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2016 Olympics; General discussion
Topic Started: Jul 31 2016, 03:54 AM (992 Views)
Merengue
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First Novak Djokovic, now Serena Williams, the best men's and women's tennis players have lost early in Rio.

More Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Katrinka Hosszu golds in swimming. No sport facilitates athletes being able to compete in multiple events quite like swimming.

Spain's basketball team have been a major disappointment so far they've now lost 2 close group games, first to Croatia now to Brasil. 4 teams still get out of the group so all is not lost but this is not looking to be a good Spain team which is surprising because they have most of their stars there, except Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka.
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Johnbuildr
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Yeah, the Williams sisters got beat for the first time ever in doubles too, M.

Phelps, what can you say that is too much? He is arguably one of the greatest athletes of our times, probably one of the top 3 to 5 Olympic athletes of all time. Hard to compare across different sports lines, but who else has ever dominated their sport like he has?

Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum



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Johnbuildr
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Ha. As a follow up to my own post on Phelps, here is a link to a pretty amusing, possibly true bit of Olympic history from Deadspin: http://deadspin.com/michael-phelps-tied-a-...cord-1785077553

:lol: :lol:
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum



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Merengue
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Phelps is absolutely amazing, a real phenomenon who has been at the top of his sport for a decade. Swimming really is a sport that, like I said in my previous post, facilitates athletes competing in multiple events as there are so many similar distances swum [50,100,200, 400 meters and then the one distance race at 1500 meters for men, 800 for women] plus events in each of the 4 styles of swimming-freestyle, breast stroke, butterfly and backstroke at most of those distances plus relays and an individual medley relay where a swimmer can dominate in multiple events as we are seeing in Rio with Phelps, Hosszu and Ledecky each winning multiple events then each competing in various relays too.

Special mention to Spain's gold medalist in the women's 200m butterfly, Mireia Belmonte, she is a veteran swimmer who has medaled before but never won gold and it is great to see her finally get that gold medal. A nice women too which makes it even better to see her triumph.

Australia sure gave the US a good game in basketball and led at halftime before Carmelo Anthony led a US comeback and an eventual 10 point win which was an exaggerated margin for what occurred in the game. But a warning sign that it won't be all easy victories for the US men.
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Johnbuildr
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Saw Belmonte's race and was actually pulling for her. A very close but a very deserved win.

It is true there are many more numerous ways to medal in swimming than any other sport, but I do not think this takes away from Michael Phelps singular accomplishments.

At a minimum, Phelps pure longevity at the very pinnacle of his sport is without equal in Olympic history. Possibly 2 or 3 athletes with similar achievements could be mentioned, but I do not know who they are.
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Peter Ian Staker
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Looking forward later today to the semiifnals and final in rugby 7s. Some wonderful action yesterday in the quarterfinals. These Olympic matches have been very tactical, almost grind it out matches, which is rare IMO for 7s.

It started with a back and forth match between Fiji and New Zealand which the Fijians eventually won. The Kiwis just got into the quarterfinals and this ahs probably been the weakest new Zealand rugby team I have seen at any level. But they still are New Zealand and always are going to be formidable. As for Fiji, well this is their sport, football as seen by their 0-10 defeat to Germany obviously is not!

Then France and japan played a thriller which the Japanese won by scoring a try on the last play of the match. South Africa then beat Australia as the Aussies, like New Zealand, the traditional standard bearers of 15 man rugby, just were not as strong in this Olympic 7s tournament.

Then the real drama was between Great Britain and Argentina, rare for a 7s match this was 0-0 although Argentina ahd a penalty from less than 30 metres out which was pretty straight on from the goalposts yet they somehow put it wide. On to extra time where Great Britain hit a post on a penalty of their own before they finally scored the match winning try. The Argentines were disconsolate at the end but in traditional rugby fashion they were consoled by the GB team. And to prove how disconsolate Argentina are, they now trail Australia 21-5 at halftime in the 5-8 placing round.

Today's semiifnals are Fiji-Japan and South Africa-Great Britain. These should be some wonderful matches.
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Onslow
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Fiji looked like men playing against boys in their rugby 7s semifinal versus Japan. they were a good 5-10 stone heavier than the Japanese players plus in some cases 4-6" taller. So an easy win for Fiji the top ranked rugby 7s side in the world.

In the other semifinal South Africa had their chances to win but missed passes or made the wrong decisions several times near the goal line in their match against great Britain. team GB ended up winning when the super quick Dan Norton converted a try and was able to line the resulting conversion up dead centre of the field which proved to be the difference as Team GB won 7-5 [South Africa converted their try near the touchline and thereby missed their conversion.]

On to the Final tonight between Fiji and Great Britain. Fiji is guaranteed no worse than a silver medal and this will be the first Olympic medal in the island nation's history. So go on them. As for Team GB, this to me is a sign Great Britain can indeed have a Team GB football team in future Olympics. It is at least possible because rugby, like football, has separate federations for England, Scotland and Wales. member of Team GB normally play 7s for England, Scotland and Wales but here they have come together to represent Great Britain. So if rugby can do it then why not football?
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shelsoccer
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Still men vs. boys. If I'm an NFL scout, I'm all over these Figian players.
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shelsoccer
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Fijian.
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hobbes
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Somehow Graham DeLaet is in second place in the men's golf. I don't think it will last, but obviously am excited for the local guy.

His secret? It could be a Canadian Olympic tradition: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/olym...rticle31308379/

cheers,
hobbes
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Sammy Maudlin
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Wow was Fiji good. I don't think Great Britain knew what hit them, Fiji just steam rolled them, it was 12-0 after 3 minutes, 29-0 at the half and ended up 43-7. That was just incredible as Fiji saved their best for the title game. Team GB meanwhile were just shellshocked. Fiji was bigger, stronger and more elusive. What an impressive win.

I guess you could say Fiji were like Michael Phelps a she too blew away his competition tonight in winning gold medal #22. The 200m individual medley means you swim one pool length doing the butterfly, back stroke, breast stroke and freestyle. For the first 3 pool lengths, Phelps, his great rival Ryan Lochte and Brazil's Thiago Pereira were changing the lead and all 3 were neck and neck after 3 of the 4 pool lengths. Then came the final length in the freestyle and Phelps just switched into another gear, Lochte and Pereira each fell back, Lochte finishing 5th, Pereira 7th while Phelps beat the rest of the field by almost 2 seconds! Kosuke Hagino of Japan was 2nd and Wang Shun of China was 3rd. Just another incredible performance from the incomparable Michael Phelps.
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Rufus T. Firefly
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Here is your Homer Simpson, "D'Oh!" moment of these Olympic Games,

CBC announcer calls entire race mixing up Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte!.
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raconteur
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A couple of interesting tidbits from Friday:

-Michael Phelps was beaten in a race! He took 2nd in the 100m butterfly behind Joseph Schooling of Singapore, who grew up idolizing Phelps. Pretty amazing first Fiji in rugby and now Singapore each winning a first ever Olympic gold medal. Phelps and 2 others each finished tied for 2nd. How is that? Track & field can separate runners, why can't swimming? Don't they have electronic touch pads when they touch the wall? You'd think they'd be able to differentiate by hundredths of a second as they do in track & field.

-On the topic of track & field, or athletics to our non north Americans, a world record on day 1 as Ethiopian Almaz Ayana won the women's 10,000m. And a small upset in women's shot put as USA's Michelle Carter surprised 2 time defending gold medalist Valerie Adams of New Zealand on her final throw. Some interesting family athletic backgrounds for both Carter and Adams. Carter's father Michael was the 1984 silver medal winner in the shotput and went on to play as a defensive lineman in the NFL. Adams' younger brother Stephen is a center with Oklahoma City in the NBA.
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hobbes
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Rufus T. Firefly,Aug 12 2016
07:31 AM
Here is your Homer Simpson, "D'Oh!" moment of these Olympic Games,

CBC announcer calls entire race mixing up Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte!.

I'm not really a fan of Elliotte Friedman, but I've always respected him. He's a smart NHL insider (though not my favourite) and he's the voice of competence on the rebooted debacle that is the Hockey Night In Canada panel.

Just based on when it's on I hadn't seen any of the swimming. I got a text about Friedman's call and my first reaction was "Elliotte Friedman is *calling* Olympic swimming?!" This is like Peter King or Chris Mortenson calling the track and field for NBC.

Then I remembered that Steve Armitage was prevented from travelling by doctors due to a heart condition. Armitage usually does swimming or track for CBC and has done one of the big Olympic sports for basically my whole life (he also did pbp for Canada's World Cup games in 86). So it makes sense that they had no one else and decided to let Friedman step in rather than totally shuffle the deck.

Sports Illustrated talked to him and I thought the article was superb. The longer I work in the business, the more I see people coming in who don't own their mistakes, who blow them off or figure they're not that important. They are important. And there's usually a reason or an excuse as for why something went wrong. No one cares. You have a job to do and it's your job to get it right. And I have so much respect for the way Friedman talks about this in this piece:

http://www.si.com/olympics/2016/08/12/elli...te-rio-olympics

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
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hobbes
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raconteur,Aug 12 2016
10:02 PM
How is that? Track & field can separate runners, why can't swimming? Don't they have electronic touch pads when they touch the wall? You'd think they'd be able to differentiate by hundredths of a second as they do in track & field.

There's an interesting reason for this. They can (and they used) measure into the thousandths of seconds, but they decided not to.

FINA allows a tolerance of a difference of 3 mm per lane in the length of the pool. You apparently can't make a concrete pool any more consistently exact. And the effective length of a pool can vary depending on temperature and other factors.

So to keep it fair they don't measure by 1/1000ths of a second because the distance swam may actually have a difference of greater than that in the pool to begin with.

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