The Olympics

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Aren't running events just, you know, *running*? I mean if you want to see interesting running, shoot-up a mall. All kinds of crazy running there. But this Olympic "everyone has their own lane, now just go fast, please" kind of running?

Snoozeville, babies!

[Drunk Monk]

And cf scores the gold for shooting this thread into a random tangent like a ricocheting javelin.

I’m ready for some karate & rhythmic gymno.

[cranefly]

Purely by chance (while fixing dinner around 6:10), I turned on the TV and caught the women's 1500 m final this evening.

Won't say any more about it, except that it wasn't a 12-way tie.

[Drunk Monk]

Nibbled at a bunch of stuff tonight.

Boxing - the men’s heavyweight gold medal bout between Cuba & ROC was awesome. The winner was brilliant, outclassing his opponent with exquisite evasions and countering with oblique ripostes. Luved it.

Equestrian - I wanted to see the sumo wrassler but got sidetracked by Springsteen (not ‘the boss’ - his daughter). This is a sport of the privileged - the rich and the royals. That being said, Springsteen is a hotty horsewomen and I hope she does well. 

Rhythmic Gymno - I luv hoop, ball & ribbon, but am not into clubs that much. What is up with gymno twins? There was GB’s Gadirova twins in artistic and now ROC has the Averina twins in rhythmic. Again kinda hot and they don’t have to resort to teeny beach volleyball bikini bottoms. I know, the gymnasts are mostly teens and that’s wrong - being in that world throughout my daighter’s Elementary years checked that. I’m just saying there’s a great potential reboot of Gymkata here...

Karate has been cool. I enjoyed the kata - great intensity and they didn’t sell out to spectacle like wushu. Kumite was okay - I felt there were more hits scored than they counted but I guess like in kendo, you hits not only have to land but they must be super clean too. I like it better than TKD.

Sport Climbing was amazeballs. This and Karate are really working for me as the nooBs. Skateboarding was disappointing. I was imagining something more like snowboarding but it wasn’t as spectacular. Surfing was okay but I didn’t understand how the scoring worked well enough and didn’t care enough to figure it out.

Handball - I forgot what this was so I peeped it. If you forgot too, it’s the bastard child of soccer and basketball.

I was bummed that pentathlon is getting crap coverage on peacock. The worst coverage there has been trampoline which only showed one competition clip and one short vid of a dude falling through the edge. Pentathlon has an overview, the end of a running race and a medal ceremony. I just wanna see more sword fights.

[Greg]

This pretty much sums up the pentathlon for me. I actually saw this horse. I would have punched him, as well. The horse decided it had enough jumps for the day. To be fair, the German rider was familiar with the horses antics and could have chosen a different horse.

German pentathlon coach disqualified after punching horse in competition


Ryan Young
·Writer
Sat, August 7, 2021, 1:36 AM


The German modern pentathlon coach was disqualified and won’t be part of the men’s individual final at the Tokyo Olympics after she hit a horse with her fist earlier in the Games.
Coach Kim Raisner, according to Reuters, hit a horse with her fist during Friday’s show jumping in Tokyo and urged a German rider to “really hit” the horse when it didn’t want to jump.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

I didn't know they had a choice of horse. I thought they were randomly assigned. That horse really was asking for it, though.

[Drunk Monk]

I was wondering about that with Equestrian. Springsteen commented on her horse. I was wondering how hard it is to get a horse flown to Japan for the Olympics.

[cranefly]

I haven't seen the horse-hitting footage, so my comments are perhaps naive.

I believe there is a random draw from a pool of horses for each rider.  So I don't think she chose the horse.  I base this on a news article about the event.

More importantly, I wonder how this pool of horses was chosen.  Obviously these are horses trained to jump over obstacles.  And I suspect the training involved a whole lot of hitting.  So is this an event only made possible by hitting a bunch of horses, but for the actual event it isn't permitted due to the optics?

Got up for the 4:40 am 1500 m final, BTW, but all they covered was USA vs France in basketball's final.  Later I saw an unsatisfactory recap on youtube.  Bummer coverage.

[Greg]

Emirates Air flies the horses in. Springsteen brought her own horse.

I heard during the telecast the German could have opted for another horse because of previous difficulties with the horse.

[thatguy]

[Greg]

Just saw A KO in Kumite in the 75kg good medal bout. But the man who did the KO was disqualified.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Wouldn't want to hurt someone during combat. It's considered to be *rude*.

[Drunk Monk]

Hold the phone...

Was there an SJSU battle cry that went ‘If you can’t hurt ‘em, hurt ‘em’?

[Drunk Monk]

I was enjoying the karate until this call.



I get it but it just became a laughing stock in the martial world

[Greg]

As Gotye said, I was glad it was over. The games were sucking up too much of my time. Yes, I watched karate. Yes, I watched synchronized swimming. I watched the diving. I was going back and forth between the four broadcast channels every night. The Queen was ready to stab me in my sleep to make me stop. It was even better when there was a Giant's game on. (Last nights 11 inning game was awesome in that torture way) I really enjoyed gorging on this feast that was the Olympics, but I'm ready for a little dieting.

I saw another horse balk at a jump in show jumping. This time it wasn't a pool horse, it was one of the German team's regular horses. This gave the US and Jessica Springsteen a chance to go for the Gold. They came away on silver based on time. I saw the women's 4x400 relay. Those women were fast. It wasn't even close. I caught bits of the basketball. The rest of the world is catching up, but it's not even close when the US Team is on it's game, mens and women's. The wrestling was great fun. I think it was the heavy weight bout in which I think it was the russian picked up the american and the american was full stretched out parallel to the ground almost as if he was levitating.

The Queen had a great point that the best thing to see at the games is the camaraderie between the athletes. At the end of the races, they stop and congratulate their opponents. Or in the case of the high jump splitting the gold. (For me, I would have competed)

Still, there was a lot of bad karma at these games. It was too hot for a lot of the outdoor events despite assurances from the Tokyo Committee that said they wouldn't be. The problems with Covid loomed over everything. Why were the Russians even allowed in? I'm still mad the blind Paralympian had to withdraw because they wouldn't let that Paralympian bring her guide person.

Back to baseball and football.