Talk Elections

So is anyone else excited for the 2012 Games this year? I am, and I hope it's a good one. Let me know what you guys think about it.

The logo is Lisa Simpson giving someone a blowjob. I don't have high hopes.

And they're hosting it in a city that has the coldest, wettest, sh[inks]iest summers in the temperate world.  Parts of England are currently under water, after they had their entire average July rainfall in 24 hours.

It'll be awesome. C'mon, it's the Olympics. Even Atlanta was awesome, and it absolutely sucked.

Yeah, I love the Olympics. TBS, I am glad that the games are in London instead of New York. It would basically be a mass transit and security nightmare.

I'm a Londoner - I'm getting sick of it already and it hasn't even started.

Oh well, at least the fog in London is natural and not man made like the last host.

Can't wait, it's only a week away.

I love the Olympics, but they decided to have the games during the Civic Holiday week when I'm normally at the cottage, so I'll be missing half of it. (Same thing happened in 1996- I missed Donovan Bailey winning gold!)

I'm sad we lost.

Lost what? It hasn't started yet.

I think he's talking about the failed attempt of New York City to host this year's event.

Which was a good thing.  I feel sorry for London.  Any mayor that supports his city making a bid to host the Olympics deserves to be voted out of office.  They simply are not worth the cost and hassle.

Unless you're Melbourne where the only venues that would need to be built are the boat ponds.

(Had to do it, sorry)

LESS THAN ONE WEEK!!

???  Every summer games since L.A. '84 (except the notoriously mismanaged Athens '04) has turned a healthy profit.

This is correct, of course. Plus, it's great for future tourism. And, you get to host future world class events at your new facilities. Of course people who claim to be fiscal conservatives run and hide when they see large price tags...

And by the way, to those who suggest the Olympics are a bad thing for the city they are hosted in, do you support abolishing the Olympics all together? I mean, they have to go some where.

Are you kidding?  The '96 Olympics put Atlanta on the map.

So there's a heatwave expected at last. Should make it nice; I was worried it would be a washout.

This is cute :)

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/07/22/tabloid-claims-global-grindr-outage-caused-by-overactive-olympic-athletes/

Olympic torch went through Havering today. Never seen so many people out on the streets...

I gotta say, whoever said the Olympics aren't worth hosting is just dead wrong.

Some things actually supercede finances. I don't know what the figures were for the Vancouver games, but the patriotism those games inspired in Canada was beyond anything I've ever seen. It was the proudest I've ever been to be Canadian--not because I learned anything new, but because, finally, Canadians were coming together to show that we are a proud and strong people. We don't do enough of that in Canada, and it was about time we did.

I hope the English can get that same sense of pride out of their games.

I've read about how the International Olympic Committee is now looking into hosting in impoverished countries like Haiti, Philippines, India, etc. I don't know why but if they can't afford it then why award it to them?

For once, I think we can agree on something. I was there in Whistler, it was a great time to be a Canadian. I've always loved the Olympics, and have embraced it as a symbol of peace and athleticism.

Speculation is mounting about who will carry Australia's flag, which is an honour bestowed by the chef de mission on games' eve. As with every other country, it is the highest honour our Olympians can receive, but the choices have been a bit odd over the years. My personal pick would be cyclist Anna Meares, but the odds seem to be in favour of rower Drew Ginn, who'd also be a good choice. Who will be carrying the flag for your countries?

The two people most likely to have carried our flag (hurdlers Perdita Felicien and Pricilla Lopes-Schleip) were both eliminated from the Canadian Olympic Trials despite being two of the best hurdlers in the world. So, neither will carry our flag.

We have Sir Chris Hoy again. The big question of course is who will carry the torch.

Probably some English soccer player.

Well, the flagbearer was announced last week, it's Simon Whitfield (triathlon).

ooh, good choice from the Canadians.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/shortcuts/2012/jul/24/working-class-jacques-rogge-ioc

hahahaha

Ha, considering he was the first gold medalist at the Sydney games...

The olympics haven't started yet but we already have an athlete kicked out.  Voula Papachristou (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18987678) was kicked out for making a racist comment on twitter, she is a supporter of Golden Dawn so I suppose it isn't very surprising.

^^ This was my post, I didn't realize I was logged into my gf's account. Anyways, Im disappointed at Canada's 2-1 loss to Japan.

Off to London tomorrow, going to Proms on Friday and avoiding Olympics stuff :)

Three things:

1. Simon Whitfield didn't win the first medal at Sydney, or even the first Triathlon medal, which went to a Swiss woman, Brigitte McMahon. The first gold went to an American woman, not sure of which sport.

2. Really over the corporate sponsorship of the games, it seems to be more infectious than most years.

3. Melbourne really should be the permanent Olympic city.

:D A refreshing take on the we're all middle-class/bourgeoisie horsesh**t. 

1) My bad.  I forgot about the ladies.

3) lol

The Olympics Drinking Game - Opening Ceremony

Celebrity Watch

Elton John (plus 1 if 'His Partner David Furnish' is there)
A Beatle (plus 1 if it's Ringo)
A Rolling Stone.
A Spice Girl (but not Posh)
Princess Anne (plus 1 if she's wearing a tracksuit)
A Miliband.
Ken Livingstone looking sad.
Mitt Romney.

Opening Ceremony

'London Calling' by the Clash.
Any Beatles number.
Umbrellas.
Bowler hats.
A 1970's punk.
A mini.

Parade of Athletes

Broadcaster misses a small nation to cut to something else (this should get you drunk by itself).
Broadcaster cuts to Prince Philip after African nation marches by.
Audible boos when Israel march.
Ironic cheers when Jamaica march.
Libya debuts it's new flag.
Audience don't know it's France when the announcer says 'La France' and need clarification in English.
New Zealand interrupt the ceremony with a  haka (plus 1 if followed by shot of Queen looking pissed off).

If you think the Chinese were honest about their bookkeeping for Beijing...

And I doubt that the various host city OOCs get charged full price for the security costs involved.

As for the infrastructure improvements, the benefits from those should be considered separately from the games themselves, since at least in theory they could have been built anyway.  (Tho I'll admit that with human nature the way it is, they might not have been built without the Olympic carnival coming to town.)

As for improving tourism, with the possible exceptions of St. Louis and Atlanta, every single Summer Olympic host city already had reasons for tourists to be aware of them and want to come visit.

As for abolishing the Olympics themselves, I'd not mind if this overblown spectacle of nationalism masquerading as a means to advance world peace were abolished and/or severely revised.  There is no particular reason to assemble an amalgam of unrelated sports together for a concentrated two week overkill.  The early modern Olympic games were more spaced out and the events were held over a period of months, not weeks.

Not long now :) Our flagbearer will be Jackson, which is an excellent choice. What events are people looking forward to? Some highlights for me will be the women   s basketball final, with luck we   ll beat the yanks; the 10m platform diving, with Mitcham hoping to go back to back with golds, and the men's team pursuit at the velodrome, where the poms and aussie teams are both incredibly, incredibly strong. I'd argue that the track cycling will feature the most impressive moments of these games, all things going to plan...expect the already unbelievable world marks to fall left and right, mainly to the Aussie and 'Team GB'.

I love the Olympics in several ways.  I'll touch on two main ways, the sports junkie in me loves the competition.  The political junkie in me loves that it provides a nice, 16-day respite of Democrats and Republicans rallying together behind Team USA before the nastiness of the home stretch to the Election begins.  (At least the Summer games).  I will be watching the Opening Ceremonies tonight at 6:30 pm CDT and I will be watching as much of the Games as I can over the next 16 days!

So when will we know who is going to light the Olympic torch?

And in other Olympic news, it looks like NBC is going to snub fencing: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/2012-olympic-fencing-nbc-snubs-mens-fencing-195200621--oly.html

I'm disappointed, I was really looking forward to seeing it, I wasn't interested in it 4 years ago and its the only Olympic sport I'm any good at.

Beautiful opening, I got a bit teary at the welsh bit. Then they had a dig at us Aussies, not so cool...

Faaaaark, this is amazing. Emotive, note perfect, no sappiness, but a proper recognition of glory and terror in the past of Britain. Truly exceptional.

Can't wait for you Americans to see the NHS bit of the opening ceremony. Governor Romney must be terrified.

It won't be that big a deal.  Remember, Obama ran his loud mouth during "God Save the Queen".

Things went a bit weird with the nhs/kids bit, and as great as the bean scene was, and the bond scene with the queen and those hilarious corgis, the music scene was a bit of a dud for me. And now the flame!

Yeah, there were part which I thought that non-Brits just wouldn't "get"

someone needs to be shot for the Paul McCartney disgrace. Bloody awful. He was almost as bad at the jubilee concert, what on earth convinced Boyle he'd be any better now? Especially with a backing track out of synch. Truly awful.

Also the kids lighting the cauldron was a dash gimmicky, but the petals were cool.

All in all, I'd give the first half hour 5 stars and the rest 2 stars.

Wow, the Opening Ceremony surpassed all my expectations! Congratulations to Danny Boyle who organised it!

I don't know if it was just me but the lighting of the flame was rather emotional..

The flame was beautiful.

I have no idea what happened with the audio of Paul McCartney's closing bit, but that was really unfortunate. The bit with the house and the text messaging threw my entire family off, and I can't say I really got the point of it.

All in all, it was very impressive.

Vancouver's was better. ;)

Yeah the texting thing was admittedly odd. Everything Paul McCartney does nowadays though is rather, um, rubbish. I guess I'm used to it after we had him at the Jubilee. :P

P.S. Seeing the Queen and 007 together, fo' realz, was just epic.

I FORGOT ABOUT THAT!

And the leap from the helicopter! Man... for all the strangeness, there were definitely some real cool bits. Struck a good balance of poignant moments and humourous moments (like when the Americans walked in wearing, lol, Chinese berets).

I missed up until about 7:45 due to work (which never should've happened, but that's a long story), but that through now was fantastic.

That was the worst opening ceremony I've ever seen. Sure, nobody expected the Brits to surpass 2004 and 2008. But this was a celebration of (british) bad taste about which nobody out of the isles could care less.

Mary Poppins? Seriously?

Also, on a more personal note, not playing the Greek national anthem for the first time was a serious faux pas.

What a pretentious ceremony thingy.

I haven't started watching but the opening ceremony is about halfway finished recording on my DVR so I still ought to have plenty of time to watch it tonight. I don't really know what to expect at this point and have been doing my best to avoid spoilers. Still, I'm almost sure to enjoy the show.

I thought this was pretty terrible.  This was the first ceremony I ever saw which had no Olympic spirit in it at all.  Britain was patting itself for... sulfur smokestacks?  It had nothing to do with sports or any sort of message.  It was loud and annoying.

The only fun part was Atkinson and Chariots of Fire.  The rest was an ordeal to sit through.

Beijing, Athens and Sydney were all far better.

It's... Strange. Then again, I don't watch these things, so I don't know how it compares to other ones. Just know that cynical bastards like me look at it and go "what...?"

Strange.

American hated, Canadians, British and Australians liked.

The one Sri Lankan girl was pretty hot.

Also, HOLY sh**t QUEEN ELIZABETH AND JAMES BOND

My family liked it better than Beijing; it was light-hard and cultural instead of raw manpower.

Well as King pointed out it did celebrate what many would consider low culture.

I thought the very beginning was quite good but it got progressively worse.

The bit with the texting utterly confused me. Other than that it was pretty good, especially the bit with Bond and the queen.

I thought the first performance, with the industrial revolution and forging of the rings, was pretty amazing. The performances after that weren't as good, but they were kind of entertaining (Rowan Atkinson is always lovable).

is Cuba there?

I much preferred this year to 2008.  Everything just seemed more interesting and entertaining than the show China put on.

This year, I have two nations to root for.  The United States of America and The Republic of Kenya.  I'm interested to see the track and field competitions for the Kenyans, especially.  I guess Soccer is going to be primarily aired on Telemundo, correct?  I haven't decided if I want to go to bed (which I should) or if I want to stay up until 4:00 and watch the competitions begin.

go to bed

Yes. Their uniforms are a acceptable yellow.

That's what I'll probably do.  I've got a couple more loads of laundry to finish up and then I'll be hitting the sack, hopefully by 2:00.

Is it just me or did the NBC presenters totally ignore the Palestinian team?

No one cares about Palestine. (in this context, at least)

I bet all the non-American stations covering this (except for the ones in America's butt-buddies like South Korea) at least used the word "Palestine" on the air.

Canada said it. They skipped one country, Bahrain, here.

What are you talking about man?  They said Palestine. They talked about how they are approved by IOC and that they have an athlete who qualified for competition.  They showed members hold Free Palestine scarf aloft and they then went to commercial. They spent as much and even more time than another delegation of its size.

I'm pretty sure they called it "Palestinian Territories", but yeah, they showed the delegation and talked about it.

NBC did as much coverage for Palestine as they did many other countries.  And, of course, the IOC refused to hold a moment of silence for the anniversary of the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes.

I have to say that was a good opening ceremony. Not as good as Beijing and Sydney, but it was better than Vancouver and Salt Lake City. 

I'm watching the repeat now.  I truly do love the Queen so much, and her performance here only enhanced my fanboyism. I'm pulling for her to outlast Queen Victoria and become the longest reigning monarch. Odd, since I don't really care much about the other royals.

As for the events, I'm mostly looking forward to the High Jump. Never really watched the Olympics before, so should be fun.

Our commentators skipped Palestine, but considering that they also skipped Japan...

Because the Australians come out so early, a lot of the time is tqken up with shots of the Aussies once they're already on the field, so a lot of countries get little or no attention.

China wins the first gold medal. :(

And the first bronze. Silver to Poland. Poland have a history of winning lots of medals, but relatively few golds.

Opening ceremony was very good, IMO, if a tad overlong. Got to do something about the parade - it's gotten far too long now.

CTV basically skipped France, which was annoying. Of course, giving the rights to CTV is a retarded idea.

The reaction to the ceremony on-line has been bewildering

I've never known a ceremony polarise opinion quite like this one, that's for sure.

It was, for this jaded Brit, truly wonderful. It celebrated Britain and its people just right - mad, bad, befuddled, chaotic, eccentric, traditional, proud, multicultural, silly, and all else inbetween. I loved its humour.

If some of our Colonial Cousins "got it" whilst others didn't, does that say something about the ceremony or the nationality of those confused ;) :)

Depends what was to get in regards to Paul McCan'tanymore or Hppy Fmlz 4evz. Rest was fine, with moments of true brilliance.

CTV is a lot better than NBC.

NBC has horrible commentators.

Vinokourov is even worse than Cavendish as a winner, but importantly for Australia, anyone taking medals away from 'Team GB' is doing god's work, and I suspect that may have been Stuart O'Grady's primary motivation in the end ;)

I'll try to watch some of the US women's soccer stuff, because I'm a fan of Alex Morgan and apparently she seems to be a really good player now.

I see that the two Brian Williams' are back again. (Well, I assume Williams is doing the NBC coverage). The one good thing about the CTV coverage was poaching our Williams from CBC. It wouldn't be the Olympics without him. Aaaaaalright *shuffles papers* it's 9:00 local time...

But yeah, it's still weird having to watch the Olympics on CTV. A network which I don't normally watch much of (but is the most popular network in Canada).

Actually, it was Bob Costas and Matt Lauer at the commentary.

Oh well. It was fun when they were both in Vancouver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzTtKbXQSUs

Nice finish to the cycling event.  The original breakaway group swelled two thirty members and maintained a 50 second lead over the pellaton for the rest of the race.  Then, with a mile or two to go, a columbian rider broke away from the breakaway, followed by a 38 year old Kazakhstani.  He drafted and then came around behind to sprint for the win.  Love it when somebody the commentators even had trouble identifying wins the Gold.

US archery team are delicious. As is the Aussie archer, Taylor Worth. May need to take up Archery.

Phelps sure has some competition this year. Ryan Lochte left everyone in the dust this morning.

Phelps clearly isn't the swimmer he was in 2008, he couldn't even win a medal in the 400 Medley.

I'm having nightmares that the,next fifty years will ve 90% US or Chinese golds. Plus Brazil, Italy, and South Korra I guess.

Italy second in ranking so far. :D

Gold to Australia for the first time in London, in a slight surprise. Really rather good :)

Also, I think we might need a new thread for every day of competition

The BBC gave it a mention, and pointed out that it's not technically a country.

Great job to the US and French women's football today! I catched the US-Colombia for half an hour before heading out this afternoon, and saw their two last goals, both of which were pretty sweat. And France trounced the North Koreans 5-0.

And there it is
http://storify.com/Sodium1989/us-right-wing-response-to-nhs-at-olympic-ceremony

And Canada wins 3-0 over South Africa.

We came up short in women's basketball though. :(

Several prominent right-wingers here have echoed them.

Handball is such a great sport. The women's France-Norway game today was epic.

I watched a lot today - cycling, archery, women's basketball, women's volleyball, tennis, and swimming.

My favorite moment was actually the archery finals against the Italians. Disappointed we lost, but still great.

I love her too.

Everyone I know does.

I enjoyed watching women's volleyball, women's soccer, and swimming today. If the Olympics are this entertaining so far, then I am willing to do nothing else for 2 weeks but just watch almost every event as possible.

()

Hating the hockey venue, I can't comforatbly watch it. What were they thinking?

Hockey? In Summer Games?

Field Hockey

Looks like the first British medal, appropriately, will come in the rain at the women's road race.

It's the only thing making India win medals.

Voss from the Netherlands gets gold ahead of bad sportsmanship.from Britain's Armistead and a bronze to Russia ( ;) )

...and now to watch China win gold in the synchronised diving, but medal hopes for Italy, Canada, Australia and the US behind them.

And it'll be Silver for the US and bronze for Canada. Australia 5th behind Italy, then Ukraine, Britain and Malaysia.

Before I opened this thread, I had never seen or heard anybody not working in the media claim that he has ever watched an Olympic opening ceremony. I swear that this is true. (And I know that quite a lot of people do, though less than the actual competitions. It's just that I would have idly wondered who these people are, would I actually care.)

I'd say about a quarter of the people I know would've watched it live, and another quarter at the delayed time. I'm a bit crazier than normal about the Olympics, but the average Aussie feels that the Games are as big as the average Argentinean feels about the World Cup.

Really? I know their claims of "2 billion people watched this" are grossly inflated, but it's still a lot of people that do.

Women's team final in the archery very damp. China looking to continue their great start to these games, although they usually fade in the second week with few team sports successes, along with a surge to be expected by Russia and the US in athletics.

I remember that the Austrian commentator said twice that 4 Bio. people would watch this.

I don't think that 4 Bio. people even have a TV ...

Swimming is really amazing tonight. Two world records from two finals, and so far two Australian medals :)

Make that two world and one olympic record, from three continents. Here's hoping to add a fourth in the mens 4x100 relay, the Aussie team looks pretty strong, but serious challenges from France and, of course, the USA.

Edit: Hubris gets you nowhere. France-USA-Russia.

23 million watched it on average in the UK - highest thing of the year so far and one of the highest in British TV history.

Hahaha, Vinokourov is just a legend. I love how the BBC etc. seem to be completely shocked by his doping history while missing out on the much bigger question of what exactly Uran and Vino were discussing so intensely right before Uran lost the sprint in the most idiotic way imaginable. (And remember that this would hardly be the first time for Vinokourov to buy a race, though it may be the first time someon thought it fit to sell an Olympic Gold medal.)

Still, Cavendish lost and that's what matters.

Man I feel pretty bad for Jordyn Weiber not making it to the All-Around. Considering she's the all-star favorite.

Everyone except Aly Raisman kinda flopped on the floor exercises.

commentary and editing makes a big difference
http://www.examiner.com/article/nbc-commentary-of-the-london-olympics-opening-ceremony-deemed-offensive

still, some of it was quite beautiful. The very beginning and ending were beautiful and fit together well with the Jerusalem/Caliban's Dream theme.

Yeah, Raisman was the only one of the American's whose floor routine I found engaging. The Russians were great on that, unsurprisingly.

Wow.

Here, there was only one criticism of the ceremony by the commentators and it was about the Chilean flagbearer, which had previously been suspended 2 years for doping.
Appointing her flagbearer is a dubious decision, yes.

At the same time, we are picky in the commentators in French Canada. Three people. An host, which is mainly in the factual and gives facts about the parts, introduce them and say the facts (X country has that much athletes), a commentator (the venerable Richard Garneau, which does that since the Rome Olympics, in 1960), mainly commenting the athletes and one well-known athlete (this time was Alexandre Bilodeau, gold medalist in acrobatic skiing at Vancouver).

Same hosts at the last Winter Games, except than the athlete was Alexandre Despatie, diver.
That time, the English Canada had Catriona Le May-Doan, a former speed staker, which, in a discrete way, left during the ceremony the studio to be one of the 4 flame-lighters.

I agree with ya there, but man they were pretty good, it's just that damn floor. I assume Aly Raisman knows it's dark secrets.

Freestyle skiing.

It's called Ski Acrobatique for both freestyle and acrobatic in French, hence the confusion.

Aka Aerial skiing in Australia :/

Currently watching the slalom canoeing. Excellent course this year.

I'm house sitting for my auntie and uncle, who have pay tv, which is usuallypretty much a waste of money but for the olympics is excellent, because it means I have 9 channels of coverage. At the moment there's the Canoeing on free-to-air channel 9, and on the foxtel stations, the weightlifting, canoeing, equestrian eventing, boxing, tennis, table tennis, hockey, and beach volleyball. They claim that every gold medal will be shown live and in full in 'the world's best coverage'. It's certainly pretty handy.

Half a second to go in the women's basketball match between France and Australia, Aussies down by three after a big comeback, take the lead when the French miss a shot from the line and Belinda Snell takes a three pointer from the other side of tge court. The olympics have arrived!

edit: France win in overtime :(

Apparently this year we're heavily favoured in some women's boxing event. Hopefully we can get a gold without drugs this time.

I've quite liked watching a few Judo matches. I've no idea what the rules are, but it's thrilling enough.

Men's Team gymnastics sees gold to China, despite only just qualifying for the final, a silver to Great Britain, who haven't won a medal in the event for a century, and bronze to Ukraine, who push Japan out of the medals on the last apparatus. USA, top qualifiers, came 5th.

Japan launch a protest, an element gets bumped up in difficulty score, and they end up in second. Britain still medal, Ukraine pushed out, and stoically filthy about it.

Wow 200m no medal for Lochte.

That japanese gymnist did NOT do a handstand. I don't care what the judges say.

So many swimming upsets. BBC commentators wondering how Missy Franklin was going in this race, and she wins it.

1 billion app watched it worldwide, not much more than half as many as 4 years ago. That includes people switching through all the channels while it was going on. App. 4.5 bio people worldwide have access to television. Less than 8 million watched it in Germany. Again, that includes people switching through channels. The average number watching at any given moment would have been maybe 250-300 million worldwide. (The reason for the decline is of course that 4 years ago, the ceremony was held in the world's largest country and showing at primetime for where the bulk of the world's population is located.)

Lol, the hilarious days-long search for a medal apparently just ended. BILD's faith in Germany is restored. -_-

Point of interest, 37 countries have already medalled, which is a great start for this games' aim to have the most ever medalling nations. Point of nyah nyah, no British golds. Point of frump: Australia is either third or fourth in the pool, depending on how you count.

Huh, Google tells me North Korea is 4th.

That they are. They have a superb weightlifter.

Apparently she is 100% ethnically Canadian. That is, both of her parents were born here.

The poor Korean girl in the Epée (fencing) semi-final drama is surely the image of Day III.
A second can last forever...

Unlike in the gymnastics, I suspect it was the right decision.


The 'colour' about her in our coverage is that she's from Aurora, CO and had the hopes of her whole community on her, hoping for some good news after the movie shootings.

http://www.lostateminor.com/2012/07/26/the-hipster-olympic-games-held-in-berlin/?utm_source=outbrn&utm_medium=images&utm_campaign=trial

Disagree. That last second lasted an awfully long time - and resetting it from 0 to 1 seemed particularly unfair.



Katie Taylor has won pretty much everything that has been there to win for 6 years now. She would have been favourite 4 years ago as well had the sport been allowed in. She's probably the most favoured Irish Olympic entry since Pat O'Callaghan in LA '32.

Observation: Gymnastics is incredibly strange, and the more you think about it the stranger it is.


Apparently, whenever there's no Canadian involved in an event, Canadian TV focuses on whatever American has even a vaguely plausible connection to Canada. That amuses me.

Missy Franklin was pretty amazing last night. Even better if she's remotely Canadian.

On a side note, CTV coverage is terrible. I've taken to watching it all on NBC, at least they show the events rather than nationalist feel-good bullsh**t about the training of Canadian people nobody cares about.

Currently choosing Aus v Spain in men's basketball, over Poland v Bulgaria in Men's volleyball; Women's Table Tennis quarter finals in the singles; Sth Africa v NZ in women   s hockey; Croatia v Spain in men's water polo; Eventing show jumping; Rowing repecharges; the Sailing regatta, and on the free to air channel, the equestrian. Everything but the Table Tennis is live.

We're up to 40 medalling countries with a bronze to Qatari royalty, in the Men's skeet, after a silver to British royalty in the team eventing. The silver went to a Danish carpenter, their first medal, gold to the US. That's half of Beijing's number, so London could be on track to break the record.

And not only that but one of our sailors is cleaning up, won all 4 races so far. Looking like a big improvement from 2004/2008.

Insane final of the men's 200m butterfly, Chad le Clos juuuuust edges out Phelps for gold with a massive final 15. Stunning race, and Phelps now equals the highest total medal count with a couple of events left.

Come on, Earl, there's no way that CTV can be worse than NBC.

So, this Ye Shiwen character. Doping? Not doping? Fair to be suspicious?

And Phelps becomes the most awarded Olympian in history with the US relay gold in the 4 by 2.

Not doping. Not really fair to be suspicious in my opinion. The Chinese Olympic teams did admittedly used to be all over that sh**t but in recent Games they've contented themselves with massive amounts of forced, almost certainly horrific but legal training.

A few points here:

Swimming is a sport of technique and raw muscle power, and it is also a sport with relatively few highlights through the year, and the second and third point make it a sport with doping issues (anything illegal building muscle will be effective far longer than it is provable.) Obviously you cannot create a world class swimmer just by injecting him dubious medicines, but you can win crucial seconds that way.

A teenager setting records from the day s/he starts participating in competitions is exceedingly likely to just be that good (and have been drilled, of course, but that's legal). An adult suddenly improving majorly at a comparatively advanced age is what should set all the bells ringing.

 

No more than any other very well performing athlete (like Phelps).

Talking of Phelps, he does look alarmingly like Johnny from The Wire, doesn't he?

Italy is still unable to get a 3rd gold medal... :(

But at least France is faring quite well so far. Let's hope it lasts.

Maybe they should make sour grapes a sport at the Olympics. It would be guaranteed Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals for Team USA.

Only because Western Europe has to compete with many teams.

?, this issue was really brought forth by a BBC commentator and an American swim coach unaffiliated with the team. The speed of her last 50 was incredible, surpassing the top males. Some people have just become real skeptical given all of the doping abuses from every country.

Tbs, USA swimming is doing quite well on its own. I havent gotten a sense of sour grapes. Then again I avoid sports commentators and analysts like the plague. Im sure they are trying to brew up some controversy.

Depends on the sport. Opening ceremony on CTV was bearable, which is more than I can say about the NBC coverage. I've been watching most of the events online, so I don't know who's better. Most of what I've been watching is the live world feed, which has no commentators at all.

BTW, three bronze medals for Canada today. woohoo! Only 2 behind those pesky Aussies. (would be nice if the combined Winter and Summer medals were higher than them)

True it was initially a BBC commentator who first quipped about her. But then Leonard and the western media jumped on the bandwagon and irresponsibly implied that there must have been doping without any proof. At the very least they should have stated they hoped drug test results were honest.

Finally after the drug test result came out, Team USA distanced itself from Leonard's comments. You can't deny these are just sour grapes by losers. No one accused Michael Phelps of doping when he won eight golds in a row four years ago. It's a good thing the IOC punishes the most blatant forms of unsportsmanlike behaviour.

The Epee decision from yesterday seems really absurd. I just heard about it now. If you are in the field and you think the time is out, but the clock keeps going it also affects your performance because now there is cognitive dissonance. That makes it more likely your opponent will score a hit.

The IOC should punish itself for accepting dope moneybags from Vladimir Putin.

I am not surprised by Pellegrini failing given her 400m performance, but we surely expected at least 1 medal from fencing today

Anytime anyone beats there personal best by that much (5 or 6 seconds), people will talk.  With good reason there are still suspicions about Lance Armstrong, who came from nowhere to win 7 Tours in a row.  The comparison to Phelps 08 is a bad one because he was a known quantity going into Beijing having won some medals in Athens and crushed at the Worlds. He was expected to make history or at least challenge it.

The swimmers Ye beat are world class athletes, championship winners and medalists. I think linking them with the appellation of sour grape losers is as unfair as jumping to a conclusion about doping.

Yeah, that was a great race and his emotional reaction during the SA anthem was excellent. I'm glad he won the gold because it just meant more to him that Phelps- who has plenty of hardware at this point.

And the USA crushes at the 200m freestyle relay to give Phelps his 19th medal.

Congratulations to Michael Phelps for becoming the most medaled Olympian in history.

And Congratulations to the US Women's Gymnastics Team. 

Although I did watch the Bob Costas interview with the team, I felt so old realizing their first Olympic memory was 2004 Athens, goodness mine was 1996 Atlanta, when they were in diapers.

The view in Australia about Ye Shiwen seems to be this:

1. She's swimming exceptionally well.

2. China has a history of systematic doping, and in the past all Chinese swimmers were assumed by the Australian public to be cheats.

3. Over the years we've seen plenty of teenagers come from nowhere to win medals, including plenty of Australians.

4. It's fair for people to have an asterisk next to her name in their minds, because of the past, but it's deeply unfortunate because she is a new star of swimming who has questions raised because of people who were swimming when she was 4 years old. If she's doping, Chinese swimming's reputation will never ever recover. If she's clean, they've come back in to the swimming fold and they'll be a welcome challenger.

(There are actually a few more eyebrows being raised very, very quietly, about the French...)

Which is proof that swimming has too many events.  If Athletics did things the way Swimming does, there would be separate 400 m races, one going clockwise and one going counter-clockwise.

They ought to ditch the the three B's (backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly) and the medley events and add the 800 m men's and 1500 m women's freestyle to the Olympics.  Maybe even add a 3000 m freestyle and a 5 km open water event to the mix.

Phelps has gotten so many medals by mastering a bunch of slow swimming styles.

Athletics actually has 12 more events, and have hurdles and steeplechase as slow running styles, and anyway I think it adds to the tournament.

I'd rather ditch all the additional freestyle distances except the 1500 and 10,000.

About to get the regatta in a golden mood in the rowing. Britain looks like they'll get their first gold in th women's pair, with Australia tge most-likely-but-not-likely to take the gold off them. Fingers crossed Britain avoids gold for another day, if only for the British press's headlines tomorrow. I tip 'Mediocre Britain' for the Mail.

The Brits smash it for their first gold. Silver to the aussies, and bronze to the kiwis who look like they'll have an excellent regatta. Congrats to the Brits, who look like they've emptied the wmergency fuel tank and will be absolute legends at home. Yanks fourth.

As much as I think it's time we change our flag, there's something beautiful about seeing the Aussie and Kiwi flags flanking the Union flag. Maybe it's a war thing.

Now for the men's 8, unlikely to see another Commonwealth podium, but the Aussies, Canadians and Brits are there, even if all the action looks to be with Germany, the US, and the Dutch.

Edit: As expected, Germany win, but the Canadians and Brits surprise for silver and bronze in an exceptional race, lead switching, late charging, and plenty of grimaceing.

Going into the games, we were supposed to win the gold in the 8s, but considering the last place finish in the heats, we'll take silver.

My Olympic connection, Abby Bishop, who was the first person in Canberra I came out to, is having a blinder as Australia lead Brazil halfway through the second quarter of the basketball 23-16.

Anyone else know an Olympian? I also know a couple of Paralympians as friebds, but no Olympians beyond very casual acquaintances. With the AIS in Canberra, it's not so unusual to know or even be mates with some of the elite, so I suspect Polnut may know a few

I'd suspect Earl woyld know qyite a few winter Olympians, right?

Needs more James Magnussen, everywhere...Because I said so.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19072677

Nice to see that the book has been thrown at the lot of them with a fairly significant degree of force.

I wish to add than many national badminton federations are unhappy about that, mainly because they think it is a cause of the flawed pool system used.

The system they use is used for the first time in that competition, and it is quite flawed, as ending second in a pool give a better draw than finishing first.

They used an untested system for the competition, which is a quite bad idea. Olympics isn't the place to test new competition formats.

Yeah if it's possible to do that to your benefit, then the system used is quite flawed and needs to be looked at. Still the right decision in light of the circumstances.

As far as I can tell the system is no different than the usual for multiple group competitions, including the world cup. This mean the winner of the group plays the second place from another group.

Anyone who considers badminton a sport should be thrown out of a window......ugh I hate the Olympics.

How is badminton not a sport?

Because of that event, the Canada, which finished last of its group and which was in the same group than 2 disqualified teams became 2nd and qualified for quarterfinals.

They won, in an upset, and are now in semis.
That is ridiculous.

Still, I'll take it. :P

It's not like we've exactly been the gold standard of sport this Olympics. Sochi will be our real test. If we can challenge what we pulled off in Vancouver, we'll be real players.

"we've already qualified and we wanted to have more energy for the knockout rounds" (and also not face a particular opponent) is considered perfectly legal, though not entirely sportsmanlike, in most sports that use a group stage. Just look at any Football World Cup...

In this case, the other (non-disqualified) Chinese team lost their last group match, when they already were qualified for the quarterfinal, and thus came second in the group, but were still considered odds-on favorites for gold by everybody and their pet dog. This is what the South Korean coach meant when he said "they started it", and note that it's evidently considered the lesser offense as they were not disqualified.
Play them in the quarterfinals (as the winner of the second thrown-by-both-sides match would, the one featuring Indonesians) and you're not getting a medal for your troubles unless you beat them.
And of course in the first thrown-by-both-sides match, the other Chinese side was trying to preserve the possibility of an all-Chinese final. Which incidentally nicely demonstrates that the original favorites' loss was not part of some "team strategy" or whatever.

Technically it is......but badminton, table tennis, shooting, and equestrian and some others don't quite strike as being in the spirit of the so-called Olympic tradition.....I guess it's a matter of taste too.

Good day for Australia. The dickhead won silver, some good results in qualifiers and team events, and capping off with a relay silver behind a brilliant swim by the US. I always love an Aussie gold, but I'm sooooo glad Magnussen wasn't one of them... I just wish he hadn't lost to a Yank. Can't wait for the rowing tomorrow.

Just watching USA vs China at the Volleyball. Made me realise what this Olympics has been lacking all along, economic metaphors.

Did you watch the opening ceremony?

Badminton, actually, is very physically intense, since the birdie comes back faster than the ball in tennis or squash, but you still have to run around a court unlike in table tennis.

Anyone else agree that Olympic boxing is terrible now?  There are still talented fighters and an odd good fight but the scoring system blows. I remember as a kid being horrified by the Roy Jones Jnr decision but at least it was still compelling and could indicate some future success as a pro.  By trying to improve it they just made it worse.

-Just watching replay of GB vs. Cuba. The Cuban got screwed by the point system.

The worst thing is the total lack of knockouts. They need smaller gloves.

Just found this gem out since I havent really been watching the boxing

A Japanese fighter knocked down an Azeri 5 f%^&ing times! According to another source the referee forgot to count at one stage, the Azeri had to be helped from ring after the fight and he won on a decision 10-10.  Unreal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19088420

If there's one thing I really want the US to win gold in, it's women's beach volleyball... I remember watching Misty May and Kerri Walsh back in 2004 - it'd be great to see them win 3 in a row.

Did you see them lose their first set?

That match was fantastic. Megan Hodge in particular is incredible.

No; I came in halfway through the second set on the rerun (I was at work when it happened live).

If you're going to count the field events, for this comparison, then you ought to add the other FINA sanctioned sports of synchronized swimming, diving, and water polo.

But also, you don't regularly get people competing in large quantities of medal events in athletics.  The two Olympic sports that overdo the medals are swimming and to a lesser extent, gymnastics. There are three swimmers, five gymnasts, and two shooters who have won seven or more medals in a single games.  The shooters wouldn't get that chance today since the shooting program has been trimmed considerably since 1920, tho I wouldn't mind seeing the return of such events as the 100 m running deer. (Shooting at a moving target 100 m from the shooter.  The 50 m event that later replaced it was called the running boar.  No actual deer or boar were used.)

The Summer Olympics are one of these occasions where I'd rather consider myself an Australian than an Austrian ...

Ernest, it'd be the same as having 4 running styles. 'Freestyle', as now, hurdles, backwards, and with your hands tied behind your back. Being good at one means you'd almost certainly be good at the others, but to be a world beater at more than one style is truly exceptional, and very very few actually do it - Phelps is good enough to have done so, though, and deserves appreciation for it; It's as difficult a task as anything Carl Lewis did.

Canadian coverage is hilarious: GO CANADA, WE WON THIRD PLACE!1111 WE WON!111 WE ROCK!111 Let's cover the medal ceremony now!1111

So, yeah, go France.

Huge upset win for the kiwis in the rowing, spectacular to watch. Second Italy, and the three favourites, Slovenia, Argentina, and Britain, in 3rd, 4th and 5th. Lithuania last. Kiwis thrilled, in a stunning race. In other events, Aussies have made it through in every boat, so things are going well.

Another great race sees the Saffies and Brits move up in the last 300m to take gold and silver, as the Danes and Aussies, who battled it out for the first 1700, come 3rd & 4th.

Four years ago Sth Africa only got one silver at the Olympics, so far this year they have three golds, having an excellent year.

Fast race in the women's 8, US leads all the way to claim gold, Canadians edge a fast-finishing Netherlands for silver, then a big gap to Romania, Britain, and Australia

It's like that in the UK too. :P

This dressage rain is unreal. But I still don't know, what the hell is dressage? What are they trying to do?

I always thought that if shooters and biathletes want medals, they should at least shoot at each other. Last survivor gets the gold, last two men to croak get a posthumous silver and bronze. ;D

---

Carl Lewis was just about the last man on earth to compete in the Wide Jump as well as the sprinters' distances IIRC?

Yeah, they reversed that one on appeal. Still looks quite odd - including the points count for round two.

Jessica Fox wins a silver for Australia in the slalom! She's only 18 in a sport where the medallists are usually in their late 30s or so, so lots to come from her in the future. In the men's double, Britain quinellaed, and women's archery saw a great final for Korea gold, Mexico silver and Bronze.

Make horses dance.

High drama at the velodrome, heartbreaking but correct decisions see the Brits and Dutch knocked out of the medal rides, and China knocked from gold to silver, with incorrect changeovers. China look like they   might refuse the silver, which would pop Ukraine in to Bronze, despite having the 6th best heat time.

Men's team pursuit also looking like it will live up to the buildup as Britain set a World record in their heat, and Australia cruise with three in to second fastest.

Edit: China accept their silver.

The tax dodger wins again, I see.

Romney's horse won a Gold medal ?

:-\

No, Chris Hoy.

Not entirely fair because there are other successful sportscritters who are far worse than him, but still a bit funny given the whole nashnalhero thing.

From tehgraun's liveblog:

Woe betide a national leader turn up at the Olympics in their home nation. Absolutely disgraceful.

Acceptable day for Australia, but I'm starting to get sick of hearing other nation   s anthems. Unlikely to get a gold tonight in the pool, but tomorrow looks like it has potential, in the pool, at the velodrome, but especially in the rowing.

John Howard was the Bronze Horseman in Sydney. Whenever he was in attendance, we won unexpected bronzes, either in a positive or negative way.

I think it's time for Australian swimmers and their fans to start wearing paper bags on their heads. Big let down so far.

I know it must be a bit blase for him by now, but some pretty disrespextful podium work by Phelps for the 200m medley.

As far as Australia in the swimming goes, I'm disappointed for Seebohm, but the way Magnussen has been acting for tge last few months was, at least to me, much more embarrassing for Australia than having 5 silvers.

Well, at least, you won a gold medal yet.

Wow!  Did anybody watch the USA vs. Nigeria mens basketball game just now?  United States completely obliterated the record for teh highest scoring Olympic game; 156!

One could argue that what those badminton players did is similar to intentionally walking Barry Bonds.

It's still hard to believe that happened 120 times in a year, even though I saw it.

Just saw the women's all-around final, and I have to say that these judgy people are unfair.

Well, I've "met" quite a few athletes at the winter Olympics in Whistler. Mostly going through security.

NBC's really overselling these American gymnasts. By the end, I was far more interested in what would happen to the Russians than anything else.

Yeah, I think Raisman was better than the Russian who placed third.

MAHE DRYSDALE GETS OVER THE LINE! What a legend! Great regatta for the kiwis, third gold. Drysdale looks like he's about to vomit from exhaustion.

A silver and a bronze for Australia, but the first of the two big 'ashes' contests is yet to come in the men's 4, and later on the team pursuit at the velodrome, which I suspect will be one of the most exceptional moments of these games.

edit: the rowing is tomorrow, sorry.

Hoping for a medal in shot put...

American coverage is the worse, nothing on is worth watching. Trampolining is on though, which is kinda interesting....I guess.

I did not know this. Can't stand that.

What's interesting is that in the women's doubles of the badminton, the four teams that advanced because of the DQs were guaranteed to win at least the bronze medal between them, and indeed, that's all they will get.  (The four faced off against each other in the quarters with two guaranteed to advance to the semis.  They both lost in the semis to end up in the bronze medal match Saturday evening.

Britain destroyed us. Learning to love Silver, but... we really wanted that one. Still, second to a World Record isn't bad... but seriously, we're well overdue for a second gold. This is a weird games from an Australian viewpoint... plenty of great results, and lots to be proud of, but not quite golden. We're ahead of where we expected to be by now by one medal, but with only the single gold. Not sad, definitely not embarrassing, but just a dash frustrating.

Looks like we're looking like a gold or silver in the women's keiren though, Anna Meares is in great form but so is Victoria Pendleton.

Well,















.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

lol

I hate when people are overconfident and assume success, but that was a really disappointing night for Australia at the velodrome. Only good news is that the women's team pursuit qualified in the top 4 and have avoided drawing the Brits.

I thought both of the Russians were great, although it didn't look like they were trying as hard to get the little things right, which hurt them.

I note that a fifteen year old American has just won a swimming gold. I note that the United States has a long history of drug cheating in the Olympics and, as such, am very, very concerned by this outcome. I suspect that comments from Chinese officials on the matter will be most interesting.

The Switzerland vs. USA women's beach volleyball game was...entertaining.

Haha, I was wondering who would be the first to post this.  Tip of the cap :)

Swimming awful. Cycling very disappointing. Athletics good. Rowing good. Boxing bad.

Not a great day for Australia, but at least some wins and draws in the team comps, some next-stage qualifications, and a few medals, which is wobderful, but not quite what we wanted.

Over 50 countries now have medals, which is nice.

Would try and give a sh**t about the shotput and womens 10km, but it's bed time.

Very pleased that half of Team GB's golds have been won with a Scot.

Indeed, it's Canada who drew the Brits.
Having UK, Canada, Australia and NZ in a top 4 is wierd. It looks more like the Commonwealth Games than the Olympics.

Woohoo, Canada beats the Brits, Americans beat Kiwis, Frenchies beat the Swedes in women soccer. Perfect.

Really, France should just abolish the men's team. They're worthless, vulgar morons who can't play. It's really disgusting that there's such a big deal made about them when nobody notices that the more talented female team is 10x better.

Uh, the female team probably couldn't beat a random men's second league French team.

That's not what he meant.

But yes, quite exciting that Canada beat the UK. First time Canada has gone that far in women's soccer. But, England is ranked lower than us, so it's to be expected (err somewhat, they do have home field advantage, and aren't actually just England). I don't think we'll beat the US though, and France and Japan are both very strong teams.

The French women's team is not "more talented" nor is it "10x better" than the men's team. That's just a fact.

What he is said is *literally* wrong, but he didn't mean it literally, obviously. He meant that the women's team is relatively stronger- that is they are ranked higher than the men's team. Of course, it doesn't match the discrepancy between the Canadian women's and men's teams.

Of course I didn't mean it literally, I'm not an idiot. Though I wouldn't be surprised if one of France's best woman players is more talented than an imbecile like Ribery or that moron who threw a fit in South Africa.

It's surprising how quick one can go from finding out that rifle shooting is an olympic discipline to feeling it is really at the core of what the olympic games should be all about and regretting the relative lack of media attention that it gets.

Shooting is the only thing that Bangladesh has ever medalled in at the Commonwealth Games, so naturally I am all for it.

It is a travesty how terrible the Indian sub continent does in the Olympics.

Gee wasn't expecting Dalhauser/Rogers to crash out of the beach volleyball. Who's gonna win it now? My gut says the other US pairing.

Was there a wardrobe malfunction that NBC won't show?

(Not because NBC is a bunch of prudes, but because they are lousy at producing the Olympics.  Their game plan seems to be make the games seem so lousy no other network would want the rights.)

Points of interest: the US is ahead of China in both golds and total medals, 53 countries have medalled, and at this point of Vancouver 2010 we had more golds than we do at London.

Australia? In Winter Games? In which sports? Do you even have snow there?

We've got a bit of snow, but the golds came in snowboarding and aerials. We actually have a bit of heritage in the latter.

54 medalling nations, btw. It'll be close to Beijing

Is just me, or are South Korea having a really good Games?

jesus christ, that women's triathlon finish

These two people swam 1500 km, biked 43 km, and then ran 10 km, and they still finished within 1/100 of a second of each other. It was ridiculous.

Great women's triathlon.

Men's four...the Brits were better.

Another silver to Australia, along with a nice bronze.

Australia have medals in 5 disciplines. If you work up the table only Japan has as many medals in as many disciplines until you hit the top 10. So in terms of winning medals you have a good spread. It just so happens that other nations are excelling in specific sports. Those nations will stay stagnant as their sports finish and if Australia bag a a few golds you start moving up.

BUMP.

I didn't think that I would anymore but just tuned into steeplechase feed and see that fellow Friar Stephanie Reilly of Ireland was running.  I didnt know her well but used to hang out (and ruin the training) with many of her teammates.  There are also alumni from after I graduated competing in the marathon for NZ and Canada.



 

Yeah, it's hard to complain. In tge rowing, we've made the vast majority of finals, which is excellent. In the sailing, things are looking very, very good for a clutch of medals. Doing acceptably in quite a few team sports, and should progress through in just about all of them, especially on the women's side. But the swimming has been below expectations, and we're not looking great in the fight sports.

As for the cycling... Still plenty to come, but we were fully intending to be toe to toe with the Brits and we simply aren't.

We're doing very, very well...but we're accustomed to doing incredibly well. We still might, but top 5 is gone and top 10 difficult. Should get there in total medals though, which really is welcome news, and nothing to be disappointed in.

The North is, too!

It basically comes down to money, doesn't it? Basically 90% of the population is locked out of participating in most of these sports due to lack of resources. Even for those who do have the chance, can they really spend 4 years training when they cannot get proper sponsorships? Cricket being so popular is an issue, and sponsors just focus on that with cricketers making millions of dollars a year in sponsorships, and with other sportsmen being left with a pittance. I'm more bothered by India's failure at soccer, for which there is decent interest, than the more obscure Olympics sports.

BTW, why isn't cricket an Olympic sport? Dressage, whatever the fukc that is, is an Olympic sport but cricket isn't? Seriously?

This Senegal v Mexico match has been very entertaining.

Women's trap was good, we came equal last but finally made a shooting final, and the winner set a new world record off 99/100. She'll be on a lot of newspapers tomorrow, she's very very good looking and her rendition of the anthem was great to watch.

Oh, and Canada grabbed it's gold in the women's trampoline.

That surprised me as well. It was really close in that second set and they were tied at 19.

Well, either we or us will win a bronze medal on track cycling (women team pursuit).

It's a bit of a scandal magnet, isn't it? IOC probably want as little additional issues in that general direction as can be helped.

Though it's probably more due to time constraints.

Might be the lack of stadiums in most places actually.

I actually think that it might be the same dumb reason that they got rid of baseball and softball- supposedly it lacks universality.  For cricket you have billions that consider it a pastime in the Indian sub., the commonwealth nations and West Indies. Baseball has US, Japan, the Caribbean, parts of Mexico, Canada, Central and South America- even a niche sport in Australia.   How many people jump on a trampoline competitively? Are table tennis, badminton and equestrian really universal?

I think Cricket was just too long to be included in the Olympics.

I hear they're thinking of making pole dancing an Olympic sport.

Who knew BRTD would be an Olympic judge one day....

One sport that truly deserves inclusion is Squash, and it's one of a few sports up for inclusion, alongside, iirc, rock climbing and wakeboarding.

I'd love to see Netball at the games, but the medallists would almost always be Australia, New Zealand, and one of Jamaica, South Africa, and Great Britain. It's a better sport than basketball, but less universal. Although if you look at the regularity of medallists in that sport... Particularly for women...

Awful telly sport though. Of course they include sailing...


No.

Currently forced to decide between Channel 9's all-Aussie, all the time delayed/live mix, along with live weightlifting mens 94kg, with an Iranian with an impossible name on London 8; the boxing delayed on london 7; the men's long jump live on london 6, the women's discus live on london 5, the track programme live on london 4,; the team fencing final on london 3; Britain v Australia live in the men's basketball on london 2, and the swimming live on london 1.

I reckon we definitely win the olympics coverage gold medal, especially given the time zones.... I've been running on four hours sleep for the whole thing ;)

Al: the finals of the netball at the world champs and commonwealth games were both in my all-time top 10 sport events, with the kiwis winning in Delhi in double overtime and us winning the cup in single overtime. No glitz, no cheats, just great athletes and incredible competition.

The problem with the londons is that they don't keep you ipdated on the other events; the problem with 9 is that they do...but only if there's an Aussie.

Yay !

Halfway through and still no medal.

Well, at least Finland and Portugal also have no medals yet ... :P

So much silver. Which is lovely, of course. Mitch Watt gets silver in the long jump, behind a pom and above a yank  Great day for Britain, looking strong for third on the medal tally, because Russia are in the same position as us, but three times better.

Gold to Mo Farah... great day to be a British olympian.

I just came across this:

http://www.afterellen.com/content/2012/07/london-olympics-opening-ceremony-includes-lesbian-kiss-seen-around-world

First same-sex kiss on TV in maybe 50? 80? 120 countries? Noice.

During the Gibb/Rosenthal  match against the Russian team, there were several calls that were obviously incorrect. All were beneficial to the American team.



At the end of the clip, one of the NBC reporters covering the event said "...have beat the 'Ruskins".

San Marino almost won a medal today!

Great night for UK in the track and field.

Happy for the Guatemala guy in race walking. I hope Borchin is well after his collapsed 2 KM away from the finish line.

That was all so oddly pleasant.

But were presumably only awarded derisory damages.

Twenty twenty cricket ends within 3 hours. Though I guess the purists will want a whole test match. Not necessary in my opinion.

I see that British soccer has followed the unfortunate English tradition where penalty shootouts are concerned.

Remarkably strong correlation between total medal count so far (total medals, not golds) and nominal GDP....

Largest total GDP (nominal) in 2011 (from the IMF):

1) USA
2) China
3) Japan
4) Germany
5) France
6) Brazil
7) UK
8 ) Italy
9) Russia
10) Canada
11) India
12) Spain
13) Australia
14) Mexico
15) South Korea

Most total medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics (so far):

1) USA
2) China
3) UK
4) Russia
5) Japan
6) France
7) Germany
8 ) Australia
9) South Korea
10) Italy
11) Canada
12) The Netherlands
13(tie) Ukraine
13(tie) Romania
13(tie) New Zealand

Kazakhstan and North Korea are doing pretty well with gold medals, though.

Well, Kazakhstan literally buy athletes which aren't properly funded in their home countries.

Cricket did feature in the 1900 Olympics (it was retroactively deemed to have been part of it), but not since then.

We are getting golf next time.

And Rugby 7s, which is a crap sport but does give nations like Tonga and Samoa genuine medal chances, and if not, at least something to watch.

Golf shouldn't be there, at least not at the expense of Squash, as it was in the inclusion vote.

Men's badminton final is crazy good.

I'm glad Phelps goes out with a medal, and leaves the sport with being perhaps one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Andy Murray has won the men's singles tennis in straight sets. While Federer had a bad match, it's a deserved first major victory for him.

The Age has changed their medal tally... Australia is now labelled Agstralia :D

Australia win a penalty shootout, just escaping the quarters against China in the women's water polo. Nervous moments, but we're still undefeated...fingers crossed.

US vs. Italy in women's water polo. Who is Phil for?

Water polo is actually a pretty entertaining sport, unlike most that are so popular in the US (like what Americans call football.)

Water polo's good, but beach volleyball is the best sport in the olympics.

I prefer track and field myself followed closely by volleyball (indoor and beach). I haven't watched much water polo and thus can't render an opinion.

BTW, did you know that the French Judo gold winner is also a fellow student in my university ? He is 23, so I assume he is already in the master cycle, which might explain why I've never met him.

Water polo is just a slower, less exciting version of handball. Now there's a great sport.

Squash and Karate were the two that actually went to a yes/no vote on whether they should be included instead of Baseball and Softball, but neither received the necessary 2/3 majority.

Kazakhstan just won their 6th gold medal. No silvers, no bronzes, just six bloody golds. How do they do it?

Unless something unbelievable happens, looks like a no-medal day for us, which is broadly what we expected, but not particularly welcome. Looks like 65 countries could be cracked though, if Botswana, Grenada, and the Dominican Republic get medals as expected in the 400ms.

Botswana 4th :(

Which one?
Teddy Riner? Automne Pavia? Some other one I can't remember?

Men's 400 final has a weird distribution: 5 Caribbeans and 2 Belgians. Who appear to be twins. (and an Australian.)

You're American, dude. It's called football because it is football.

Water polo fascinates me in that I could never hope to do it (I tried fooling around with a water polo ball in the pool once and it did not go well), but so much of the action happens underwater that it's almost impossible to watch.

Of course, the most important thing about this is that he is an actually successful hibs fan.

The Australian is jewish, just to make it better :)

Oh, Bolt won the 100m by the way.

Really football is a sport played by kicking around a ball. What Americans call football is a sport that primarily consists of throwing or carrying an object that isn't a ball.

That's cool, but one of the Canadian guys in the 400x100 relay on August 10 is not only an undergrad student at my university, but he's also a graduate - a year before me - from the same high school!

He'll lose, obviously, but more proof that CB-turned-UofO students are the best at all they do. :)

Also, tomorrow, Alex Morgan vs. Canadian nationalistic pride? Who should I cheer for? Not that I care, I won't watch the game because I'm in Belleville.

The British TV coverage is getting completely unbearable...

North America is hardly better:

CTV: Full coverage of the token Canadian guy in every race, excitement when a Canadian doesn't place last or next to last. But they do cover other nations, tbh.

NBC: America is the only country competing, so they only cover Americans. Though unlike Canadians, the Americans actually win something.

I'm guessing the British coverage is similar to NBC's, just replace "American" with "British".

Hash, I didn't know you went to uOttawa! That was my second choice behind Queen's. Starting third year, and I'm still not sure if I made the right choice haha. The French immsersion coulda been useful.

Anyhow, is Canada still doing horrendously? I've been too demoralized to bother watching lately.

Watch me. Seriously. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/samir/did-nbc-just-air-an-extremely-racist-commercial)

Ignore the twitter stuff, the video is at the bottom. I almost choked I was that shocked.

If someone had access only to Italian state run TV, he would think the only sport taking place at the Olympics is fencing.

10 medals, which is quite unexpected at this point.

The thing is, fencing is hugely interesting and I greatly enjoyed watching the bronze medal match between the United States and Russia in women's team epee when NBC deigned to show it.

Eh, that's not actually too bad. Isn't our record something like 22 at a boycotted games?

Some people look for racism everywhere, it was obviously not meant to be racist.

I've seen other countries play soccer on NBC, but that appears to be it.

They had been playing that commercial since the Opening Ceremony. Oh the outrage! ::)

Rinner. I really admire how he manages to keep up with it while playing to such levels.

I don't think that is exactly accurate.  I think they more play the sports that Americans actually watch. For instance, diving is on right now and Americans did not win any medals.  Even if the Americans were not in the gymnastics final, they would still show it.  Sports that Americans win a gold and don't follow are either heavily edited or merely mentioned on the main broadcast.
The other channels have also shown many water polo, beach volleyball, basketball etc of other nations competing. Tbs, I think it only natural and financially rewarding to focus on your home markets athletes.

It's excellent, considering than the majority of the hopes of medals is in the second half of the Games, which began today.

We did 22 in Atlanta, which is the best performance in normal Games. We got 44 in Los Angeles 1984 (boycott of the Eastern Bloc).

You mustn't have the red button. Tomorrow, Annalise Murphy in the medal race in sailing at 1 PM, she won the first 4 races but hasn't done too well since. She's on 34, there are 2 on 33, and another on 34. Only those 4 have won any races, so thankfully it should be winner takes gold tomorrow.

Quite, quite.

I think a degree of open pleasure (at, say, the three Athletics golds the other day) is acceptable, but I draw the line at being forced to care about sailing. It is boring. I do not care if Ben Sailor Boy Whateverslie has won his twenty billioneth Olympic gold medal in the whatever class. On the screen it's just a load of triangles.

FOX should be the Olympic affiliate for the US, and CBC should be for Canada. I wonder why this hasn't happened?

He's also a bit of a cock, though you'd never know from the commentary...

True, but I don't blame him. Apparently some fans used to call him English which must be annoying. Now if Laura Robson won the mixed with Andy, would that be the easiest gold medal in modern olympic history for Robson?

C.R.E.A.M.

Yeah possibly the only sport more boring than sailing is golf, which isn't in the Olympics. Olympic shooting is pretty dull too. It'd be cooler if the sport instead was some type of obstacle course like the tutorial missions in the Call of Duty games instead of just "point gun->shoot->wait to be told how you did"

I wonder what the coverage in Canada is like for that gymnast who just went on the vault. That was tough. Really bad for her. At least the crowd tried to lift her up.

Fingers crossed for a good day. In the hunt for medals in the men's sprint at the velodrome, men's trap shooting, show jumping, maaaaaaybe women   s pole vault, and particularly the sailing, plus a few still in the hunt on the track.

At the sailing, the commentators for the BBC are also providing the feed in to Australia. First experience of the bbc commentary.

It's disgusting.

Fk Annalise Murphy came 5th, no medal.

4th, actually, a pom came 5th, and between them they got 90% of the overly emotional, strained-voice commentating. The commentary is just as bad in the men's laser, but the result is looking good... C'mon Tom, go for Gold! ....and if not Gold, Silver!

Gold!

Well 5th in the race, what a bummer though. She better gold in the next games. At least Katie Taylor has secured our second medal.

Randomly flipping through Olympic results... I wonder if this was an error in transmission or I've just found the athlete with the shortest personal name ever.

http://www.london2012.com/athlete/a-lamusi-1074544/

$$$$$

More seriously, NBC has chosen to market itself as the network of the Olympics and spend the bucks to do it.  FOX hasn't, nor does it have ready access to enough additional national channels to put comparable Olympics coverage on.  ABC/ESPN/Disney is a possibility.  Imagine an Olympic logo in which the lop left and top right rings morph into Mickey's ears.

Was wondering whether the US did better at the Olympics under Democrat or Republican Presidents, so I decided to work it out. I put in the US medal numbers for all the Games since the war, allocated 3 to a gold, 2 to a silver and 1 to a bronze. 1980 and 1984 got discounted due to the boycotts.

I found that the US got 202.6 "points" on average under Democrats and 192.33 under Republicans. I might update this once the current games have concluded.

Gold no. 2! With one race still to come to confirm it, but an unbeatable lead over the kiwis.

I now love sailing. Especially after the disappointment of Michael Diamond.

Valerie Adams wins 24 shotputs in a row, at the top level, and...gets beaten by a relative unknown Belarussian. Which is sad for the kiwis but excellent for Australia :p

CBC had all games, except Barcelona, Lillehammer, Vancouver and London.
It was announced last week than they will have Sotchi and Rio.

Corner kick goal for the tie!

The administration at the athletics is disgusting. The women's pole vault has been decided by officials in turquoise piped jackets. The number of delays, along with order errors, is insane. Even the greeks got their running sheets right.

Less of an issue, but still disappointing, is this practice of not introducing half the athletes, even in finals.

I must be sleep deprived... I just sent a pointless email to LOCOG. Complaining. I'm turning in to one of those people. Eek.

"To whom it may concern,

I'm loving these games, and a lot of work and care has clearly been shown. Truly, they are shaping up to be unforgettable in the history of the modern Olympics. There are some problems, but one stands above the others.

The administration at the stadium has been appalling. The women's pole vault was determined in equal parts by the weather, the talented athletes, and the bozos in charge of the stadium running order. Many, many delays, often announced to the athletes very shortly before their vaults; apparent vaulting order mixups, and hideously slow decisions. I have rarely seen such poor management at sports at any level, let alone the Olympic final. Congratulations to the medallists, and all the athletes, for surviving the debacle. The practice of not introducing all the athletes for track events, even in finals, is also highly disappointing, but at least it  doesn't actively affect the results.

Overall, the games are going well, but please tidy up the administration of the athletics, it's really not looking good at present.

Sincerely,

Hugh Bartlett
Australia"


THAT'LL TEACH EM.

I hope the text was green.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/06/pass-notes-yorkshire

No, football is a game played on foot (as opposed to a game played on horseback).


A FOX Olympics would be impossibly bad. I'll pass on Joe Buck and Tim McCarver doing the Olympics, thanks.

Oh man there's an Italy vs. Netherlands beach volleyball game going on now. I hope Phil is watching, lol. Go Dutch of course.

(Too bad it's men's. I enjoy that significantly less than women's beach volleyball for obvious reasons.)

I love this GIF.

()

That entire event was just horrible to watch.

That Stars Earn Stripes show I keep seeing ads for looks f**king disgusting. No surprise it has Todd Palin in it.

I'd rather they advertise Revolution more, that's the only new show I'm seeing ads for that looks likely to be good.

I believe the Belarussian was the second favourite. She's a former World Champion and Olympic medalist but she often did her best seasonal performances in some Belarus/Russia meetings (like many East Europe athletes...you know, the Russian national championships results are always eye catching but then the majority of them aren't repeated in  any major contest)

The USA/Canada football match last night was hilariously violent. The spirit of Don Revie-era Leeds United lives or something.

I don't get it.



Yeah it was, although I have to admit Alex Morgan, Hope Solo, Kaylyn Kyle, and Jonelle Filigno were pretty much the only reasons anyone watched.

She's bitter she only got silver? She's a sad individual.

So sad for Liu (100m hurdles). Unlike in Beijing, he has reached the first barrier before falling down.


She did a very good first jump (she was in the lead by something like 0.5 points but then she totally got the second attempt wrong. First attempt score 15.866; second attempt 14.300. I guess she was pissed off because she probably performed that jump so badly just 5% of the times and it happened in the most important occasion.)

Brownlee's go 1/3 in the triathlon, as Britain marches on.

Women's water polo semi between Australia and the US coming down to the wire. US lead 9-8 with 100 seconds to go...

Edit: GOAL!

After four quarters of awful referreeing, Australia finally get lucky and with 1 second left get a penalty... Southern scores... Here comes what should be some insane 6 minutes ahead.

Edit: poo.

She was the way overwhelming favorite. The commentators on NBC were even saying things like that the ones who went before her were probably scared of her knowing that she'd beat them so they weren't performing as well and how it was obvious that she was going to win.

Chief commisaire at the velodrome at risk of death after (correctly) relegating Victoria Pendleton from a 1/1000s win in the first heat of the sprint final for coming out of her line.

Heat two soonish, hopefully it'll be clean and Anna Meares wins, as she would have in the first heat if not obstructed. Shane Perkins also a medal chance.

The Opals look like they'll beat China, but it was tight for the first three quarters.

Good sailing day, extending our lead over the poms heading in to the medal race, both boats gauranteed of a silver in the 470s but Australia in prime position for gold.

Honourable loss in the water polo, looking good for bronze.

Go Anna! Gold for Anna Meares! Gold! GOLD at the velodrome! Go Anna!

Does the Don Revie era was including biaised referees?

She's also a 16-year-old girl, so, you know.

Lol, what craven AF apologist invented that false etymology? Football is a game in which playing the ball with your foot is allowed and an important aspect of play. (Note that even in Association Football, the ball is not played exclusively with the foot.) The parallel term "handball" is of roughly identical (late medieval) age.

Hmmm.... casual violence from the delectable Alex Morgan? Kinky. Got a softcore snuff videolink?

I support Drusille Ngako, Paul Ekane Edingue, Thomas Essomba, Serge Ambomo, Blaise Yepmou Mendouo, Abdon Mewoli and Christian Donfack Adjoufack. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9458906/Cameroon-athletes-missing-from-London-2012-Olympics-amid-asylum-fears.html)

The (just finished) Brazil/Russia womens volleyball match was a very good advert for the sport, as was the Japan/China match on earlier. Anyways, you know it's not your day when you fluff six match points in a set-based game and then lose.

Her near consistent lack of discipline is pretty amusing.

:) :)

We're up to 71 medalling countries, by the way. 80 should happen, 86/87 difficult.

The Felix/Richards-Ross/Fraser-Price/Campbell-Jones 200m final showdown will be interesting.

Looking forward to the 100m hurdles final. I don't particularly like overconfidence, but unlike James Magnussen, Pearson not only has the results to back her up, but hasn't been a media whore. She's confident, businesslike, maybe a dash too stony..but she's a champion, and she does what she needs to do to win. Which doesn't include bullying the letter T.

Canada apparently won a medal in High Jump, which has 5 medallists.

The rain comes down, and Sally Pearson wins gold by 0.02s. Phew! Go Sally :)

Man, that soccer game yesterday sure was a heartbreaking match :( Canada always brings their A game against the US in these major tournaments, but they've not won yet.

riiiiiiiiggggggeeeeeeeeeeedddd

Ironic that the winning US goal against "my country" was scored by the person who is, by far, my favourite player in modern women's soccer.

My family is convinced Liu Xiang has been ordered to take the fall if he can't win the gold medal, which, in China, isn't that far-fetched. I don't really believe it, but he'll keep his sponsorships for another year this way.

Speaking of China, here's a Graun article  (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/07/china-detects-bias-olympic-athletes)on China's claims of conspiracy. This does not mention Chen Yibing's silver medal (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h3Y1nJ97EpuFRpPY1FEXGX6EmKpA?docId=CNG.c1c224cabbac236cb1ae282bf8ac607a.21) in the Men's Rings final; the Chinese media is in full force, even dialing up Bulgarian gymnasts to support their claim.

I actually applied to Queen's as a distant third choice, but never considered it after both Ottawa and Karleton accepted me. Two years down, I'm confident I made the right choice because, despite Kingston being a beautiful and exceptional city, I know I wouldn't have had the opportunities in my field of study (polisci) I've had if I had been in some small town like Kingston rather than the NCR. And uOttawa is a good university regardless.

If I heard it right (I wasn't paying attention unfortunately), Gibbs and Rosenthal were eliminated last night, losing to an Austrian team I think.

Bummer for American mens team, but on the bright side you have the gold and silver in the womens game. Pretty good in one of the few sports in which the women's version is more popular.

Some people are saying some pretty disgusting things about Anna Meares on twitter.

What is with your obsession with her?

I used to have a crush on Kara Lang, but her knee went wonky and now she's in the broadcast booth. If she was still playing, we probably would've beat the US. (Clearly, we need to diversify our goal scorers- too much reliance on Christine Sinclair)

I'm not "obsessed" with her, but she's really good looking and she's one of the top players on the US squad afaik.

Nice bit of trade unionism going on at the men's pole vault, looks like the qualification may stop at 5.50, with 16 going through to the final, instead of twelve. Being led by reigning champ, Australia's Steve Hooker, who would qualify anyway in 8th position.

All very positive, all in agreement. Victory to the workers!

Although the Spaniard looks like he may break ranks...

And they're jumping again :(

Bureaucrats win. Due to two of the athletes being scabs.

Union wins, 14 in to the final. Tonnes of camaraderie (spelling?) Between the athletes, and a dash of logic from the officials.

A victory for the workers seems most appropriate given the part of London in question.

It really was great to watch. Americans hugging Russians, Koreans massaging Germans, Frenchmen moping, and a curly ranga solidarity leader in bright yellow.

()

Watching it all on the big screen in Birmingham. Startled the crowd with MOAN HOY! myesterday

Australia take Gold, kiwis silver, Danes bronze in the sailing. Kiwis carrying the flag of NZ and the silver fern unity flag, nice. I'm really looking forward to them changing their flag, might convince us to do the same at last.

2 medals to start the day. However, Van Koeverden was supposed to win gold :( We still have just one gold so far.

Rhe bmx is happenning, we've got reasonable hopes of three medals, hopefully including at least one gold, fingers crossed.

Oh my god, first Cian O'Connor missed out on a gold medal jump by .02, then he lost the bronze-silver medals jump at the last fence.

What no discussion of beach volleyball?  lulz@daOlympics

Great semi between the kiwis and the Dutch in the women's hockey, Dutch went through after a shootout, but kiwis did quite well to hold the Netherlands to a tie.

Yeah, I don't really watch the Olympics beyond swimming, Beach volleyball (Misty Mae and Carrie Walsh basically) as well as some of the track events. Oh and Basketball of course lol. Looking forward to some kangaroo ass kicking later on today. :P

I fully expect we'll be wiped off the floor in the men's game, but I think the Opals might just give you a run for your money, especially if Jackson and Cambage play as well as they are able - they're both at least in the top 5 players in the world, and we have a reasonable support crew around them. That said, Jackson hasn't been at her best so far at the games, so she'll need to lift.

I'm so annoyed the beach volleyball final's on right in the middle of athletic finals. I've seen hardly any knockout stages thanks to the scheduling. I'm able to watch Brazil China right now, but it's not great.

Which silver fern flag was it?

()

()

()

Did you see how it ended? That turnaround in the second set was cool.

closest to the first, but more like this:

(), but saying Aotearoa instead of New Zealand.

they could have not stopped at 5.50 because Lavillenie hadn't entered the race yet (he started jumping at 5.60).

I wonder what kind of unofficial flags would be used for Canada had we not done away with the red ensign in 1965.

Almost 50 years later and our Commonwealth brothers are still holding on to their silly colonial flags. Quite surprising considering Australia is considerably more anti-monarchy than we are (especially outside of Quebec). ... if only Ontario could get rid of its red ensign.

Lot of that is down to Anzac stuff.

You can't hold the ball for 11 seconds.  It's a rule*.  She broke it.

Good game by the ladies though, very little to no diving.  If only male soccer players were as tough as the women.

---

*link (http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/generic/81/42/36/lawsofthegame_2010_11_e.pdf)    Pg.33

SHOCK GOLD TO AUSTRALIA!

Go boys! We thought we might just get a medal, maybe maybe...but it's gold by half a length in the men's K4! What a way to start the proceedings :)

The commentators were highly biased on spent the last 200m just yelling 'GO BOYS!' and have been speechless since, but I doubt anyone would blame them, we won! The best golds are the shocks :)

Canada vs. France, US vs. Japan game day today. But I'll miss both because I'm working. Nonetheless, allez les Bleues and GO USA.

It's a rule that's seldomly called though. So, it seems suspicious that it would be used then.

Oh well, time to re-group. Canada vs France right now for bronze. Go Canada Go. (and go Japan!)

0-0 at half time. France has a slight edge though in play so far.

goal!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Only real chance of the game, and what a time to get it! Canada wins 1-0

Good for Canada :)

In a real sport, Australia are playing excellently against Germany, but the scores are tied up at 1-1 near half time. In the BNX, looks like we'll get at least two, perhaps 3 guys in to the semis.

And Ireland have a gold.  Congrats to Katie Taylor, pretty incredible run of victories for her stretching back what 6 years now?

WOOHOO! GOLD! And this time I don't think our gold medallist is on drugs. Heavily favoured all the way.

Tragedy in the hockey.

Two riders through in the BMX.

But most importantly, the Opals lead the yanks at quarter time in the women's basketball :)

Up by 4 at half time... US haven't lost a game since Barcelona, so certainly not counting chickens, but we   re putting up a good fight so far...

After the hockey, and the water polo, and the men's basketball... we could really do with a team win in the elimination stages.

Also two Aussies with genuine medal prospects (3+4 in qualifiers) in the diving, and a case of wait-and-see in the field, I think we have three finalists, not sure.

US up by 6 heading in to the final term, only positive spin for Australia is that both Cambage and Jackson had plenty of bench time and might be fresher than their opponents...

US win by 13, completely running over the top of the Aussies who had almost twice as many turnovers.

It's weird supporting Australia. We have done incredibly well in the team sports to be competing in all but two of them, and we've done very well to be getting through to the knockout stages in almost all of them. Great spread, and great for the future, but none will go on to fight for Gold. Still, we can look forward to a clutch of Bronze medals with luck.

It's be great to see one of them getting up for gold, and we all thought we were in with a real shot. Being in the bronze medal match proves that we were in with a shot, but we just can't seem to get it together enough in any single sport to go for the number one spot. Still, with so many finals placings, I suppose we should be proud - I think any other country would be, and I'm certain any country of 23 million would be.

Well, now Finland and Portugal have medals, and we are still waiting ... :P

So are we, but it's not going to come, and at least you have the winter Olympics to win lots of medals.

True. But I thought Israel might have at least a few good swimmers. But probably not.

Besides, our summer athletes (the ones who are active and not retired) are so unknown to me that I don't even have a clue at which sport we might still get some medal ...

A silver in diving and a bronze in water polo within two minutes of each other, whooo!

Good enough for 1 finals and a few semis, not good enough for a medal.

Fun soccer final so far.  Tough no call for the Japanese on a hand ball. Could/should be level.
The Japanese are tough on the counter. 

5 medals in two days! (silver and bronze in women wrestling, bronze in football, silver and bronze in kayak).

Jamaica 1, Jamaica 2, Jamaica 3, Jamaicamerica cry. US sprint dominance well and truly dead.

Jersey girl doing us proud in the soccer final!

American dominance hasnt been there for a while.  The Jamaicans are faster and just incredible, nothing to cry about.  We are just ushering in an era of dominance in the triple jump :)

At first this is all I read........

(yes, I'm trolling this thread :P )

I still think the decathlon or triathlon is a better judge of an overall athlete. Also real tough to discount Bolt. I just wish Bolt didnt coast at the end of some of his races. Curious to see what his time would have been in that 200m.

Nice job by the ladies in Water polo and soccer. Well done

Great game ladies!

I sadly only caught like the last 2 minutes of it, but great job to the US women.

80 medalling countries :)

:(

Oh well. I'll bask in our bronze. Can't wait for the 2015 World Cup. There will be games in Ottawa :)

Flint, taekwondo, the whole connection there. Haha.

USA pulls ahead of Red China on gold medals and total medals. Wonderful.

:)!

And Austria is now left with Luxembourg (population = 500.000) and Malta (population = 400.000) as the only countries in the EU without a medal ... :P

Well, I think we better stick to the Winter Olympics ...

The lead's been switching back and forth for days.

For overall medals it has actually almost come to the point where China is mathematically eliminated from catching up to the US.  In the team events medals China is already eliminated, they only have one boxer left and, no qualifier in several of the wrestling and tae kwon do and track events. China would really have to clean up in racewalking (possible) and the marathon (not likely) for it even to be possible.   

I want to restate this.  After watching the ladies gold medal game again tonight, I again noticed that the women just don't dive...or at least MUCH less than the men.  Is there a reason for this?  Are some countries worse than others?  Is there a push to get rid of it?  I know it can be a hard thing to punish as it's a judgement thing, but sometimes it's so freaking obvious....guy goes down like he just had his leg cut off, rolls on the ground for 30 seconds hoping to get a call.....no call comes, the ball goes back to his team and next thing you know he hops up and is sprinting down the field calling for a pass as if nothing ever happened.  It's bad sportsmanship, it's unethical and it hurts the sport.

I think part of it is that the new world in soccer terms has an immense hatred for diving. You're much less likely to see the US, Japanesr, Australian, Canadian, Korean men's teams dive than their opponents, especially the Italians, but also the Brazilians, French, Poles...

Hmmm...interesting.  It just seems like a huge lack of respect to the other team, the refs, the sport and the fans.

I've gained a lot of respect for the sport over the last decade or so, it's certainly a better game than the American stereotypical preception of it is. (I've reworded that sentence 3 times and its still not looking right, but I think you can understand what I'm saying)  But the diving pisses me off. 

Of course there is bad sportsmanship in every sport and every league.

The problem with diving is that it's become so all pervasive in the sport that often times if you're rightfully fouled (and there are many players and teams that have perfected the art of small, niggling fouls that are hard to catch but break up the play of the opposition) but you don't go to ground, the referee is not going to take notice and call the foul.

As to why it happens less in the women's sport, the unfortunate answer is probably that women's football is much less developed. Male players play up to 50 or 60 games per year, when you factor in the games for their clubs and the games for their international sides. Women players play significantly fewer games, with a lot less pressure, money, expectations, etc. riding on them. There are club games in Europe that can literally decide whether or not your team is going to earn ten or twenty million euros. In that sort of situation you're going to try and get whatever advantage you possibly can. There's nothing anywhere near comparable in the women's football leagues (the United States doesn't even have a women's football league, last time I checked; I'm pretty sure the majority of the American team basically only plays competitively in internationals).

OK, guys, today is the only time I'll be a Canadian rah-rah-rah nationalist. Our 4x100 men's relay team is competing in the qualifying round today, and our team includes Segun Makinde, who goes to my university and who graduated from the same high school as I did. I know it's tough when they're in the same heat as Jamaica, but GO CANADA!

Alternative, GO GEE-GEES/GO COUGARS!

It's weird that you have more pride for your university than your country. Especially that university ;) ... but then again I'm surprised you would cheer for Canada at all considering how much you hate this country.

I can't wait until this crap finally ends. I'm so tired of hearing about it.

So you'll get to focus on Rotten Tomatoes instead.

One gold down for Australia, with reasonable hopes of two more today...but very much a case of wait and see.

I don't hate Canada, though I strongly dislike certain aspects of it (because no country is pefect, and there is no such thing as the 'greatest country'). Though I certainly am no stupid nationalist, and I don't see the point of obsessively cheering for your country. I'd like Canada to win more medals, because I feel a sense of attachment to Canada, but I'm following the Olympics more to see talents rather than for any sense of nationalistic pride.

And, no, I don't feel more pride for my university than for Canada (or any other country). That's just stupid.

Canadian synxh swimming outfits are loco.

Bewks missed the start, caught up to 5th, but clearly devastated. Gold to Colombia, silver for the kiwis, bronze to the Netherlands. Now for the men's....c'mon Sam!

One of the little extras of having no cutaways from the events is that in contests like the men's pole vault, which would normally get a highly edited cut, you can see everything. All the vaulters are congratulating eachother and smiling, probably the friendliest bunch of top-level competitors around, with three exceptions: the Spaniard, the Czech, and the red-hot favourite Frenchman, appropriately named 'Lavillenie' (sp?).

By 'medalist', do you mean ever or just in London?

USA looking more or less uncatchable for the golds.

World record in the 4x100, as the Jamaican women purposefully photobomb the yanks taking their picture with the timeboard.

Unfortunate scenes at the hammer, with the German throwing what would've been a silver medal, but confusion meaning it doesn't count.

Turkey 1-2 in the women's 1500m, after a crazily slow start. Basically, expect them to be the face of Istanbul's bid. Double handedly, they've giving Turkey a real shot at winning the bid.

Excellent job by US Mens 4x400 for silver, nearly held on against the Bahamas after so many injuries and a depleted squad.  Nice depth.

I note that the British men's 100 metres relay team did what they always do. lol.

OK, Canada qualified nicely in the relay, but apparently my guy didn't run? What's up with this travesty?

Bahamas won a relay medal as expected. "Bahrain" got their first medal of this edition too.
Given the qualification results in Rhytmic, I don't think Israel is going to win a medal there.

Another bronze medal.

As a point of interest, I wonder what the Commonwealth Realms medal count would be. With Britain's Golds, our Silvers, your bronzes, and a nice bag from Jamaica and New Zealand...

Canada, the third greatest country in the world.

I can feel the Conservative ads already.

Coincidentally, in her jubilee year, the Queen's realms would be atop the medal tally, at least at the minute:

Commonwealth Realms
42/41/46 (129)

USA
41/26/27 (94)

China
37/25/19 (81)

---------------------


;)

Too bad, Canada finished next-to-last in Rythmics, at their first Olympic participation. The federation hoped a good result and TV exposure to help to make the sport more known, to improve junior recruiting.

Ha :) of course in a united commonwealth team you'd end up with substantially less medals because of limitations on how many entrants per nation etc.  The qualifiers would be damned fun and competitive.

Well, it's better than all the non medallic 4th place finishes we got in 2010 and 2008. I dont even think we got any 4th place finishes this time.

Thanks to the DQs in badminton women's doubles, Canada managed to get a fourth place in that event.  (Without the DQs, they wouldn't have advanced to the quarter finals.)

Canada also has a true 4ths in the women's omnium cycling, the 4 x 200 m women's freestyle swimming, and both the duet and team synchronized swimming.

So that's five fourths, and Canada has the opportunity to win some more of the fourths it deserves. :P

Ah yes. I heard about the synchro team finishing 4th. Thanks for checking. As long as we have more bronze medals than 4th places, it's okay.

Has anyone seen those BMX Racing events? It made me wonder if what I am watching was either the X Games or Olympics.

Isn't that whole thing full of terrible crashes?

Yeah. It was like watching NASCAR, but surprisingly less boring and short.

Short was my problem with it.  Basically, if you're winning after the second corner, you win....as far as i could tell.  Make them do a couple hundred laps and the sport would be more interesting.....or much more boring.  Not sure.  Racing needs passing or it's just a freaking parade.  Like F1.

@hugh
I don't think the Turks will be able to make too much hay from last night's 1-2; Alptekin's prior doping ban makes her an unlikely face for Istanbul 2020.

They haven't gotten the 2020 games yet.

Can someone explain to me why this race walking thing isn't as dumb as it looks.

A minute of it on the outside screen of a bar in Sachsenhausen while I was waiting for my Merguez sandwich at the takeaway next door.It is exactly as dumb as it looks, and if they followed their rules to a T and surveyed everything with slow-motion cameras, every single competitor would be disqualified (until they developed a new "walking" style that would be much slower). I am not making this up.

They did count it in the end (though it ended up as bronze). The computer for unexplained reasons thought it was out of range even though it clearly, self-evidently wasn't. Betty Heidler is Frankfurt's face at the olympics, of course.

EDIT: Scratch that, it was way more complicated and I listened to the radio in the morning and they're morons.

Quite, quite. I'm sometimes tempted to think that it's the most ridiculous event at the whole thing, and that's remembering the existence of synchronised drowning and horsey dancing.

And the childrens' catwalk ("beam", I think it's officialese name is.)

I'd forgotten about that, actually. And yet, 'walking' (or Bizarre Waddle Run Thing) still 'wins', I think...

It's called "denial".

Race walking is awesome!

(Australia's most successful athletic discipline over the last decade or so ;))

Silver to Tallent, his wife racewalks this arvo :)

Oh guess what folks. Another bronze. Surprise surprise. Canada matches our 2008 medal tally. Four more to tie our best ever tally at a non-boycotted games. However, we just have one gold.

I don't know what's left, but I feel that Canada's gold medal will be its only gold medal this year.

Probably. We used up all our gold medals at the Winter olympics.

Apparently the Russians have nicknamed Jared Tallent 'The little podium devil' because he always sits on the shoulder of Russian gold medallists. Cute :)

Blame UK, they probably took a lot of Canada's chances at gold.

No.

Gold medalist countries where Canada won silvers:
Germany (1)
USA (1)
China (1)
Norway (1)
Japan (1)

Additionally for our bronze's:
Golds:
China (2)
Korea (1)
Kazakhstan (1)
USA (2)
Great Britain (2)
Russia (1)
Germany (1)
Japan (1)
Tunisia (1)

Silvers
USA (3)
Mexico (1)
Germany (2)
Russia (1)
Australia (1)
Spain (2)
Azerbaijan (1)
Japan (1)

So, GB won 2 gold medals where we won bronze. So if it weren't for them, we'd have 2 more silvers at least. Looks like the US is our biggest problem....

They certainly took a few away from us. Off the top of my head, at least one in sailing, the long jump, a couple in the rowing...

Medals by province:
Ontario - 1 gold, 3.5 silver, 4.3 bronze
BC - 1.5 silver, 2.3 bronze
Quebec -  3 bronze
Sask. - 1 bronze
Alberta - 1.3 bronze

(for team sports, I gave the medal to the province with the most team members. Decimal points are for the ties)

Soccer team
BC: 4
Man: 3
Ont: 7
Sask: 2
Que: 2
NL: 1 (Sessleman's father is a Newfy, but she was born and raised in the US)
Alta; 1

What about China?

There was a bronze medal match in Judo between a Dagestani starting for Russia and a "Russia German" who's basically a Russian starting for Germany.
And Chechnya won a silver medal in Weightlifting.

What a 5000m! Farah does the double.

I think Rhythmic Gymnasts are rejected ballerinas.

Another bronze! :) Even though the announcers were Canadian, they ignored us during the 4x100 race because Usain Bolt set a record. So, maybe they're not that biased.

And finally, no, the umpires decided to stole it to give it to some random useless island.

No!!!

Unreal relay.  US match the previous world record but Jamaica just too good.

These games have been so horrible I can't even believe.

Paying your debts from Vancouver, maybe?

Apparently, but it's not like Canada has ever been that competent at the summer games, either way.

??? It's tied for our third best medal tally ever. (2nd best if you dont count the boycotted games). We only won one gold, but we still brought in the medals. And, the women's soccer team is an inspiration to us all. </cliche>

It wasn't as bad as Athens

With Ugandan gold in the marathon, we hit 85 nations...any chance of the 86th? Highly unlikely, but not impossible, I hope.

The mountainbikers are our last chance for a medal it seems, which would make Austria the 86th.

But of course this is only dreaming ...

Even Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait won medals at these games. Countries who didn't win anything should really feel crappy if even the Saudis and Kuweitis can win something and they can't.

The Audtrian is in 7th on the course, so... Maybe doable.

We'll gladly take those Arabs on in the Winter Olympics ... :P


Yeah, but 17 seconds behind the leading pack.

The men's Volleyball final is great.

Brazil led with 2:0 sets and had a few gold medal points, but the Russians won the 3rd set now after a long fight.

Now over a minute back and 8th.

Forget it. These are officially the worst Summer games for us in 50 years.

Olympics 2012: Austria laments worst Games in 50 years

Days before the London Olympics draw to a close, Austria was already lamenting its biggest washout in half a century on Friday, with no medals to show for and poor performances by some of its biggest hopes.

"Biggest Olympic disaster now official," a headline in the tabloid Oesterreich read, after the country's last big hope — canoe-kayak pair Yvonne Schuring and Viktoria Schwarz — finished fifth in Thursday's final.

"Olympics: it's over," the daily Die Presse also titled, while the Salzburger Nachrichten asked "What went wrong in London?" and spoke of a "lack of winning mentality" in the Austrian team.

A handful of athletes had yet to compete in the marathon, the modern pentathlon, mountainbike and rhythmic gymnastics, but the common conception was that the biggest medal chances had already come and gone.

The only other time Austria went home empty-handed at the Olympics was in 1964 at the Tokyo Games.

In an interview with the daily Kurier Friday, Sports Minister Norbert Darabos expressed his disappointment and called for a "total reform of sport funding."

After a week of competition, Darabos already deplored what he saw as "Olympic tourism" last week.

"Only travelling to the Olympics and enjoying the great atmosphere, that's not enough... the aim is to bring home medals," he said angrily.

This Summer Olympics fiasco is only made worse by Austria's regular brilliance at Winter Games, where it dominates alpine skiing.

Despite what was considered a poor year for the men's ski team, the small country brought brought home 16 medals from Vancouver in 2010, including four gold.

"But winter's coming soon... by then the flop from London will be water under the bridge," the Salzburger Nachrichten saw the silver lining.

http://www.dnaindia.com/sport/report_olympics-2012-austria-laments-worst-games-in-50-years_1726538

LOL:

()

Can't wait for the Closing Ceremony. I wonder what Rio has in store for their handover ceremony.

Wow, Russia won the final 2 sets and the Gold medal ... :o

Plus: The US Basketball players are struggling against the Spanish right now.

Only up 59-58 after the 2nd quarter.

Spain actually won the 2nd quarter by 31-24.

The refs have really been taking the fun and flow out of this with all of the foul calls. Marc Gasol with 4 fouls already hurts Spain's chances for the upset but still definitely possible if US doesnt D up.

Spain takes the lead ...

67-64

This basketball final is amazingly good right now.

Game is tied at 80-80.

There are 195 or so countries at the moment.

So, we are on the side of the majority ... ;)

France defeats Sweden in the Handball final by 22-21 !

The US finally beat Spain in the basketball final by 107-100.

Croatia wins Waterball Gold.

So, there's only 1 contest left I guess (Modern Pentathlon).

Bizarre to end the tournament with that joke.

Did Montenegro win a medal anywhere, they came fourth in Waterball (and why do Anglophones call it "Water Polo" anyhow?)

The sporting equivalent of a kazoo or something.


They won silver in the women's Handball. No idea about the second question.

Oughtn't that to be "Hand Polo"?

What do you expect? Consistency?

Last podium sees a Brit and a Brazilian on ths podium, ehich is nice. Gold to Lietuva though.

Well, we cracked the top 10 both on the G-S-B and total medal counts. Behind what we're accustomed to, but certainly no disaster.

An Austrian came sixth in it. Now that would have been hilarious if they'd finally won their first medal in the last event.

Full Medal Jacked

1     United States (USA)    46    29    29    104
2     China (CHN)    38    27    22    87
3     Great Britain (GBR)*    29    17    19    65
4     Russia (RUS)    24    25    33    82
5     South Korea (KOR)    13    8    7    28
6     Germany (GER)    11    19    14    44
7     France (FRA)    11    11    12    34
8     Italy (ITA)    8    9    11    28
9     Hungary (HUN)    8    4    5    17
10     Australia (AUS)    7    16    12    35
11     Japan (JPN)    7    14    17    38
12     Kazakhstan (KAZ)    7    1    5    13
13     Netherlands (NED)    6    6    8    20
14     Ukraine (UKR)    6    5    9    20
15     Cuba (CUB)    5    3    6    14
16     New Zealand (NZL)    5    3    5    13
17     Iran (IRI)    4    5    3    12
18     Jamaica (JAM)    4    4    4    12
19     Czech Republic (CZE)    4    3    3    10
20     North Korea (PRK)    4    0    2    6
21     Spain (ESP)    3    10    4    17
22     Brazil (BRA)    3    5    9    17
23     Belarus (BLR)    3    5    5    13
24     South Africa (RSA)    3    2    1    6
25     Ethiopia (ETH)    3    1    3    7
26     Croatia (CRO)    3    1    2    6
27     Romania (ROU)    2    5    2    9
28     Kenya (KEN)    2    4    5    11
29     Denmark (DEN)    2    4    3    9
30     Azerbaijan (AZE)    2    2    6    10
 Poland (POL)    2    2    6    10
32     Turkey (TUR)    2    2    1    5
33     Switzerland (SUI)    2    2    0    4
34     Lithuania (LTU)    2    1    2    5
35     Norway (NOR)    2    1    1    4
36     Canada (CAN)    1    5    12    18
37     Sweden (SWE)    1    4    3    8
38     Colombia (COL)    1    3    4    8
39     Georgia (GEO)    1    3    3    7
 Mexico (MEX)    1    3    3    7
41     Ireland (IRL)    1    1    3    5
42     Argentina (ARG)    1    1    2    4
 Serbia (SRB)    1    1    2    4
 Slovenia (SLO)    1    1    2    4
45     Tunisia (TUN)    1    1    1    3
46     Dominican Republic (DOM)    1    1    0    2
47     Trinidad and Tobago (TRI)    1    0    3    4
 Uzbekistan (UZB)    1    0    3    4
49     Latvia (LAT)    1    0    1    2
50     Algeria (ALG)    1    0    0    1
 Bahamas (BAH)    1    0    0    1
 Grenada (GRN)    1    0    0    1
 Uganda (UGA)    1    0    0    1
 Venezuela (VEN)    1    0    0    1
55     India (IND)    0    2    4    6
56     Mongolia (MGL)    0    2    3    5
57     Thailand (THA)    0    2    1    3
58     Egypt (EGY)    0    2    0    2
59     Slovakia (SVK)    0    1    3    4
60     Armenia (ARM)    0    1    2    3
 Belgium (BEL)    0    1    2    3
 Finland (FIN)    0    1    2    3
63     Bulgaria (BUL)    0    1    1    2
 Estonia (EST)    0    1    1    2
 Indonesia (INA)    0    1    1    2
 Malaysia (MAS)    0    1    1    2
 Puerto Rico (PUR)    0    1    1    2
 Chinese Taipei (TPE)    0    1    1    2
69     Botswana (BOT)    0    1    0    1
 Cyprus (CYP)    0    1    0    1
 Gabon (GAB)    0    1    0    1
 Guatemala (GUA)    0    1    0    1
 Montenegro (MNE)    0    1    0    1
 Portugal (POR)    0    1    0    1
75     Greece (GRE)    0    0    2    2
 Moldova (MDA)    0    0    2    2
 Qatar (QAT)    0    0    2    2
 Singapore (SIN)    0    0    2    2
79     Afghanistan (AFG)    0    0    1    1
 Bahrain (BRN)    0    0    1    1
 Hong Kong (HKG)    0    0    1    1
 Saudi Arabia (KSA)    0    0    1    1
 Kuwait (KUW)    0    0    1    1
 Morocco (MAR)    0    0    1    1
 Tajikistan (TJK)    0    0    1    1

What?
It was the canadian duet, whose theme was the circus.
It's clearly an imitation of a jack-in-the-box,

Well, we did it. We beat Red China. Congrats America, you're still #1.

Top 10 by golds is already shown in Lewis's list; by total medals:

USA
China
Russia
Great Britain
Germany
Japan
Australia
France
South Korea
Italy

By medal points:
225 USA
197 China
155 Russia
140 Great Britain
85 Germany
67 France
66 Japan
65 Australia
62 South Korea
53 Italy

So, conclusive win to the US.

It's a shame they got rid of the horses. God forbid we upset the animal rights people.

Is that why they don't have polo? How is it more damaging than jumping over barriers?