The Official Olympics (Sport) Thread

[Aki Kaurismäki]

She's got no confidence.

[biggytitbo]

Seems like Holly is making this as difficult as she possibly can... never seen someone so distracted before an attempt before.

[biggytitbo]

Jeez, why didn't she just do the vaults without all the farting about?

[biggytitbo]

Wow, Gong's a real screamer! Imagine her at the height of orgasmic pleasure!

[Aki Kaurismäki]

Holly in tears. She never approached the event correctly.

The sports psychologists needed to have a word.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

This is going to be a disappointing night for GB.  I'm writing them all off.

[biggytitbo]

Yeah mentally she was allover the place...fairly wide open that event too...could have been another Rutherford.

[Unoriginal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLUKWf15H4E

NSFW

[biggytitbo]

This is going to be a disappointing night for GB.  I'm writing them all off.

I have a sneaky suspcion dai green will capitlize on his second chance and get a medal. He is world champion after all, he's not some up and coming young athlete.

[Aki Kaurismäki]

I would've turned off by now if my gold fish hadn't died today. I can't face scooping their bodies out of the water so the living room is off limits while I pluck up the courage.

On the laptop in bed.

[biggytitbo]

...joke about 'red pole'...

[biggytitbo]

Good effort, though he was going to do it on the second to last hurdle...just too far behind in the home straight.

[Lee Van Cleef]

I almost cried watching Sanchez get his medal.

Jesus.  Roger Ebert is right.

[Gulftastic]

Fabulous footie match! USA sneak it with a winner in the last minute of injury time. Slightly annoying as they only got to extra time due to a dodgy penalty.

[biggytitbo]

Surprise of the night, the equestrian gold medalists don't even sound that posh!

[weirdbeard]

Just read this astonishing story - the 100m final wasn't shown live on NBC in America, instead they held it back for the prime time re-run.  What they got instead was horses.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/londonspy/us-audience-fumes-nbc-shows-equestrian-replay-instead-223035713.html

Christ.  I would say thank God for the BBC, but even ITV or Sky wouldn't pull tricks like that over here.

[biggytitbo]

Apperently they've been doing this throughout, apperently not aware that its 2012, or the internet and twitter exist.


Been reading some more about the foreign reaction to our cycling performances. Apperently the French guy, who was himself suspended for failing to turn up for a doping test, personally interrogated Kenny at then press conference about how team GB are doing it. The consensus on the cycling forums seems to be that it has to be doping. I find that incredibly hard to believe, how could they ever hope to get away with it when they're so high profile?  If there was any truth in it it would completely destroy British cycling overnight and be the biggest scandal in british sporting history. Far more likely the team has just found the right combo of funding, technology, coaching and natural talent.


However we're doing it, were favourites for 3 more golds in the velodeome tomorrow, which would be 8/10, even better than bejiing. Triathlon gold looks nailed on and some horses are looking good for gold too.

[Thursday]

I suppose there's always the possibility that the coach went mad and has been putting stuff in the Lucozade, but I can't imagine it's that.

[hummingofevil]

The GB / Sky cycling thing is understandable if you just accept that Dave Brailsford is a nutcase genius. When people talk about training hard for all their lives, it kind of sounds difficult but this doesn't take into account what you actually doing. The systems that they seem to have in place are all about attention to detail but when that includes bike design, sports psychology, selection of athletes at whatever level then it kind of makes more sense that they are totally dominant rather then one or two of them being pretty good.

Listening to Wiggo, Kenny, Thomas, Clancy and Rowling talk they all seem to be in some slightly weird bubble where its just 100% about the performance and how Brailsford and the team have controlled everything they do for as long as they have been allowed to. Its perfectly doable without doping. Its not even unusual; look at the Chinese diving teams, the South Koreans in archery, the US in the pool and so on. Get a good plan and spend good money on it and it is possible to dominate a sport.

[Mr_Simnock]

Well put humming. I may also add that until around the late nineties (edit) we had almost no organisation at all for the cycling, now we have quality velodromes to train in, a centralised base and team (at Manchester), massive investment in bike design which also includes getting help from companies like Qinetiq for materials  and use of wind tunnels. The shirts are specially designed over months to be strong, light and breathable. The bikes seats ave been looked at recently over a two year period, they found the old ones produced or aggravated existing injuries and the new ones cut this to a minimum. Think about it, if you are in a team that takes a year or more to fully investigate a cycling seat then you are in very very well prepared team. Its also worth pointing out that our peak comes in the Olympic year, outside of this and its a different story in the annual world champs, but they aren't our focus, absolutely everything is geared to the Olympics. Absolutely no stone is left unturned in looking for an advantage, no new gadget is left untried and all manner of companies have been contacted with regards to anything that might help the team. We are good because we literally, for once in something, have the best set up in the world by miles and the others are just pissed off they can't match it.

[Nobody Soup]

the thing is, insulting as this sounds, some elite athletes aren't really training as hard as they could be. mo farah was rubbish in beijing and credits going to kenya as the reason he improved so vastly. he went there, found out people were getting up at 6 and going out running, coming back, eating and sleeping a bit, getting up again and running more. plus the intensity they'd been doing it at was way beyond what he was doing in the UK. he'd been getting up at 8 and going for a bit of run 6 days a week.  he incorporated that plus went to train in ethiopia a few times and well, the results are there for all to see now.

there were other factors like the inner competition and number of training partners but that's something we've got with the cycling, why I think philip hindes is taking advantage of having a british parent. germany are no slouches in track cycling, but I imagine the reason he's representing britain is that he gets to train amongst a group of hyper competitive dedicated cyclists. wiggins too trained at maximum intensity for the tour de france, something usually not done as they try and ease themselves into it.

[Twibbie]

The consensus on the cycling forums seems to be that it has to be doping. I find that incredibly hard to believe, how could they ever hope to get away with it when they're so high profile?

Precisely because they're so high profile. Cycling's governing body is corrupt to the core, to the extent that it's trying to get the American anti-doping case against Lance Armstrong delayed/withdrawn because they fear they'll be shown up for the corrupt pieces of shit they are. You could have said all the same things about Armstrong. "He's such a big name and he's tested so often, how could he be doping?" He knew how to beat the tests, like most cyclists and teams do, and the governing body decided he was too big to fail.

Its perfectly doable without doping. Its not even unusual; look at the Chinese diving teams, the South Koreans in archery, the US in the pool and so on. Get a good plan and spend good money on it and it is possible to dominate a sport.

There are basic limits to aerobic and anaerobic capacity that limit what cyclists are capable of. Ed Clancy rode the flying lap at a speed which would have placed him fourth in the stand-alone sprint competition. His kilo TT would have got him fourth at this year's world championships (and bronze at the stand-alone kilo in the 2004 Olympics, 0.2 seconds behind Chris Hoy), and his individual pursuit was less than four seconds off what Geraint Thomas posted at the Worlds this year, which would have got him eighth. Either Ed Clancy should consider a serious career in the sprint, or there's something else going on. 19 year-old Philip Hindes outdid three-time sprint world champion Gregory Baugé in the opening lap of the team sprint. Maybe Hindes and Clancy are freaks, you can't rule it out. But cycling has never lent itself to that explanation. Vino gets gold in the road race and everyone raises their eyebrows, but we're supposed to swallow GB telling us that Chris Hoy is shitting out personal bests at 36?

And the comparison to US swimming? Well yeah, I'd be thinking on that.

The systems that they seem to have in place are all about attention to detail but when that includes bike design, sports psychology, selection of athletes at whatever level then it kind of makes more sense that they are totally dominant rather then one or two of them being pretty good.

Do you really think other countries don't bother with this stuff? They just spend most of the year having a laugh while only the industrious and diligent Brits put in the hours? How big a difference do things like a seat make? Enough to take 1.6 seconds off a team pursuit world record that was set with St Bradley in the team? Enough to comprehensively dismantle a team with the two of the three fastest pursuers in history?

Its also worth pointing out that our peak comes in the Olympic year, outside of this and its a different story in the annual world champs, but they aren't our focus, absolutely everything is geared to the Olympics.

Do you think that's a logical thing to do? Spend three years not once indicating the level of strength you actually have, then blowing everyone out of the water in the fourth year? Don't you think everyone else's main goal is the Olympics too? If it was Belarus or Russia who were doing and saying all this stuff, would we still buy it?

germany are no slouches in track cycling, but I imagine the reason he's representing britain is that he gets to train amongst a group of hyper competitive dedicated cyclists.

So he turned down Germany, world-record holders before these Olympics in the very event he's just got a gold, in order to join hyper competitive dedicated Britain.

wiggins too trained at maximum intensity for the tour de france, something usually not done as they try and ease themselves into it.

Is that supposed to mean we should have more faith in him winning it? It would be less believable if he didn't win nearly every race he entered this season?

There's been no silver bullet with Team GB/Sky this year, everything has just about remained within the explicable. But you have to pretty much subscribe to the idea that Britain has the vast majority of the best cyclists in the world, or that all these "marginal gains" (which most other countries already do anyway) add up to enormous chunks. It'd be nice to believe all this, but I've been here too many times with cycling. The fact that GB are winning all these events more or less uncontested is boring at best, but I'm getting the same feeling watching British cyclists this year that I got watching Di Luca and Riccò and Armstrong and the rest. I hope I'm wrong and that I have a precautionary over-bearing cynicism, but you know at very least the media should be grilling a cycling team where the head coach hired a doping doctor for his road team.

[Nobody Soup]

So he turned down Germany, world-record holders before these Olympics in the very event he's just got a gold, in order to join hyper competitive dedicated Britain.

nah, you're right. he probably looked at the olympics in beijing and thought "germany have the WR they are the number 1 velodrome nation!" world record or not it's kinda obvious that for the last 5 years britain has been the dominant track cycling nation. britain finished one and two, it's clear they were the premier sprinting nation and if you had dual nationality and the option to race for either you'd choose the UK right now.

Is that supposed to mean we should have more faith in him winning it? It would be less believable if he didn't win nearly every race he entered this season?

I'm not sure what you mean, but no, by increasing his intensity I mean he trained harder. it was in the press that they took a leaf out of swimming preperation and spent the training period for the tour going flat out from day one, previously percieved wisdom had been to work your way up to full intensity by the start of the tour. the whole rest of my post was an example of an athlete finding out a difference in training culture can be the difference between mediocrity and massive success. I think it happens more than we think so...

Do you really think other countries don't bother with this stuff? They just spend most of the year having a laugh while only the industrious and diligent Brits put in the hours? How big a difference do things like a seat make? Enough to take 1.6 seconds off a team pursuit world record that was set with St Bradley in the team? Enough to comprehensively dismantle a team with the two of the three fastest pursuers in history?

no, i don't think they do bother, not to the same degree as brailsford does right now. and yes, i think it is enough. just like I think kenya and ethiopia train harder and know distance running better than anyone else in the world. I think russia and romania used to understand gymnastics better than anyone else in the world (and america themselves credit their rise as a serious competitor to nadia comaneci coaching and advising)  at this olympics right now jamaica have shut out sprinting on legs to exactly the same degree britain has done it on bikes (in the last 5 years they have produced 5!!! of the 8 fastest men in histroy, you never even get to hear about mullings or carter even though they'd be the fastest man in the history of any other country beyond jamaica and the usa) are they all doping?

more to the point though, if france and germany are looking so hard into saddles, wheels etc. that their technical advantages should be exactly the same why is it the only thing they're not doing is looking into doping without being caught? why is the only possible way britain could have earned an innovative advantage be through drugs?

to be fair though, I take your point, it is common with cycling, especially in cases where someone (or a sporting entity in this case) dominates so much but I think putting like "we're supposed to swallow..." is perhaps taking it too far. that sounds like you're utterly convinced.

one thing I would say about qualifying bauge as a "3 times world champion" this year he pretty much only won it because kenny messed up. secondly, there's rather more evidence bauge may be a doper than hindes and it would probably be more likely in this case that it's bauge that was using performance enhancers when he won those events and perhaps now he's off them is racing at a poorer standard.

[dredd]

Relevant:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19116749

analysing performance and trying to prove doping is a futile task

[Twibbie]

edit: bollocks, wrong thread