# 2024 Summer Olympics Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** olympic-sports-track\ **Created:** [July 10, 2024, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019 "2024-07-10T20:21:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 40
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/781 "2024-08-12T04:40:14Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Flag football is planned for the 2028 Games. That makes sense. Regular football is too brutal for a compressed schedule; players need time to recover from a game. Flag football is much less demanding, so games can be played on subsequent days. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/782 "2024-08-12T06:17:53Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It’s as popular in some European nations as football is. ? What European nations are those? ---
**Author:** ![Teuton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teuton/32/3864_2.png) [@Teuton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teuton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/783 "2024-08-12T06:18:07Z")
Team GB finishes with one more medal than in Tokyo, but much less Gold - 14 this time, Tokyo saw us get 22. This drops us down to 7th in the table, our worst showing for a while. On total medal count, we finished third. USA managed to beat China into second on both ways of counting, which should cheer up the TV pundits. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/784 "2024-08-12T06:27:41Z")
> [@Teuton](#): > > Team GB finishes with one more medal than in Tokyo, but much less Gold - 14 this time, Tokyo saw us get 22. This drops us down to 7th in the table, our worst showing for a while. > On total medal count, we finished third. Did you think the French would let the British get a lot of gold medals to take back across the Channel? > [@Teuton](#): > > USA managed to beat China into second on both ways of counting, which should cheer up the TV pundits. As I heard it, the U.S. and China tied in gold medals, with the U.S. getting quite a few more total medals. That number may be adjusted by one once the Jordan Chiles situation gets resolved. ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/785 "2024-08-12T06:28:36Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > Toxylon - “Reportedly?” Source? And, more pertinently, under what circumstances? If we’re talking a spit-flecked social media moderator shoving a mike in their faces on a show watched by thousands of snarling half-orcs, I have to question the honesty of those responses. Painting a picture, eh? Here’s Barshim on the subject: [https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1144886/shared-olympic-gold-will-not-repeat](https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1144886/shared-olympic-gold-will-not-repeat) “That moment, we’ll never share that again. It was a one-time thing. Coming back from injuries and a dark place, I wanted to do something different, something with a different meaning … I’m glad it touched so many people’s hearts, but we’re sportspeople, we’re professionals, we always want to be the best, we have that fire, ‘I want to beat you, you want to beat me,’” he explained. ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/786 "2024-08-12T10:51:20Z")
I’ve often wondered if the US took those pool events where artistry routine is scored by judges as seriously as swimming being a race they’d pull away from China. As it would surely be easier to do in a smaller field of nations that kind of event than for China to become competitive to the US in track and field anytime soon. As for cricket the main issue would be the logistics. Hockey is a ball game that takes up most of the two weeks to play out and they use artificial turf to play matches in a single venue back to back. Cricket is a sport played on grass. Pitches getting rugged through wear and tear is part of what makes the sport. A single match in its shortest form can take three hours and unless the Carribbean islands decide to play under the united West Indies flag as they do in regular cricket, how many teams are going to participate? ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/787 "2024-08-12T11:10:15Z")
And this is a prime example of why I find soccer out of place in the Olympics. I love the sport. But it’s a U23 event in the Olympics, not the best in the world all showing up. The best in the world just played their own competitions this summer and preparing for the new season about to begin with their clubs. And a silver medal feels like it losing the League Cup Final - no one cares, you lost, you failed. Whereas other events a silver and bronze too are big achievements and like climbing Mount Everest. [https://v.redd.it/2sabnmazn1id1/DASH\_720.mp4?source=fallback](https://v.redd.it/2sabnmazn1id1/DASH_720.mp4?source=fallback) If an olympic podium isn’t the pinnacle of your sport I don’t think it should be there. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/788 "2024-08-12T12:20:43Z")
American football is quite popular in Brazil, apparently since they got cable TV. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/789 "2024-08-12T16:23:40Z")
> [@Teuton](#): > > This drops us down to 7th in the table, our worst showing for a while. Just so they don’t get left out: Cape Verde Ivory Coast Peru Qatar Singapore Slovakia Zambia Refugee Olympic Team All finished with 1 Bronze medal. But they got on the tally board, and need to be congratulated for their showing. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/790 "2024-08-12T17:36:16Z")
Need to get Darts in the games. Fat guys holding a beer need representation. See you in LA 2028!! ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/791 "2024-08-12T17:40:32Z")
You kid, but head over to the UK and catch professional darts competitions on TV some time. They go crazy for it. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/792 "2024-08-12T18:59:27Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > Closing ceremonies done. I’ll see if I’m up to a timestamped runthrough (love those! 😁) later today. For now, my general takeaways: > > flurb - Yeah. Look, I’m not going to call anyone a whiner. If the officials screw up, those harmed have the right _and_ the obligation to call them out on it. However, one ironclad rule should be that you do not have the damn medal ceremony while the results are still in dispute. Even if the judges eventually got it right, giving Jordan Chiles a bronze and then yanking it away was just crass. Nobody in the IOC had any problem with making the American, Japanese, and Russian figure skating teams wait two years to get their rightful medals, so taking an extra day to iron out the proper start values shouldn’t have been any problem. The difference being, both the figure skating and gymnastics incidents have specified time limits in which something needs to be done. In figure skating, as it is a drug testing issue, it is ten years (remember, the 2004 men’s shot put result wasn’t reversed until 2011); in gymnastics, a challenge to the execution value of a routine must be presented within 60 seconds. This is what the Romanians challenged, and the CAS agreed; the USA coaches involved took too long. If you want to remove the time limit, then make it retroactive, in which case, Mary Lou Retton’s all-around score will be reduced by 1 point for her coach being on the competing surface during her final routine, resulting in her losing that gold medal (seriously, an official noticed this at the time, but Karoyli knew full well that they weren’t going to change the result over something like that - supposedly, this played a part in the same official successfully getting a penalty called against the USA women’s gymnastics team in 1988, costing it a team bronze medal). > [@DKW](#): > > RickJay - Boxing is a crapstorm from top to bottom, and it’s been infuriating seeing the news outlets stick their heads in the sand about this again and again. Good riddance. As for what replaces it, I can think of no better robustly deserved RIP middle finger to the whole broken, corrupt mess than the sport that replaced it everywhere else, mixed martial arts. It’s past time, dangit. > > Beckdawrek - Saw a little breaking so far. Still undecided on whether it’s belongs here, but my general feeling is that this should get _some_ kind of award, just not medals (yeah, there I go again 😉). Don’t mind stage names if they’re that protective of their identities, but I think that immediately delegitimizes this as a regular Olympic event. Olympic/“amateur” boxing has always had one very large problem: how do you score it? If you try scoring it “professionally,” politics gets involved (tell Roy Jones Jr., or any number of boxers that lost to Americans in 1984, anything else - did you know that only one American boxer lost by decision that year, and it was to Lennox Lewis?), and if you try using devices to count punches, you get judges that have no idea what they are doing costing boxers fights (case in point: Eric Griffin in 1992). However, MMA is just asking to make this sort of thing worse. Both wrestling and judo figured out ways around the “let the judges choose a winner” problem - well, sort of, with wrestling, as if nobody scores after two minutes in freestyle, the three officials decide arbitrarily who was the “most passive,” and that wrestler has to score within 30 seconds or the opponent gets a point; once somebody has a point, it is easy to apply point-based tiebreakers. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/793 "2024-08-12T20:35:18Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > in gymnastics, a challenge to the execution value of a routine must be presented within 60 seconds. This is what the Romanians challenged, and the CAS agreed; the USA coaches involved took too long. I heard a report that was a little more detailed than that. According to that, every gymnast must file a challenge before the following gymnast’s routine is complete, and their score is posted. It’s different for the last gymnast in the competition, which Chiles was, who has only one minute. It ws suggested that this controversy may lead to that rule being changed. Also, the U.S. team are appealing the reversal, and claiming they have video showing that they submitted their challenge within the one-minute window. At least, that’s the last I heard on the subject. There may have been more news since then. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/794 "2024-08-12T21:00:42Z")
Apropos of nothing, if you scroll down to 39-42 on the [Medals Chart](https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/medals?utm_campaign=dp_google), you will encounter a rare flag palindrome. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/795 "2024-08-12T21:33:22Z")
Before the Opening Ceremony of the 1936 Summer Olympics, Haiti and Liechtenstein discovered they had the same flag. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/796 "2024-08-12T21:36:08Z")
Is that like two women showing up at a party in the same dress? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/797 "2024-08-12T21:40:43Z")
And now I’m wondering about the logistics of ensuring that the flags of all of the competitor nations are at any event where there might need to be a medal ceremony, and provisions made to play the national anthems. I read someplace that in preparation for the 2012 Games in London, the London Philharmonic Orchestra recorded the anthems for over 200 countries. And then you need to make sure you don’t mix up similar flags, like those of Indonesia and Poland. As it was, during the opening ceremonies, the Olympic flag was flown upside down. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/798 "2024-08-12T22:03:47Z")
I did a trip on a sailing ship about 20 years ago, and have kept in touch with them ever since. They were coming to Boston, and a few days before they arrived said they needed a new flag of the Cook Islands. I checked, but couldn’t find anyplace to get one on such short notice. It’s quite possible that the organizing committee of the Olympic Games has access to better resources than I do. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/799 "2024-08-12T22:13:49Z")
The obvious suggestion is for the organizing committee to simply ask or require each country’s delegation to provide a certain number of flags of set size. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019/800 "2024-08-13T02:32:55Z")
Apparently, I owe Steve Kerr an apology, because it’s now being reported that Tyrese Haliburton was nursing a secret injury during the Olympics. (Presumably the same one that ended his Eastern Conference Finals early?) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019.md?page=39) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2024-summer-olympics-thread/1004019.md?page=41)