Be Excellent To Each Other

That's not really what I meant. London is a fantastic city, and that encompasses all of it, from the tourist areas to the shadier residential bits. I envy those who can look on it fresh, rather than those like me who've lived here for a decade and are somewhat jaded due to it primarily being somewhere I go to spend 9 hours a day behind a desk.

These Chinese gymnasts seem to be about eight years old.

Racist.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/201 ... 34-00%3A00

Start at 50:00 for the CONTROVESY (as has already been briefly mentioned in this thread)

It appears there's an actual human who starts and stops the clock? Why is the start not when the starting judge presses a button and the stop when the lights go on? Even I could wire that up.

ALSO: The Chinese gymansts do look 12 years old. The Romanian ones, however, look proper sexy.

Argh, googling for "romanian olympic gymnastics team 2012" to post a pic and 3/5s of them are 12

I RETRACT MY STATEMENT. I'd only seen the oldest one dancing to pink floyd.

One of the lesser known Queens but she has an awesome title and she will have tea with you? Excellent!

Fencing is to sword fighting what Scalextric is to motor-racing.

Epic tennis game on 7 between France and Canada (Tsonga and someone - why don't they show the name? - Ah Raonic - they have just shown it) currently 23 games all in the 3rd set!

Malc

Remind me what the BBC stands for again. Of course there's going to be a biase towards Great Britain, coverage-wise. I suspect the Chinese broadcasts mainly concentrate on the China athletes, etc.

I thought the rules said they have to turn 16 this year (or be older)?

Or is that just a rule or the British team?

I must have missed the bits in the opening Ceremony that was beefeaters, red pillar boxes and men in bowler hats.

Gymnastics was impressive, basketball was pretty exciting even though I've never watched it before and learned the rules of the commentators, even the Riding Horses Over High Stuff was a bit tense. Just can't get into swimming though. And then football happened

I always enjoy the first week of Plics before the sodding running starts.

It has just come to my mind that I've been drinking in a pub with one of the rowers and her family several tunes before. Must send an email tomorrow.

I think I'm in love with most of the GB womens football team.

I am displeased with the mat gymnastics. The tumbles and the like are extremely impressive, but what's the value of the dancing in-between, exactly?

Poise, movement, posture... loads of stuff.

The thing that alarms me is that you and I could be stood 4 feet from the corner having a beer and a chat whilst 15 year olds backflip over us. The height is amazing.

The men don't do it though, do they? (The Tart was having a similar rant 10 minutes ago)

Russia fell over twice and still got higher scores in that event than GB.

DISCRACE.

Yes they do. A lot of men's gymnastics is judged on strength, hence holds, pommel routines etc being incorporated into their floor exercises.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19050139

See how your fatness compares to the olympics. Also: Look how small that japanese girl is. Why are you so tiinnyy?

Yeah, had a look through that earlier. Wierdest moment was finding someone I vaguely know in it. A tad surprising.

Is it normal for there to be this much controversy over scoring? Rescoring in the gymnastics, odd scoring in the boxing, clocks not running in the fencing, and now China and S.Korea both deliberately trying to lose matches in the badminton to get matches against weaker opponents in the next round.

There's always controversy and shenanigans. It's hundreds of hours of sport condensed into 12 hours or so every day. It's bound to happen most days.

Fair enough. I've not previously paid much attention to olympicseses.

That's now how advertising works.

If you're flipping through a magazine and you see an advert for Smirnoff that makes you chuckle, it's not to make you rush out and buy Smirnoff right now. It's so the next time you are in the supermarket or a bar buying vodka, it's Smirnoff that catches your eye. Same thing with the London Olympics' affect on tourism. It's not supposed to make people book holidays today. It's so, when they are perusing possible holiday destinations, London has a higher profile in their subconscious.

I'd expect the edited highlights to skew to British competitors; why wouldn't it? They can only fit some tiny percentage of everything in, and it makes sense to be more British than anything else. On the other hand, there's twenty four HD channels showing everything ever in real time. 24! Surely that's a sufficient answer?

Indeed. There only appears to be British athletes on two of those 24 channels at any one time. Most of the time the commentators are lavishing praise on the Chinese and American stars...

Not convinced. Last night on the channel showing the swimming, they gave more interview time to the British lass who came seventh than to Michael Phelps, who'd just become the biggest medal-winner in history.

They did a big piece on Phelps on BBC1 with the Thorpedo about an hour ago.

Wouldn't that be because Phelps was talking to the US TV people, though?

Perhaps. Just pointing out that the 24 olympic channels aren't any less GB-centric than BBC1 is, for whatever reason.

I'm off to watch South Korea vs Gabon play football later today.

That's the big game!

Wembley, baby!

"Maybe next, red shirt."

(she does look a bit 'hepped up' on 'goofballs')

A colleague is watching that today. Look for someone who looks like the Burger King man king king thing.

GOLD!!! Go women rowers

Woohoo!

They absolutely destroyed the competition!

I don't get the whole 'throwing the badminton match' controversy. It's a known flaw in that sort of tournament, and there's plenty of examples where it's been taken advantage of. And the point is to win the tournament. If they didn't want that sort of thing, maybe have a straight knock-out tournament where you have to win every match.

I have to say that I really enjoyed the opening ceremony by the way. Credit where credit's due, it was a very fine spectacle. Excellent.

Aye, but if I had paid for the tickets and saw them dick about like that, I'd be furious.

Holy shit, they've DQ'd the badminton teams!

Heh. That's quite the bold move.

Speaking of playing by the tournament rules:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Barba ... ball_match

Yes, we had that in the football thread a few weeks ago, didn't we? Absolutely hilarious. And ridiculous.

Also: I've been a bit annoyed by the commentators in the basketball extolling the 'good fouls' and 'if you are going to foul, foul early' and so on. it's hardly sporting.

And the organisers lambasted for the broken games scoring.

Caught the last couple of sets of GB v Algeria women's volleyball a couple of days ago, finishing around mid-night. Only a qualifying round, but great to watch and a tremendous recovery by the GB ladies to win after being 2-1 down, particularly as they were ranked about 20 places below their opponents.

Packed!