2016 Rio Olympics

Man the torch lighting really loses its luster when it's not live. I feel like I'm being robbed of an opportunity. Like I'm not being allowed to watch New Year's celebrations until 2 AM. Curses NBC, my old foe, you're at it again!

Non-US people, did they do the athletes and judges oaths? Curious if NBC cut it.

(Admittedly, I do watch mainly for the spectacle.)

edited 5th Aug '16 9:30:25 PM by Elle

They did.

So, some parts of the Olimpic villa are not finished yet. Some delegations are complaining about it, while some athletes are posting in twitter about a greater issue. There is no pokemon go! For shame!

No Pokemon Go? That's a crime against humanity. To the tumbrils with them.

Every country becomes a tad chauvinistic during the Olympics. French sports newspaper L'Equipe counted down the 50 moments that mattered during the Olympics, and this included 7 by French athletes, which is really high. Of those 7, I guess Mary-Jo Pérec winning 200 and 400m in Atlanta could be there (it's not exactly easy), and Alain Mimoun could have deserved a mention as Emil Zatopek's #1 rival when he finally got the Gold. Aside from that, Alexis Vastine deserves a mention in any list of "cursed athletes", as his story is particularly tragic, but the others were only there because it was a French newspaper.

Ditto with the Guardian's list of "the 100 Olympians to Watch", which had 23 from the U.S., 31 from G.B., 14 from Australia and 3 from New Zealand. That sums up for 71, leaving only 29 from other nations (2 from France, 2 from Japan, 2 from South Korea, 2 from Brazil, 2 from South Africa, 0 from China...)

edited 6th Aug '16 6:09:01 AM by Julep

New Olympic record: 420.7 by Li Du (China) in the 10m Air Rifle Women's Qualification. The final will begin in a few minutes.

Speaking of Pokemon Go. Kohei Uchimura, the best male gymnast in the world, accidentally stacked up $5,000 of roaming charges from playing Pokemon Go in Rio Luckily he contacted his provider and they waived most of the fee

I'm still afraid about what the mainstream media is going to say about Romania. Everyone's going to notice when Romania's not there in the team event

I can't overstate how dramatic it was when The Romanian women's gymnastics team didn't qualify. Women's gymnastics is to Romania what baseball is to the US. It's the pride and joy of their country. They've been dominant for the past 40 years. The test event was the most dramatic thing I've ever seen in sports. People in the arena were crying. People were yelling at and blaming the Romanian gymnasts for not qualifying when it was really their committee's fault (they kept switching coaches, they were really disorganized) People were screaming and sobbing all over the place. None of the other teams knew how to react. It was really hard to watch. It was the end of a dynasty.

First medals awarded - women's 10m air rifle

Gold - Virginia Thrasher (USA)
Silver - Du Li (CHN)
Bronze - Yi Siling (CHN)

edited 6th Aug '16 7:20:45 AM by megarockman

10m Air Rifle Women's podium:

G - Virginia Thrasher (US) - Final Olympic Record (208.0). She's only 19 years-old

S - Li Du (China)

B - Siling Yi (China)

'd

edited 6th Aug '16 7:21:40 AM by Quag15

I don't know if you have a channel that plays all the sports at the same time, giving you the opportunity to pick whatever you wantt, but you should give Sevens Rugby a try. Male or female, it super short (game is 2x7 minutes) and super dynamic, the players keep running and jumping at each other, you don't get much kicking or any scrums (which can be nice, but is more of a "hardcore fan" thing).

Basically it is the fun parts of rugby (running, passing and tackling) without the less fun parts of rugby (scrums, ground control, pick and go).

Obviously, this advice does not apply to tropers from New Zealand who know about it already and probably can't wait to claim both gold medals.

edited 6th Aug '16 7:23:41 AM by Julep

Oh noes Kohei Uchimura (gymnast) fell off the high bar, and might not make event finals. He's the reigning world champ on that event

Infodump time! In case anyone is going to watch gymnastics. Especially the God-awful NBC coverage that's the only option for some people, where they're constantly complaining about the new scoring system. Here's an explanation:

I hate when people say that the new gymnastics scoring system is hard to understand (You know how they changed it from the perfect 10 to scores that are usually around 14/15) It's not that difficult. You get a difficulty score out of 10 (how hard your routine is) and an execution score out of 10 (how well you do that routine) and then you add them together. And that's your score. So hard right? Scoring is a lot tougher now, so and 8.1-ish on execution is considered as perfect as you can get.

The perfect 10 system may have been pretty, but it was seriously flawed. It didn't factor in difficulty nearly enough. In the 2004 Olympics, Alexei Nemov of Russia did one of the most difficult routines the world had ever seen. But since difficulty wasn't factored in, he didn't even make the podium. It caused international outrage The crowd booed for fifteen minutes straight. People from different countries, who wanted nothing more than for Russia to lose, knew this was an outrage. This isn't even the full thing. Starts at 5:21

The first subdivision of men's gymnastics preliminaries is over, and the second subdivision isn't until 1:30. So I'm going to watch a sport other than gymnastics for a change Anyone have any recommendations?

The men's cycling road race is near the end.

Keep delivering the gymnastics reports, in any case. I may not follow it, but I like getting updates in the Olympics.

edited 6th Aug '16 9:20:31 AM by Quag15

Still 80 kms to go. They expect the race to end around 8.30PM French time, so 2.30PM NY time, or 7.30PM London Time (I never know the official names). It's a very mountainous race, so it's rather slow.

Central European (Summer), Eastern (Daylight), British (Summer).

Yeah, I probably didn't take into account that they began to climb the Tijuca Park a short while ago.

It would be nice to see one of the Portuguese cyclicts (Rui Costa in particular) getting a medal, but a problem in Costa's bike as well as the fact that the Italians are really strong will not let us get a chance.

edited 6th Aug '16 9:40:28 AM by Quag15

For France I'd like Alaphilippe to do something. He got the worst luck in the Tour de France, getting a stupid bike incident while he was on his way to win a stage. He's also a chill dude in interviews.

But more than anything, it's insane to see how many Skyguys are here. It shows how much of a headstart they have, all of their team members are among the top 3 or 4 of their countries, when they aren't the best - and all but one of them are just teammates working for the leader. Poels, Thomas, Kiriyenka, Kwiatkowski, Henao...all these guys would be number 1 in almost any other team. And Nieve isn't even there.

edited 6th Aug '16 10:04:04 AM by Julep

Huh, looking at what Wikipedia has it looks like the volleyball tournament is taking proactive steps to avoid teams trying to throw games a la badminton in London - the quarterfinal matches involving each Groups' 2nd and 3rd place teams are going to be determined by drawing of lots.

edited 6th Aug '16 10:07:10 AM by megarockman

Spain just beat Argentina in women's volleyball. The second set ( I don't know if it's called a set, not a volleyball expert) was pretty intense. It was a nice game for both teams.

You are correct - it is a set.

Interestingly enough, they were showing South Korea-Japan on one of the channels here earlier.

Yup, it's a set.

I watched that match as well. The Spanish atheletes are quite popular in regards to the sport here in Western Europe, and certainly had the experience to pull it off. Kudos to the Argentinians for fighting to the last moment, in any case.

edited 6th Aug '16 10:15:51 AM by Quag15

I'm taking a break right now until men's gymnastics prelim subdivision 2 starts. I'm watching only online live streams so I don't have to deal with the NBC commentary...

Our favorite lovable screw-ups are in the next subdivision, the US men's team.