2021 Summer Olympics (Tokyo)

Wilt said:
Considering the cost of hosting an Olympics, I think they should take the Olympics back to Tokyo as soon as it’s deemed possible.

It‘s only fair on the people of Japan that they should be allowed to attend their own Olympics without fear of the pandemic.

What say ye?
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Eventually they should just make Athens the permanent home of the games.
 
Wilt said:
I can understand the worries of cost, but there’s the thing ….they’ve already built and paid for it.
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I believe IOC demands that new stadiums be built for Olympics or demand for significant upgrades on previous stadiums and that's one of the reasons why a lot of cities face backlash from its residents
 
Bertie Wooster said:
I'm interested in the criticism of the US media for listing the table in order of collective medals won, rather than by Golds won - especially following on from the huge criticism Piers Morgan (rightly) received when he talked about 'Golds being the be all and end all' and everyone, rightly in my view, disagreeing with him.

Personally, I've always thought the medals table, not just Gold medals table, should be listed by collective medals won first - with amount of Golds used as first separator if nations equal. Or, if Golds are to take on more significance, then at most say they're worth 2 points to Silver and Bronze 1 - that way, teams with slightly less medal tally but more Golds might be ahead. But in a situation where a team have way more medals than another, but say 1 or 2 less Golds, then the team with more medals would be ahead.

For instance, this time around, I don't agree that ROC, with 18 more medals than Australia, and 17 more Silver medals, are behind Australia just because they have just one extra Gold medal. If 1 Gold medal is deemed to equate more than 17 Silver medals, then that starts adding weight to Piers Morgan's earlier comments (which I strongly disagree with). It's like football tables only going off games won rather than points earned, so a team with just 1 extra win being above a team who've picked up 17 extra draws so have actually achieved plenty more points throughout the season / competition.
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Turned out to be a moot point! The US topped the total medals and the gold count.
 
Carolina Red said:
Turned out to be a moot point! The US topped the total medals and the gold count.
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:lol:

Yeah, very true.

I was pleased they sneaked ahead of China with more Golds - not just because they deserved it by winning far more medals overall; but, also, because of the draconian way China go about training their athletes from an early age in their ruthless pursuit of Golds for the Government's benefit rather than for sporting reasons.

So I was pleased to see a US victory. :)
 
Been good fun. Enjoyed these Olympics and looking forward to 2024 when everything is in a slightly more normal time zone for me.
 
Hearing rumblings about Marcell Jacobs and doping. Is it just sour grapes or could there be some validity to this? Obviously sprinting has quite a long history with PEDs, so it is definitely a possibility.
 
He’s going to come under some suspicion when he’s a 26 year old who has never broken 10 seconds before this season and is now Olympic champion with a 9.80 run and there is a link to a nutritionist possibly being investigated for providing steroids. That said, particularly with new shoe tech and the fast track in Tokyo, there are many legitimate reasons why he might have made that improvement. There’s no way for us armchair fans to know and no evidence to indicate that his performances aren’t clean.
 
Wibble said:
We'll owe Japan a debt of gratitude. Bloody brilliant games in very difficult circumstances.
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Definitely. The whole country sacrificed a lot to make this happen for the world. Top of my to go list when travel resumes.

In a separate note, makes me so angry to see idiotic athletes refusing vaccines or even face coverings at the Olympics.
 
Mike Smalling said:
Hearing rumblings about Marcell Jacobs and doping. Is it just sour grapes or could there be some validity to this? Obviously sprinting has quite a long history with PEDs, so it is definitely a possibility.
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I did find it somewhat ironic that the Times led on that story underneath an almost-full-page-spread celebrating the triumph of a British cyclist.

There's obviously the traditional red flags there. And it's arguably been open season given the lack of testing last year during the lockdowns.

In his defence however he only moved across from the long jump fairly recently. So he had been building up a lot of the raw materials for the 100m, without actually training specifically for it. And once he moved across, there was always likely to be a jump in his best time. His success wasn't that much of a surprise having been in good form all year on the back of a strong winter indoor season. When a big guy likes that dominates the 60m in the winter, the rest of the competition should be worried.

@Doracle is right on the shoe tech - look at the close-up here on Jacobs to see the impact these can have from stride to stride. That's the problem with opening the floodgates to this kind of enhancing technology - some will respond much better than others.

 
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Greater Manchester finished ahead of Canada, Brazil and New Zealand.
 
Dante said:
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Greater Manchester finished ahead of Canada, Brazil and New Zealand.
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Would‘ve come 4th in per capita table too. They’ve taken a couple of liberties though. Jason Kenny is from the area but Laura is not and they actually live in Cheshire now plus some medalists were in teams.

If you look at 2016 Greater Manchester would’ve finished 4th in the medal table and 2nd in the per capita table! Either way, you can’t knock the sporting pedigree of our small part of the world.
 


"Sport is an amazing outlet.. it's a struggle.. but it's so joyous. The feeling when you win is unlike any other, but the feeling when you lose, when you don't get selected even when you qualify, when your injured.. is also unlike any other"

She posted this yesterday. Heartbreaking :(
 
Samid said:


"Sport is an amazing outlet.. it's a struggle.. but it's so joyous. The feeling when you win is unlike any other, but the feeling when you lose, when you don't get selected even when you qualify, when your injured.. is also unlike any other"

She posted this yesterday. Heartbreaking :(
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Very sad.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Would‘ve come 4th in per capita table too. They’ve taken a couple of liberties though. Jason Kenny is from the area but Laura is not and they actually live in Cheshire now plus some medalists were in teams.

If you look at 2016 Greater Manchester would’ve finished 4th in the medal table and 2nd in the per capita table! Either way, you can’t knock the sporting pedigree of our small part of the world.
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I get why people collate this stuff and are proud of their region, but for me the thing is that it’s ‘Team GB’. The whole point is it’s a collective effort of people from all over the country and demonstrating what you can achieve as a unit. I’ve seen Scottish nationalists posting about where they would be if they competed independently, but of course you can’t do that just based on Scottish athletes because you need to factor in the racing partners, coaching teams, training facilities and funding etc. All we know is that if we split into smaller units we’d all do worse!

(I get you just posted this as something lighthearted so the above is not to you, just a general observation!)
 
Agent Red said:
I get why people collate this stuff and are proud of their region, but for me the thing is that it’s ‘Team GB’. The whole point is it’s a collective effort of people from all over the country and demonstrating what you can achieve as a unit. I’ve seen Scottish nationalists posting about where they would be if they competed independently, but of course you can’t do that just based on Scottish athletes because you need to factor in the racing partners, coaching teams, training facilities and funding etc. All we know is that if we split into smaller units we’d all do worse!

(I get you just posted this as something lighthearted so the above is not to you, just a general observation!)
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Yes, it’s just a bit of fun.

I know what you mean though, it is team GB. Chris Hoy says he doesn’t believe he would‘ve achieved what he did if Scotland was independent because it’s behind the scenes too and obviously the UK cycling team with its top facilities and coaches were in Manchester. I think all the top performing GB Olympic teams are based in England.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Yes, it’s just a bit of fun.

I know what you mean though, it is team GB. Chris Hoy says he doesn’t believe he would‘ve achieved what he did if Scotland was independent because it’s behind the scenes too and obviously the UK cycling team with its top facilities and coaches were in Manchester. I think all the top performing GB Olympic teams are based in England.
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Yeah exactly. Also one of the things I like about the games is that the usual kind of internal sniping shuts down for a bit and it all feels very positive, more so than other sporting events I follow.

The BBC documentary series ‘Gold Rush’ on how Britain changed its approach post Atlanta and brought in the lottery funding is really good by the way. I’ve only seen the first two episodes but really enjoying, including all the inside info on how we won the bid for London etc. Highlight so far is TfL manually turning every traffic light green when the officials were visiting London to convince them they met the criteria that athletes only be 40 minutes from their competition venue.
 
Samid said:


"Sport is an amazing outlet.. it's a struggle.. but it's so joyous. The feeling when you win is unlike any other, but the feeling when you lose, when you don't get selected even when you qualify, when your injured.. is also unlike any other"

She posted this yesterday. Heartbreaking :(
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Really sad. Incredibly young age to go.
 
Agent Red said:
Yeah exactly. Also one of the things I like about the games is that the usual kind of internal sniping shuts down for a bit and it all feels very positive, more so than other sporting events I follow.

The BBC documentary series ‘Gold Rush’ on how Britain changed its approach post Atlanta and brought in the lottery funding is really good by the way. I’ve only seen the first two episodes but really enjoying, including all the inside info on how we won the bid for London etc. Highlight so far is TfL manually turning every traffic light green when the officials were visiting London to convince them they met the criteria that athletes only be 40 minutes from their competition venue.
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I’ve seen it. It is good. All that surveillance capability in London has to come in useful at some point! I really like that Sue Campbell who was head of UK Sport. I like the cut of her jib and it’s easy to see why she was so successful.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
I’ve seen it. It is good. All that surveillance capability in London has to come in useful at some point! I really like that Sue Campbell who was head of UK Sport. I like the cut of her jib and it’s easy to see why she was so successful.
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Yeah agree - I haven't come across her before but she seems impressive.

I'm really interested in how UK Sport make their investment decisions and what to cut/increase based on performance and the talent pipeline, plus looking at what other countries are doing and if we have a realistic chance of competing. I work in an organisation that isn't too far removed so going to see if I can track someone down to come and talk to my team at work about it.
 
Samid said:


"Sport is an amazing outlet.. it's a struggle.. but it's so joyous. The feeling when you win is unlike any other, but the feeling when you lose, when you don't get selected even when you qualify, when your injured.. is also unlike any other"

She posted this yesterday. Heartbreaking :(
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Heartbreaking indeed. Mental health of athletes cannot be underestimated. They put themselves through years of pain in order to compete, and sometimes their worlds crash down around them, but it seems as if no-one cares unless they win something.

This is just devastating news and it should not be happening. RIP Olivia Podmore.
 
Do we think Piers Morgan will have the brass to criticise Olivia Podmore? I mean that’s what Simone and the like were protecting themselves from after all and he went after them.

RIP Olivia.
 
Deery said:
What the feck are these Italians on is there a state sponsored doping scheme going on over there, the way that guy took over the Team GB athlete wasn’t natural….

Probably going to catch a lot of flak for saying this..,
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Oh deery me.
 
Gutted for his teammates who will presumably lose their medals too as a result, though it makes missing out on the gold a less painful memory.

Embarrassing that a British athlete is one of the ones that’s tested positive. With track running/sprinting in particular the doping seems so prevalent it’s quite hard not to always have that in the back of your mind and dampening the overall enjoyment of the sport a bit.
 
Agent Red said:
Gutted for his teammates who will presumably lose their medals too as a result, though it makes missing out on the gold a less painful memory.

Embarrassing that a British athlete is one of the ones that’s tested positive. With track running/sprinting in particular the doping seems so prevalent it’s quite hard not to always have that in the back of your mind and dampening the overall enjoyment of the sport a bit.
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Indeed. Very disappointing but not exactly surprising. Sprinting, along with road cycling, is the dirtiest sport there is.
 
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I've been watching the Tokyo Olympics on discovery plus every day for 2 months and I am almost finished. Roughly 20 hours left to watch. Anyone else still watching?
 
That means a medal upgraded from bronze to silver for the Canadian relay team and for Andre De Grasse

Just what the hell was Ujah even thinking?
 
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