The best part of this is the reaction from Brazilians. Your President is getting impeached, your economy is a disaster, corrupt police systematically execute homeless children, pollution, poverty and infrastructure failures are widespread.
But 4 meathead swimmers making up a tall tale is the problem with your shit hole of a country.
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If they made up a tall tale, it wouldn’t have been an issue. But filing a false police report is an issue pretty much anywhere.
I’ve got a couple of track questions.
Has any top sprinter ever run the 200 meters in a straight line, and how much faster was he (in other words, how much time is lost because of the turn)?
Why do they even bother with those adhesive numbers that the runners stick on their hip or thigh? Seems like they fall off more often than not.
But the punishment is going to be disproportionate no matter what they do. I am not taking up for them at all because it is the epitome of stupidly but it is a joke to consider it a serious crime. Vandalizing a convenience store and then offering to pay for the damage is not a capital offense.
They just lost all of the lucrative endorsement deals that they could have had and introduced shame to their family when they should have had pride. Make them pay for the damage, send them back home and let people in the USA treat them as the embarrassments and douches that they are.
I am fairly certain they are not among the top criminals in Brazil right now. There are plenty of people in the U.S. more than willing to lambaste their incredibly stupid decisions once they land. It is a shame because years of hard work are down the drain because of one night but that is what you get when you supposedly represent your country at an international event.
If only these selfish Olympic athletes were good enough to qualify for your state wide meets they might have had a chance to understand sports as well as you do. Ah well. Pity them for their ignorance.
Well, you got me curious and apparently it was thing until the 1960’s.
It’s interesting that Tommie Smith’s best in the 200 was 19.83, but he also ran 19.5 in the straight. That makes me wonder if peak Usain Bolt (who holds the world record at 19.19) could have broken the 19 second barrier if the event was still run.
Conger and Bentz have had their passports returned and have been allowed to leave the country. Feigen still seems to be hiding somewhere.
The Rio police should tell Ryan Lochte that he’s won the Best Shoes at the Olympics Award but he has to come collect it in person. That would probably work.
Well, you’ve certainly done a good job of rebutting all of the people who were calling for execution.
Who’s greater; Bolt or Phelps?
On another note, thrilled to see Andre de Grasse win silver in the 200m.
I was equally thrilled to see he was pissed he didn’t win gold. It’s nice that Canadian athletes are actually expected to win now, and express disappointment when they lose. The day is not long past when the universal attitude was “Well, I participated! It’s great!” and nobody questioned the performance.
In 2004 Adam van Koeverdon, a kayaker, went to Athens and made a number of statement to the effect that in his opinion he was sent to Athens to win medals and nothing less would do, and that perhaps some of his Olympic teammates had a more casual attitude to trying to win than he found pleasing. He then went out and won medals, including a gold. It was, believe it or not, a revolutionary thing for Canadians to actually talk about how we should try to kick ass. (Aside from in hockey, where anything less than gold is a national disgrace.)
I like sports and games and when I play them I am a perfect sportsman and gentleman at all times, but dammit, it’s about WINNING. Thats the point. When I play golf I don’t cheat and I am encouraging you to play your best if you’'re in my foursome, but I am going to try to beat you. When I play ball I play to win, full stop. No cheating, no funny stuff, no unsportsmanlike nonsense, but it’s balls to the wall until the game is up. Hell, when my wife and I go to the casino to play poker we have an understanding; if we are at the same table we play to destroy each other. No family, no mercy. If she takes my stack, or I take hers, the bitterness is gone once we stand up to go home, and we discuss the hands to help each other improve., That is what makes games fun. If there is a blurred line between trying to win and not, that lends to misunderstandings and hard feelings and takes away from the joy of competition.
It’s not that there isn’t honor in participating. There is, and most athletes will lose because there’s only three medals per event, and if Sally is the 24th best in the world one can hardly chastise her for finishing 22nd. Historically, though, what often happened was we had people ranked 2nd and they finished seventh. In the last 10-15 years that has changed, partially just in attitude but also in tying sports funding directly to success. To see De Grasse clearly disappointed at silver - at first, anyway, obviously he was happy to beat a hell of a non-Bolt field - pleased me. He’d just got smoked by the greatest sprinter who ever lived but he wanted to win. That’s what a champion does. He’'s a winner, and if he stays healthy will win gold in Tokyo.
I don’'t really care how many medals we win and actually I’ve lost count; I think it’s 16 now, certainly more gold than last time. Whatever; I don’t care if it’s 15 or 40. Anyway we’ll do better at the Winter Games. What matters is my team is trying to win now, and that makes it fun. Even when they don’t.
Agreed.
Pretty depressing, though, how many empty seats there were in the stadium. I know that it’s hard to fill an Olympic stadium to the brim for every minute of every day of competition, but if you can’t fill it when the greatest sprinter in history is running in one of the most popular races of the whole games, then maybe you should think about reducing your ticket prices a bit.
Did he file a false police report? Granted, the stories of what happened have been coming and going, but my current understanding of the sequence of events is
Swimmers come in late, minus a bunch of cash. When asked by others there, they say they were robbed.
As word gets out, officials say they’ve not heard of any such thing.
Lochte is asked about it by the press, he repeats his robbery story to them.
Then the Brazilian police start their investigations, not because a report was filed by the swimmers, but because it’s Big News at that point.
During the investigation, the story starts falling apart.
So Lochte is definitely guilty of lying to the press. Possibly guilty of lying to police in the course of an investigation (I’m unclear what he officially told to the police vs what he told to reporters). But I don’t think he filed a false police report.
No question, these guys are dummies (did they actually file a police report???), but for Brazilians to go diaper because they feel they live in this this great country with a spotless record that is suddenly tarnished by this strikes me as a little over-indignant. They were lucky to even have an Olympics where Americans lowered themselves to travel to this Zika-infested dystopia to begin with.
TMZ isn’t the greatest source for legal advice. 
But supposedly they had someone photograph the damage. It was a small crack in a plastic sign.
Maybe TMZ is right? Stranger things have happened. 
Bolt won three golds in a row at a 100m distance, and so did Phelps.
Bolt won three golds at a 200m distance; Phelps won four in a row.
Bolt may win a third 100m relay gold; Phelps won four in a row.
Phelps did that while winning four 200m relay golds in a row.
Phelps also won back-to-back golds at a 400m distance.
So if Bolt returns in four years, and Phelps doesn’t, and Bolt wins the 100m relay again, and also wins his 1st-ever Olympic gold in a 200m relay – and wins the 200m again, and also wins his 1st-ever Olympic gold in the 400m – they’d be directly comparable.
(The comparison would still favor Phelps; even if we leave aside relays, due to the role of teammates, Phelps would still have earned consecutive individual Olympic golds over a greater number of distances than that hypothetical Bolt.)
Also, Phelps has won gold in both the butterfly and the freestyle. Bolt would have to add something like hurdles to his arsenal to be comparable. Phelps has also won the individual medley gold but insisting that Bolt win decathlon seems a bit much.
There is no comparison.
Just compare the medals tables for swimming and running events - look at the countries involved. Swimming; almost entirely European or other first world nations - probably a total population of less that 1 billion.
Swimming - any one go data on the portion of the worlds population that (a) been taught to swim at all / properly and (b) lives within reasonable distance of a well maintained pool?
You may as well compare Equestrian with long jump.
Every abled person in the world can run. And in the next 60 seconds.
This exemplifies the sheer beauty of the Olympic spirit. If an American takes a dump on Copacabana beach, the Brazilians should eat it and be thankful.
Yeah, but he has to be thinking “I can’t wait until this Bolt dude either quits or slows the hell down. I’m young, and will get my chance, but there might be another fast guy who steals my thunder.”
As for Bolt vs. Phelps, it’s always hard to compare medal counts between sports. But, yeah, Bolt needs to come back in four years and dominate again to even be in the conversation with Phelps.
Can we do Usain Bolt v Carl Lewis? Bolt wins Olympic gold in the 100m three times, and in the 200m three time – and Lewis only wins the 100m twice, but does it while winning the Long Jump four times. Which is better, going 3-and-3 or going 4-and-2? Plus they’ve both got relay golds, and if Bolt picks up another as expected he’ll have nine track-and-field golds just like Lewis – but six individual and three team, while Lewis is at seven individual and two team.