Yes I know well, my post was meant as a statement rather than a question, sorry for being ambiguous. We’re a hockey nation, Germany has done traditionally well in field hockey in the Olympics (both women and men, though the women sadly lost their quarterfinal vs. Argentina in a shootout today and won’t win a medal) and won gold a few times.
I must be one of the few that wishes the Paralympics wasn’t so closely following the Olympics. I love it and I do get that the facilities are all there and ready, but I get so sports-fatigued watching the Olympics, I could use a year break before the Paralympics.
I am keeping my Peacock subscription through the Paralympics, though. I will watch it. Uh, Peacock is fully covering it, right?
Yeah, all events will be covered online on Peacock with a few events on the TV networks.
They won’t be taking over NBC for the whole period but there will be some TV coverage. And that makes sense. There’s less viewer interest, and there’s definite sports fatigue after a couple weeks.
Yeah, I figured you knew, particularly since Germany is in the semis.
But in the US, the number of people who know about women’s field hockey is pretty small, and the number who know the men also have a team is tiny.
In my experience, at the high school level, field hockey is entirely a women’s sport.
That’s funny: I’m watching men’s football semifinal Morocco-Spain, and during the whole first half, there was a flock of pigeons on the field, about a dozen birds, flying lowly above the pitch and landing from time to time, only to take off again when the ball and/or players came too close. No birds or players have been harmed so far,
ETA: now kick-off for the second half, and they’re still there!
I started another thread to ask how many folk are how interested in the paralympics.
So is volleyball, though in Michigan this year or next, male volleyball is supposed to be offered.
Is male volleyball in High School common?
Why do they rush through all the swimming events in the first week?
That’s odd - here, in Ontario, volleyball is most definitely not a sex-specific event. But field hockey (which is a bit of a rare sport anyway) is 99.99 percent a female sport.
It’s weird how stuff like this turns out. I’m not really super sure, for instance, how it came to pass that women tend to be shuttled into SOFTBALL, not baseball. There is no real physical reason for that. It’s just one of those self-reinforcing things.
It used to be that men played hockey (the real kind, on ice) while women played ringette, which is hockey except you play it with a rubber ring that you control with a pointed stick instead of a bladed stick, which prevents slapshots but does bring in the exciting possibility of someone being skewered like souvlaki. Then a few years back women started playing hockey and ringette had started to vanish like my Uncle Carl from his children’s life. Why these things happened I cannot fathom.
Just a guess, but perhaps they don’t want swimming to compete against track & field and vice versa?
IIRC, synchronized swimming — and the swimming for the modern pentathlon — is still on its way; maybe they’ll need pools for that?
That may be it, though ya gotta think a city like Paris could have two Olympic sized pools.
As an aside, I’ve heard people call a big pool an “Olympic sized pool” when it’s nothing of the sort. Olympic pools are ENORMOUS and very rare; most cities have nothing of the sort. All of Canada has maybe ten or twelve such pools; I’ve seen one and it’s jaw-dropping. Seeing one on TV really doesn’t give you a sense of it.
Also, I believe water polo and the diving events are still underway.
Just an observation about cultural differences: what Canadians and Americans call “field hockey” is just called “Hockey” here, it’s the standard hockey. What you call “hockey” is “Eishockey” (ice hockey), and I think we may have a point, as I suspect that field hockey is the older sport and existed before someone had the idea to play it on ice with skates (which of course was a great idea).
They have to drain the pools to prepare for Jello Wrestling.
What? Hey, if Breakdancing is a sport…
Holy shit I’ve been watching men’s pole vaulting this afternoon, what a finish.
Yeah, Armand Duplantis is a monster! He’s now the greatest pole vaulter in history, bigger than Sergey Bubka IMHO. And he’s only 24!
Duplantis has that Bolt-like quality of just being in a different league from everyone else. The ease with which he cleared his vaults right till the gold medal was remarkable and then that spectacular climax to break his world record.
While this performance definitely opens the GOAT conversation, we have to remember how just how amazing Bubka was. He broke the world record over a ten year period from 84 to 94 taking it from 5.85 to 6.14. He won six consecutive world championships. He only won one Olympic gold but was unlucky with the 84 boycott and injury in 96. My sense is Duplantis will eventually become the GOAT but isn’t quite there yet.
And he’s almost as much of a showman as Bolt, he can play the audience. Of course he also looks like a Greek god, just like Usain Bolt, that helps too.