Be Excellent To Each Other

Wish the BBC News site would realise that I might want to know about the other stuff going on in the world as well without having to rummage through the sport headlines to find it. The Guardian website does it right - press a button and all the Olympics coverage disappears.

Beach Volleyball last night was all sorts of awesome.

X Factor man is brilliant.

Commentator - "What a great Smash. Peter would have loved that. Where is Peter?"
X Factor man - "I'M IN A CONGA LINE!" (cue screen panning to Conga line of 250 people along the top row)

And the telly as well. I'm bored shitless of the Olympics now, especially the ridiculously partesan coverage on the main channels which will seemingly spend an afternoon showing reruns and analysis of Team GB coming fourth in the horse-bumming or whatever rather than the more impressive stuff that's probably actually going on live.

That's why I'm loving the 'pick any sport' cable coverage. It was awfully uncomfortable when Sue Barker tried to get Carl Lewis and Ian Thorpe to comment on Team GB's performances. Carl Lewis looked like he really couldn't give a shit.

I feel sorry for that Chinese lass wiht the doping allegations flying around.

You mean the 16 year old one who swam the final 50m of a 400m race faster than the bloke setting the second fastest time in history.

That is as dodgy as hell!

Given therecare checks, its not that nice to go throwing around accusations. Quite unsporting.

Winners are tested. Doping control said she's clean. They can detect blood doping with transfusions of your own blood. Doesnae sound dodgy to me.

Bloke sets second fastest time in history.

16 year old girl is faster than him over the last 50m. Her total time was seven seconds faster than it was a year ago.

We'll see.

you've surely missed thehot the debated transfer last year when the germans bought our horse Totilas for 20 million...

(and then completely couldn't cpntrol him and he's now not there)

That's less than a second a length, and she increased her strokes by a quarter, apparently.

She's a growing lass?

Ignoring the fact that at the end she was faster than the bloke winning the same event in the second fastest time in history?

Webbed feet?

Thorpe made an interesting point last night - a lot of 15 year olds turn up, do amazing times and then disappear. About half of them come back about five years later to something approximating that form.

I have every confidence in the doping administration.

The Chinese trainer makes a good point on that: he'd already won so could 'coast', she still had to win.

Aye, faster over a single length

I love your wife. She’s right about everything.

To accept that, you have to believe that Lochte would "coast" in an Olympic final. To the second fastest time in history. Lochte won by 3.6 seconds. Ye by 2.8.

Didn't Bolt break the world record while not pushing to the line? Was there a furore then?

Yeah, I seem to remember he slowed down just before the line so that he could mug at the camera.

He got drug tested like every other winner & was also found not to be the owner of a pair of breasticles.

And then said "I could go faster. If I wanted."

As I recall, the world responded by saying "Holy shit!", not "WERE R D DRGZ?!"!?!?!"

I believe the Chinese were tested before competing - like everyone else - and she'll be tested again now. If she's cheated (quite plausibly unknowingly) then oh dear, but so far the evidence is in her favour. Yet no "Holy shit!", just "WERE R D DRGZ?!"!?!?!"

I'd like to see the Sack race and Egg & Spoon race included. These are the events that British kids are training for at an early age afterall. We need to play to our strengths.

By the way, who replaced Jessica Ennis with a bodybuilder?

She wasn't just faster than Lochte over that final 50m, she was in the middle of all the men for that final 50m.

The split times are interesting. The opening 50m is the fastest, as you would expect. The closing 50m is the second fastest.

Looking at the mens 400m, the difference is somewhere between 2-3 seconds. (Except for the Japanese guy, who was horrendously slow over the opening 50m and the difference is 0.8 seconds.)

Looking at the womens 400m, the difference is ~1.5 seconds. Hannah Miley has a difference of 1 second. The two Chinese girls swam their final 50m 0.08 and 0.15 seconds slower than their opening 50m.

(Been looking at stuff like the 200m freestyle, again, ~1 second slower in the closing 50m than the opening 50m.)

What can I say? Doping control hasn't found anything. Therefore a miracle happened. Twice.

Maybe they found that was the quickest way ro dovthe oversll distane.
it certainly doesnt make a strong case for cheating.

No Dave, it's definitely either drugs or Jesus.

( )

There should be a Wildcard Event, a free choice of any activity by the host nation that changes every four years.

Pretty sure I know of one question she answered wrongly.

These days kids are discouraged by schools to show any sort of competiveness in school sports days, everyone gets a “taking part” medal

Not sure why this started, some fat kids parents maybe sued a school as he didn’t get a winners medal from coming last in the egg and spoon race

UK Wildcard event should be binge drinking as we excell at that

Well, it'd let the scots into team GB for one event.

Harsh.

If she was doped up and did this then I think everyone should be doped up. Why not? It'll make everyone into super humans, which is what the Olympics is all about. Plus it'll make things more exciting.

Also: Drugs are drugs, not cybernetic arms. How can a drug enhance her performance so much? Would the drugs allow her brain to not feel the pain or tirdness, even if her lungs do?

Yeah, I said they should allow it earlier in the thread.

I mean, the car you drive is better because of things they put in racecars. Why not make us better, too?

Because cars are just some bits of tat and it doesn't matter if you fuck them up trying to make them quicker?

There's a lot of effort put into removing competition in engineering of motorsports these days too. Spending less is better than being better, apparently.

Depends on the drugs. You've got drugs to aid recovery, increase the amount of oxygen you can carry in your blood, increase mass, decrease mass, stop pain. There's quite the list.

... because no-one wants to watch athletes die from heart attacks or exhaustion? Well, some folk might, but they're sick cunts.

The chances of them doing that actually at the Olympics are quite slim, though.

Yeah, but in ten years when the world realises that everyone who competed in London 2012 is dead...

Anyone see the fencing earlier? http://www.buzzfeed.com/ktlincoln/an-ol ... loor-after

She appears to have been royally screwed.

Olympics turns out to be damaging to retailers non shocker.





Meanwhile,



Eh? The opening ceremony isn't going to be a regularly repeated show, is it? You're not going to rush off to visit a place on the basis that it once held a one-off event that you weren't there for anyway, are you?

Maybe not, but the Opening Ceremony is regularly touted as being like a 'holiday brochure' for the host city. How that translates in actual visitor numbers, I am not sure, but it really is thought to have played a part in subsequent tourist visits in the past.

On a purely anecdotal level, the amount of American and Australian (among others) friends on Twitter cooing about how much they love England, Britain, London (etc) and how much they wanted to visit here, during and directly after they had watched the ceremony, was quite lovely.

I have to say, look around London, and the international visitors that are here are quite clearly having an absolute whale of a time. I envy their delight a little bit.

I'm sure there'll be at least one editorial cartoon of the stereotypical fat American tourist in a hawaiian shirt smoking a cigar with his wife Fanny (in batwing glasses) arriving at Heathrow and asking his taxi driver to take them to see 'those dancing doctors and nurses'. Hell, I'm sure Mitt Romney will find a way to use it against US healthcare initatives by highlighting how the British NHS wastes its resources prancing around glow in the dark beds.



Even though said cooing is based on complete ignorance and artificial bollocks which was only re-inforced by the opening ceremonies? You're right, you know, they played carefully to the tourists by giving the impression that you really can get in a black cab and go have tea with the Queen in Buckingham Palace.

Maybe it's come from living overseas but I find myself depressed how much of people's perceptions of a country are genuinely formed based on crap that's purely for tourists.

Craster is right. Tourist London is a carefully cultivated image that turns small sections of an otherwise miserable place into a theme park (consider Murphyville in Judge Dredd)

You can only go and have tea with the Queen of you're James Fucking Bond, dude!