Smith/Morgan Lake/ Adam Gemeli)
1] Has to be the male sprinters and their false starting in the 100m (not even a redemption in the 4*100m)

Top 10 highlights:

10] Men's Rugby Sevens coming back from 21-0 down to beat USA to make it to the Semifinals
9] Being able to watch full replays on Discovery+ without any spoilers from the app or presenters first
8] Katie Archibald and Laura Kenny winning the Women's Madison, winning all but 2 of the sprints in a complete demolition of the rest of the field (scoring almost as many as 2nd-4th combined)
7] Tom Piddock winning the men's cross country
6] The Modern Pentathlon Golds in men/women
5] Tom Daley finally getting gold
4] The swimming team's best ever performance
3] Sky Brown and her Skateboarding
2] BMX Medals in all 4 events (Charlotte Worthington nailing that trick that no one had ever done before after failing on the previous attempts. Wow!)
1] Mixed Triathlon Gold

Looking forward to the Paralympics, but I don't think I'll be getting up quite so early/going to bed quite so late for these. And Roll on Paris in 3 years time!