Aww! They have a webcam and screen set up to allow athletes to Skype their family back home if they weren’t able to make it. That’s really sweet!
Ok the skateboarding park is a lot more impressive (to the casual audience) than the street was. Street was literally laughable in how bad it was. Park is looking actually fairly impressive. Still subpar though, when compared to, say, the BMX freestyle. I’ve been watching a little while now: probably seen about 7 or 8 runs. Only one of them didn’t end in a crash.
Street really needs good commentators if you’re not into the sport already. The subtleties of what makes a trick hard to execute are really easy to miss to an untrained eye.
Hell, that’s true of BMX Freestyle too to a certain extent. The men’s winning run might have looked less impressive than silver/bronze, but there is a lot of stuff like gaps, lines, use of the arena etc that the judges look at.
Yeah, the need for better commentators is definitely a big piece of it. Especially when it comes to the score differences between two different tricks/runs.
But even the best commentators can’t make the fact that there was a roughly 60% failure rate look good. The idea that the supposed best in the world (because that’s what Olympic athletes should be) are failing to land any points 60% of the time made it absolutely laughable. And I mean that quite literally. The people I was watching with were quite literally laughing at how absurd it was that this is the standard.
I don’t remember being as upset as you about the street final. Was it the men’s or women’s? I didn’t watch the women’s final.
The men’s was certainly much better than the women’s (or, frankly, the girls’, since it seemed like nearly all of them were about 11–16), but it was still really poor to my eyes. I think I had given up before they got to the finals though.
I admit I skipped the women’s competition since I had your kind of experience with it when watching Tokyo and it didn’t look like this time around would be different.
I enjoyed the men’s final though. But we did have a good commentator.
An impressive performance on the black & pink bouldering wall with a big overhang from the Aussie. I only caught the end of it, but the commentators gave me the sense that she was the first one, or one of the first, to make the 25 point mark on that wall.
I find it interesting how much time the boulderers seem to take looking at the wall before their first attempt. Are they not allowed to have seen it before they head out? And if so, how does this get enforced? Is everyone just locked in a room without communication until their turn to start?
Exactly that. They have to go into isolation a few hours before the start of the session. Isolation means no internet/bluetooth/outside contact in an area with warm up equipment. They then have 5 minutes to “read” the boulder and climb it.
In the finals it is different and they get a 2 minute shared observation per boulder before they start. But they are still in iso while the others are climbing.
Coaches get to stay with athletes in iso until the competition starts, but can’t go out and back in again. They are also not allowed to shout any advice while the athletes are climbing.
It’s interesting to see how different sports handle coaches. Some can’t help at all. Others are basically micromanaging their team. It does come across as somewhat arbitrary when you’re watching them all together like this, even though each sport is basically making a logical decision about what its regulatory body thinks is best for their specific sport.
Oh nice, thanks!
Lopez wins his 5th gold in his 6th Olympics in heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestling. What an absolute titan. 6-0 in the final, barely broke a sweat all tournament. Apparently lost almost 30kg to get back to match weight for this comeback too.
Bows out on the absolute top, leaving his shoes in the ring as he finally retires. What phenomenal images, what a moment again at this incredible Olympics.
Bows out on the absolute top, leaving his shoes in the ring as he finally retires
omg that would have been amazing to see! Stupid time zones.
Ok I went and watched the replay of that. Absolutely beautiful symbolism.
It was one of the top highlights of the olympics for me, so beautiful!
Javeliners throwing themselves forward along with the javeline will never not be funny.
New Olympic speed climbing record, by 1/100th of a second! Well done Watson of America.
Oh and it’s almost immediately beaten! By another 2/100ths of a second by the Kazakh climber Maimuratov.
And another new Olympic record, equalling the World Record, by Leonardo from Indonesia!
Oh and the Saffa misses the button at the top. Absolutely hate seeing that.
But not as hard to watch as a false start from his opponent, I guess.
Tanaka going out with a huge lead at the start of the first women’s 1500 m repechage. My instinct says this is likely to be a poor strategy.
And going into the final lap that instinct seems correct. She’s now slipped to 4th, and seemingly falling further.
Ooof yeah. She looks to be really struggling even to stay on her feet going round the final bend falling to 11th of 15 as Ethiopia’s Tsegay, Britain’s Muir, and Kenya’s Ejore finish in the top 3 places of that heat.
Incredibly tense in Australia v Serbia basketball quarter final. 32 seconds remaining. Serbia up 81–80.
9.8 seconds remaining. Serbia got free throws, missed the first.
Sunk the second. Australian time out. 82–80…
AND AUSTRALIA SINKS IT WITH 1 SECOND TO GO. A long shot, but not quite from the 3 point line. 82–82, going into overtime.
Damn. It was 93–90 to Serbia with Australia to inbound off a foul with 12 seconds on the clock, and Serbia regained the ball off the inbound, went down, scored 2 off of an Australian foul. Game ends 95–90. Disappointing, but well played Serbia!
Oh gods. The forward flips off of a backwards dive absolutely terrify me. What if you don’t push off far enough and end up flipping your head directly into that solid board? 😬
Second 1500 repechage everyone’s staying in the one group, with Australia’s Hall out front.
The most impressive part was the Kiwi speeding up right at the end to overtake the Pole for 6th place, as the Aussie gets 8th.
