Bolt 9.69 seconds and he was celebrating for the last 10 metres of the race! Good day for Britain, 9 medals today including 4 golds. We own the track cycling, 2 golds there today, a silver and a bronze and we are going to get gold and silver tomorrow in the women's individual pursuit, don't know why anybody else bothered to send a team
Phelps just tied Spitz for gold medals! He won it by 1/100th of a second!!!
I couldn't believe he won that. He was a good .5 seconds behind and somehow jumped forward and won by a millimeter.
Yeah, my wife was jumping up and down screaming there was no way he could have won. She gets a little angry when it comes to matters of fairness. Anybody see the canoeing and kayaking yesterday? There are a couple of neat Olympic sports -- much more interesting that cycling or swimming, I think.
Phelps just tied Spitz for gold medals! He won it by 1/100th of a second!!!
I couldn't believe he won that. He was a good .5 seconds behind and somehow jumped forward and won by a millimeter.
Yeah, my wife was jumping up and down screaming there was no way he could have won. She gets a little angry when it comes to matters of fairness. Anybody see the canoeing and kayaking yesterday? There are a couple of neat Olympic sports -- much more interesting that cycling or swimming, I think.
The Serbian team was shown the frame-by-frame film of the finish and it did show Phelps winning. I could not believe he won it myself.
I'm not sure if this happens in other countries but you can hold a betting pool on how long after the Olympics start you will start seeing stories in the news about people complaining about us needing to take sports more seriously in education. I just saw, on the BBC RSS feed, that England has got up to third place so I'm now wondering if the complaints are going to surface.
I really doubt that there is any correlation between the interest a country has in sports and the amount of medals it wins.
Should sailing be an olympic sport? Is it really a sport at all?
If there's no athleticism involved, and it's just about who has the better boat, then you should be able to win the gold medal if you have the best boat, right? Let's see you do it, then.
Uhh... It's not about who has the best boat. The boats are the same. Great pains are taken to ensure that.
It's about who can employ the best strategy - but that's all mental. That's why I was wondering if there was any physical component at all. If it's just a mental exercise, should it be in the olympics?
Now with the America's Cup, there are differences in the boats, but that's a different matter.
Isn't the rule that all equipment has to be available to athletes of all countries free of charge? In reference to the Godwin pic and as a general tib-bit of information: Hitler was the first to introduce the round the world torch run.
It's about who can employ the best strategy - but that's all mental. That's why I was wondering if there was any physical component at all. If it's just a mental exercise, should it be in the olympics?
That could possibly be true for yacht racing, if you discount the huge muscley guys that pull the sheets on the massive sails, but the majority of the Olympic classes are dinghys which are almost a perfect balance of strength and strategy. Take the Laser. It has a tiny centerboard and rudder and is extremely flat, making it crucial that the boat remain flat lest steering become difficult. The Finn is almost exclusively sailed by men over 200 lbs. because of the extremely large sail it is otherwise impossible to keep upright. The 49er, just look at that picture. Trapezeing is extremely physical. I could go on and on. Look at this pic. What she's doing is called hiking, leaning their body as far out as possible with their feet in a strap. Most upwind legs for Laser races are about 45 minutes long and most people I know including myself can't keep this up after the first five. My coach, who won many huge races in his day, can last about twenty. But the Olympians can do it for the entire leg. It requires immense abdomen and thigh strength to stay out like that. Most people start folding within the first minute the first time they hike.
To sum it up, supporting your weight horizontally with only your legs is fucking hard.
There are two main problems with sailing in the Olympics this year:
The first is the shitty location. Qingdao seems to be averaging 3-6 knots every day. Sailing in light breeze is not only uninteresting to the watcher, who may find it uninteresting regardless, but also to the racers. There is no reason why the committee could not have picked a different location with more consistent breeze to build the sailing center on. China just plain epic failed.
The second is the type of racing. If you're familiar with the America's Cup, Kilarney, you know that the races are one-on-one match races where the boats are closer together and in direct competition making it more exciting for everyone involved. What the Olympic classes are doing is fleet racing where all the boats sail against eachother at the same time, causing long gaps of nothing happening and a very spread out racecourse. It would have been a good move for television if the committee added some match racing classes.
The bottom line: Fuck yes sailing is a sport.
[Edit] Sailing lawyering is quite demanding as well.
If you're familiar with the America's Cup, Kilarney,
I am. It is incredibly entertaining. I can't wait for the 33rd America's Cup to begin. I've seen some of the boats close-up, and they are just amazing to behold. The only complaint I have is that it becomes boring when one boat clearly dominates over another due solely to its design. (Like the winged keel in 1983.)
Match races are really entertaining to watch. It's like watching a chess game combined with sport. But you're also talking to a guy who like to watch curling.
It's better than a lot of the other shit events they have.
Like?
Olympic equestrianship really annoys me. Sure, there are some jumping events where it's about the rider's prowess, just like it would be with motocross where the bike would be a tool to show off human athleticism. But I was watching the cantering event the other day -- which effectively tested how well the horse walked.The horse. How wellthe horsewalked. Good god. Dressage should not be an Olympic sport, just as training dogs should not.
Ummm . . . do you think that the horse would canter that way by himself?
A tractor can't drive itself, either. Let's put that in the Olympics. Hey, I know. A sheep can't shear itself. OLYMPICS, BABY!
Tractor racing as an Olympic sport, that would be brilliant! Well at least better than watching a horse walk about for a couple of minutes, then again I don't think there is another Olympic sport that is as boring to watch and that is saying something when you have synchronised swimming in there.
Tractor racing as an Olympic sport, that would be brilliant! Well at least better than watching a horse walk about for a couple of minutes . . .
I'll bet that the reason you think it's "watching a horse walk for a couple of minutes" is because you have no idea what it takes to make them walk that way. If you actually knew what to look for and how to watch such an event, you'd find it a lot more interesting.
Oh well, dressage has been around for about 500 years. It's not like it's going away because a couple of punk kids don't know how to appreciate it.
I'm not denying training and riding horses takes skill. My issue is that skill is not necessarily athleticism. Many things require much training and much ability, but are not feats of athleticism. Horse-jumping? Horse-racing? Sure, those have merit because they test the rider. But horse-trotting has nothing to do with human endurance, stamina, fortitude, and so little to do with agility that it hardly matters. In addition, it is the horse's ability that is being measured in dressage.
I'm not denying training and riding horses takes skill. My issue is that skill is not necessarily athleticism. Many things require much training and much ability, but are not feats of athleticism. Horse-jumping? Horse-racing? Sure, those have merit because they test the rider. But horse-trotting has nothing to do with human endurance, stamina, fortitude, and so little to do with agility that it hardly matters. In addition, it is the horse's ability that is being measured in dressage.
Jason, not only is the horse's ability judged in dressage, but the rider's as well. Once again, do you think a person just mounts the horse and the horse just starts going through the gaits? The rider has to communicate to the horse what he wants the horse to do. He does this through his legs, backside, back, hands, and the distribution of his weight in the saddle. The rider is constantly sending physical signals to the horse throughout the ride. You probably don't see this because one of the goals is to make it look as effortless as possible.
Have you noticed the riders afterwards? Notice how sweat is rolling off them? It's very, very physically and mentally difficult to get a horse to go through those gaits and make it look as effortless as possible.
When was the last time you rode a horse? Have you ever tried to ride using the reins as little as possible and mostly using your legs to guide the horse? Do that sometime and tell me whether it requires athleticism.
Finally, have you caught the names of any of the dressage riders? Do any of them sound familiar? They might if you'd been watching the cross-country and stadium jumping events. A rider and horse are usually signed up for cross-country jumping, stadium jumping, and dressage. That's why competitions are usually called "three day events". Try it sometime. Take a horse through a cross-country jumping course, then a stadium jumping course, and then do dressage and see whether you think there might be some athleticism involved.
Nice way to admit your ignorance! Read a bit about eventing before dismissing it as a sport. It comes from military riding skills: ride the same horse in a parade (dressage), cross country to deliver messages across a battle field and an ultimate test of ability of the horse and rider to compare to riding into battle itself. The dressage, while it looks pointless to you in isolation, is another test of the horse and the rider in which speed and jumping aren't the most important skill.
Seems that America likes to use a totally different method to the rest of the world for the medal table. Here is how the real medal tablelooks And now here is the Americanversion
Onewild, seriously, you cannot make hyper links for the live of you, can you? <span class="tag"><a></a></span><span class="atn">href</span><span class="tag">=</span><span class="atv">"http://link.here.com/seriously"</span><span class="tag">></span><span class="pln">Text!</span><span class="tag"></span>
Well all I did was highlight the word I wanted to hyperlink, hit the button and put in the web address. Seriously if it then needs changing to work then it's not very user friendly now is it. Unless of course I accidentally deleted something after doing all that.
What you did was paste the url, complete with the "http://", in front of the http:// that's already loaded in for you when you click on that hyperlink button. The easiest solution to that is to just copy and paste the full url, then click the button, then paste the url in, which should overwrite the http:// that the forum automatically puts in, since it's automatically highlighted when you hit the button.
Comments
Good day for Britain, 9 medals today including 4 golds. We own the track cycling, 2 golds there today, a silver and a bronze and we are going to get gold and silver tomorrow in the women's individual pursuit, don't know why anybody else bothered to send a team
I really doubt that there is any correlation between the interest a country has in sports and the amount of medals it wins.
It's about who can employ the best strategy - but that's all mental. That's why I was wondering if there was any physical component at all. If it's just a mental exercise, should it be in the olympics?
Now with the America's Cup, there are differences in the boats, but that's a different matter.
In reference to the Godwin pic and as a general tib-bit of information: Hitler was the first to introduce the round the world torch run.
To sum it up, supporting your weight horizontally with only your legs is fucking hard.
There are two main problems with sailing in the Olympics this year:
The first is the shitty location. Qingdao seems to be averaging 3-6 knots every day. Sailing in light breeze is not only uninteresting to the watcher, who may find it uninteresting regardless, but also to the racers. There is no reason why the committee could not have picked a different location with more consistent breeze to build the sailing center on. China just plain epic failed.
The second is the type of racing. If you're familiar with the America's Cup, Kilarney, you know that the races are one-on-one match races where the boats are closer together and in direct competition making it more exciting for everyone involved. What the Olympic classes are doing is fleet racing where all the boats sail against eachother at the same time, causing long gaps of nothing happening and a very spread out racecourse. It would have been a good move for television if the committee added some match racing classes.
The bottom line: Fuck yes sailing is a sport.
[Edit] Sailing lawyering is quite demanding as well.
Match races are really entertaining to watch. It's like watching a chess game combined with sport. But you're also talking to a guy who like to watch curling.
Oh well, dressage has been around for about 500 years. It's not like it's going away because a couple of punk kids don't know how to appreciate it.
Have you noticed the riders afterwards? Notice how sweat is rolling off them? It's very, very physically and mentally difficult to get a horse to go through those gaits and make it look as effortless as possible.
When was the last time you rode a horse? Have you ever tried to ride using the reins as little as possible and mostly using your legs to guide the horse? Do that sometime and tell me whether it requires athleticism.
Finally, have you caught the names of any of the dressage riders? Do any of them sound familiar? They might if you'd been watching the cross-country and stadium jumping events. A rider and horse are usually signed up for cross-country jumping, stadium jumping, and dressage. That's why competitions are usually called "three day events". Try it sometime. Take a horse through a cross-country jumping course, then a stadium jumping course, and then do dressage and see whether you think there might be some athleticism involved.
<a href="http://link.here.com/seriously">Text!</a>http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/medals?page=total&sort;=gold