Launching balloons near the Eiffel Tower doesn’t seam like a great idea.
Yeah, I keep hearing about him. Is he a major NBA player? If so, why didn’t he play?
100M breast. Not butterfly.
Oh, shit, my bad.
Maybe NBC is getting feedback concerning commercials interrupted by the Olympics. I saw a commercial that was split screened with a tiny showing of an event.
I saw that too.
I was just hoping and then wham!, 10 minutes of a background piece and at least 12 ads.
I really hate the two competitors per country rule in gymnastics. It keeps someone who could have earned a medal from competing. Jordan Chiles got completely screwed. She did great but was just edged out for the second US place in the all-around. She would have qualified in fourth place if there wasn’t the 2 person limit.
Since there are 24 competitors it’s not like one country will dominate everything. It may be different for the apparatus finals where only the top 8 compete. There I can see a possible limit ( although I still think it should be three).
That’s been normal on CBC/TSN’s coverage. A small part of the screen is the event, a larger part is an advertisement. I don’t like it.
I watch MINIMAL sports on TV - mostly golf’s majors, the Chicago marathon, and maybe the Triple Crown and the Superbowl. But I watch plenty of (too much!) TV, and am very willing to slip the Os into my strenuous regimen of sloth. But their chosen manner of presentation has turned off this potential casual viewer.
Last night we did a jigsaw puzzle and I read. Did not even attempt to see if they were showing anything watchable. Modestly disappointing.
It really is confusing. Every 2-4 years, I hear so many folk talk abut how much the coverage sucks. I can’t really recall hearing anyone enthuse over the coverage. But NBC keeps going in the same direction, so it must be the approach that makes them the most $!
One Olympic announcer has been sent home early.
the women swimmers were “finishing up” and “you know what women are like… hanging around, doing their make-up.”
Thanks for pointing this out. Makes sense.
As an eventer wanna be (my horse is a bad jumper and I’m old), I’ll vote pretty cool. Cross country needs a lot of land which Versailles has. Versailles also has stables. The palace and grounds are a beautiful background for this sport.
I wish they would show more of - even if it’s just the final period or whatever - of the more obscure sports to North Americans (e.g. team handball, field hockey, archery).
Not really unusual, at least in the UK nearly all eventing competitions are held in the ground of stately homes. For example the UKs two 5 star events (highest level) are at Badminton and Burleigh, a 4 star event is held at Gatcombe, home of the Princess Royal (who competed in eventing in Montreal 76)
Yeah, but there are stately homes, and then there’s the Palace of Versailles.
Starting point guard for the Pacers. Two-time All-Star. Led the league’s top-rated offense last year, and a lot of that time was with questionable talent like Bruce Brown and Buddy Hield.
He’s not great on defense, and has a pass-first mentality, but Jesus, you’re up by 20; let the kid play!
It isn’t just tennis, it is the same for any individual sport, you can’t bring a back-up to Paris but can sometimes replace a competitor with someone who is already there.
It also raises the question who should the backup be? Most of the places in tennis singles go to those ranked in the top 56 in the world (subject to max 4 per nation) so should the back-up be the person ranked 57 in the world or someone from the same nation. as the person who pulls out even it they are ranked outside the top 200? there is the cost of not just getting the back-ups to Paris and accomodating them while they are there but also all their support staff.
It seems to be little noticed how dominant South Korea has become in archery. They just won their 10th consecutive gold medal in the women’s team competition.
Why 56? 64 is a perfect number for a single-elimination tournament. Do the Olympics use some different tournament format, or are the other 8 spots based on some other elligibility standard?
This.
There are some spots for countries that don’t/can’t fill their quota but have won major competitions on their continents, an automatic one for the host nation, a couple for previous Olympic/Grand Slam champions, etc.