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2016 Olympics; General discussion
Topic Started: Jul 31 2016, 03:54 AM (993 Views)
raconteur
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hobbes, how can I watch CBC's feed for the Olympics in the US? It took less than 3 hours for me to get fed up with the B.S. on NBC's coverage, not to mention how everything is tape delayed because this is really a reality show and not a sporting event, or at least is in NBC's eyes!

Nice opening ceremony and I too liked the torch lighting. Like Alexao I really do hope Pele is ill and that explains why he was not there. Geez, how bad does that sound, "I really hope Pele is ill!"
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robdog
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raconteur,Aug 5 2016
10:48 PM
hobbes, how can I watch CBC's feed for the Olympics in the US? It took less than 3 hours for me to get fed up with the B.S. on NBC's coverage, not to mention how everything is tape delayed because this is really a reality show and not a sporting event, or at least is in NBC's eyes!

Nice opening ceremony and I too liked the torch lighting. Like Alexao I really do hope Pele is ill and that explains why he was not there. Geez, how bad does that sound, "I really hope Pele is ill!"

I must say I have dishnetwork & the matches have all been live - I have a hard time trying to decide which match to watch - also there is now a Soccer Speciality Channel that televises only the footie matches
Supporter for FCK, San Lorenzo, Chelsea, Pachuca, Corinthians & Real Betis
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Don Balon
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Today is the men's road race in cycling featuring all of the world's top cyclists. Multiple Tour de France winner Chris Froome of Britain is there but a one day road race is so much different from a multi day stage tour. yet the route has a lot of climbs but interestingly ends with a long sprint down the Copacabana. That should be fascinating to watch. here we are supporting Alejandro Valverde and he and Vincenzo Nibili of Italy have been mentioned as two of the favorites. but Olympic road racing often elevates a relatively unknown to the front as well.

The race is going on now and probably will continue for another 3 1/2 hours. If you want to get a good view of the scenery of the hills outside Rio, this is the event to watch.
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robdog
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Don Balon,Aug 6 2016
08:34 AM
Today is the men's road race in cycling featuring all of the world's top cyclists.  Multiple Tour de France winner Chris Froome of Britain is there but a one day road race is so much different from a multi day stage tour.  yet the route has a lot of climbs but interestingly ends with a long sprint down the Copacabana.  That should be fascinating to watch.  here we are supporting Alejandro Valverde and he and Vincenzo Nibili of Italy have been mentioned as two of the favorites.  but Olympic road racing often elevates a relatively unknown to the front as well.

The race is going on now and probably will continue for another 3 1/2 hours.  If you want to get a good view of the scenery of the hills outside Rio, this is the event to watch.

What a tease you are - I stopped watching Nottingham Forest vs Burton Albion to see what you are talking about, but on NBCSP Women's Beach Volleyball is on (not that I am upset w/ that :P ) - on the NBC Flagship channel there are some excellent views of the Women's rowing in the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon
Supporter for FCK, San Lorenzo, Chelsea, Pachuca, Corinthians & Real Betis
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Manzanares
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robdog, I was watching online through NBC's Olympic stream service. They had the entire race on but it did get irritating when they would cut into the international feed every 5-10 minutes and blast the same 3 or 4 commercials over and over again. At least for the final 15 minutes of the race there were no interruptions.

And what a good road race it was on a difficult course with some steep climbs and difficult descents which caused some troubles for the cyclists (more on that), a stretch of cobblestone roadway which was not easy (as any of us who have ever riden over cobblestone can say) and some beautiful scenery, great coastal views along with some nice views of mountains and canopied semi tropical flora.

As for the race, a major disappointment for valverde and all of Spain's riders, it was set up to be what looked like a 3 man breakaway with Majka of Poland, Henao of Colombia and one of the favorites Nibali of Italy. Then on one of those descents Henao and Nibali crashed which took both out of the race with about 5km to go. That left Majka alone but not for long as a breakaway group from the peloton eventually caught him in the last kilometer and Majka as a climber really had no legs left as Belgium's Greg van Avermaet and Denmark's Jakob Fugsland sprinted for the finish with van Avermaet winning by a second over Fugsland and 5 over Majka. 4th place was a further 17 seconds behind. A tough but exciting race and of the favorites only Froome, in 12th, ended up anywhere near the top.
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Don Balon
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Manzanares has described the race well, it was well set up for a 3 man race before Henao and Nibali crashed. We never did see the crash as it occurred just on a turn ahead of the moto with the TV on it. Tough luck for them and also Great Britain's Geraint Thomas who crashed a minute after they did. So left alone Majka had a lot of work to do which is how van Avermaet and Fugsland caught and eventually past him. A good start to the Olympics with a lively race in one of the major events of these games.
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hobbes
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I'm not much of a cycling enthusiast, but that was an excellent road race. I think I got drawn in by the scenic course (and the fact that I was inexplicably awake in the first place) and then it was just an entertaining race. I almost thought Majka was going to hold them off after he broke away.

Raconteur, I'm not really sure. There's 23 live streams at cbc.ca/olympics. I assume you will have to get past their geo-blockers. This is a handy how-to for that: http://wtvpc.com/tip/unblock-content/

I thought this was an interesting read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olymp...73a2_story.html

Other things I enjoyed while awake at dawn, the rowing was positively insane yesterday. I guess the Serbians capsized. The first 500m weren't bad, but the middle section was incredibly choppy. After the fact I heard some complain they never should have rowed in it, but during the broadcast it sounded like this is the nature of this body of water. There's a space between two peaks where the wind blows in hard. It was surreal to watch rowers not even try to win races, but to just stay in their lane, pointed in the right direction and upright. One of the Irish rowers was rowing one-armed to try to stay straight.

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
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carioca
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Because of the winds, today's rowing was postponed.

From the article hobbes linked which really explains it all about NBC's broadcasting decisions,

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Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:

“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he told Philly.com recently. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”


Good to see their ratings for the opening ceremony were the lowest since 1992, with all the online options and people able to keep track via twitter & Facebook, it makes even less sense to be delaying everything.
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Merengue
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The women's cycling road race was almost a carbon copy of the men's, except this time there was a sole leader, Netherlands' Annemiek van Vleuten who was 20 seconds in front of 2nd place Mara Abbott of the US. But then van Vleuten, just like the men's leaders yesterday crashed on the last descent of the hill, the so called Vista Chinesa "Chinese view" and her crash was pretty bad as she flew over the handlebars of her bike. Dutch TV now says she is "OK" which is heartening news but it was a fierce crash as you can see from the link I provide below.

Abbott then went on to be all alone in the lead [she led by :40] and she maintained that until the last 200 meters, or maybe less, as three chasers who broke from the peloton, Anna van der Breggen of Netherlands, Sweden's Emma Johansson and Elisa Longo Borghini of Italy caught and passed her with van der Breggen beating Johansson and Luongo Borghini in that order on the final sprint.

Just like Poland's Majka in the men's race, Abbott, a known climber just did not have the legs at the end, and was caught by a group working together. Another example of how working together a group of cyclists can make up a big deficit and how climbers can struggle in that final sprint.

Here is video of that awful crash and the final sprint with van der Breggen's victory.

Both men's and women's road races not only provided great scenery and a good travelogue to Rio and its environs but also provided some outstanding cycling and drama.
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chacal
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Anna van der Breggen is spending the night in the hospital with a concussion and small fractures on her vertebrae. But she is to make a full recovery. I wish her well.

Some world records were not just broken but smashed in the pool tonight, one by Britain's Adam Peatty, the other by the US' Katie Ledecky. Those two just destroyed the world records in their respective events. So here is my question, when a world track record is broken, especially by a wide margin there are immediate suspicions of doping. Why not the same in swimming? I mean Peatty and Ledecky blew away not just the rest of their competitors but also the world records in their events. Should we look suspiciously at their records? Or is swimming a cleaner sport than others and we should just admire their ability in smashing the records?

Some upsets in tennis as world number 1 Novak Djokovic of Serbia was upset by Martin Del Potro of Argentina. And the best women's double team, the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus also were beaten. Tennis, unlike golf, does have almost all of its top stars at the Olympics (minus the injured Roger Federer and the suspended Maria Sharapova.]
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Rufus T. Firefly
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chacal,Aug 7 2016
08:12 PM
Some world records were not just broken but smashed in the pool tonight, one by Britain's Adam Peatty, the other by the US' Katie Ledecky.  Those two just destroyed the world records in their respective events.  So here is my question, when a world track record is broken, especially by a wide margin there are immediate suspicions of doping.  Why not the same in swimming?  I mean Peatty and Ledecky blew away not just the rest of their competitors but also the world records in their events. Should we look suspiciously at their records?  Or is swimming a cleaner sport than others and we should just admire their ability in smashing the records?


Interesting that you bring this up chacal because I was going to comment on the same subject before I even saw your post. Take a look at this article in the Guardian about how there is a lot of tension at the swimming competition as fellow competitors are calling out the supposed drug cheats. The article is worth reading but note this about Hungary's gold medalist on Saturday Kattinka Hosszu,

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So why the incredulity at Hosszu’s almost absurdly quick world record in the 400m individual medley? There is no suggestion here of illegality, not least because the Hungarian has taken legal action against those who have doubted her in the past. But this is a 27-year-old athlete competing in her fourth Games who has never previously won a medal. Suddenly she is so far in front of the field she was five seconds ahead of world-record pace at one stage, before slowing down to smash it by more than two seconds.
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That does raise suspicions doesn't it? And some swimmers have been suspended before such as when Australia's gold medalist Mack Horton commented that he was happy to have beaten a known drug cheat in China's Sun Yang to win the 400m freestyle. Also note other swimmers chagrin at the world swimming federation allowing Russia's Yulia Efimova who had been previously banned for taking anaebolic steroids and earlier this year was given a short ban which expired prior to the Olympics for taking meldonium, the same substance which Maria Sharapova was taking as a medication and which got her a 2 year ban from tennis.
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hobbes
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To me Katie Ledecky is like a Thorpe or a Phelps, a young phenom who is doing great things at a young age, but had a track record and a pedigree. No one expected her to kill the field like she did, but no one was surprised that she dominated. Canada's Penny Oleksiak won two medals already and is 16, but her brother is a six-foot-seven NHL player who could be an Olympian himself someday. I don't think anyone thinks she's on drugs.

It's the veterans who suddenly become exceptional that raise the red flags - like that Hungarian. The one that always jumped out was Irish swimmer Michelle Smith who won three gold in Atlanta and was eventually banned for four years for tampering with a sample. She won three gold in four days and everyone seemed to feel like something was fishy.

After a 24-year absence and after locking up the last ticket to Rio, Canada's men's volleyball team beat the U.S. 3-0 this afternoon in what is apparently a large upset. I'm not sure we're going to win another match, but if we had to win just the one. :)

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
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Peter Ian Staker
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That Hungarian swimmer sounds like the swimming version of Florence Griffith Joyner who suddenly late in her career smashed world records she never previously approached (world records which still stand to this day 28 years later.) And Michelle Smith the Irish swimmer hobbes referenced is another example of a "late bloomer" whose success was later proven to be drug aided. It is a sad but realistic picture now of international sport that especially when a late blooming athlete smashes world records that the initial reaction is to question whether he/she has been doping rather than admiring their accomplishment.

The international cycling federation is coming in for some criticism of the dangerous descents on both the male and female road racing courses. Not often that you see so many experienced cyclists crashing like that. Then again Abbott even before knowing of van Vleuten's crash was playing it cautiously on the descent, either based on the results from the previous day's men's race or on her own reading of the conditions. Too bad for both her and Majka in the men's race that they could not hold on to their leads but such is the nature of the sport that a group, even a small 3 person one, working together can make up a lot of ground quickly on a "lone wolf" leader.
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Yogi
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Pre Olympics we talked about Rugby &s as a possible break out sport. Anybody watch any of the rugby games yet? The women's 7s concluded today with Australia beating New Zealand for the Gold and congrats to hobbes as Canada upset Great Britain for the bronze. The Canadian win made up for a defeat they suffered to the British earlier in the competition. I guess the men's competition will be starting up soon.
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hobbes
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One of my oldest friends (she was the only kid I knew on the first day of kindergarten) played in two Women's Rugby World Cups, so I've followed this program pretty closely over the last decade or so. So it was pretty nice to see them win bronze yesterday. People I've talked to on the street seem to like sevens, but personally I prefer 15s. Still, I watched most of Canada's games.

The team seems to have caused a stir up here. Captain Jen Kish might have the most buzz of any Canadian Olympian right now (lots of tattoos, lots of big hits).

Also, my friend's wife is a former England captain. She lost the 06 World Cup semifinal to England and they were in the stands when England beat Canada in the 14 World Cup final, so I was happy to see her get a little revenge in the household rivalry yesterday. :)

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
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