Man, the Basketball team nearly got beat by Australia. They have several NBA players too.
Carmelo Anthony saved team USA’s ass. Making 31 points.
98-88 final
Watching the differences in spotting on the uneven bars is kind of interesting. The Chinese and Japanese coaches are all over the gymnasts, standing right next to them throughout. The Russian coach spotted Aliya Mustafina pretty closely but stood vaguely near her teammate on the landing only. Same for the Brazilian. I saw an American coach spot one gymnast on one release move during the team competition and none since. I guess athlete preference?
Big congratulations to my Olympic crush, Kayla Harrison, on successfully defending her Olympic gold medal in women’s judo (-78kg)!
I asked about this on a swimming form yesterday, and all I’ve gotten is that it’s good for teams to swap out swimmers, it makes them faster. Ugh, I hate talking to swimmers sometimes. I asked why are more then four swimmers allowed on a relay team, and all I’ve gotten is “it’s good for teams to swap swimmers so they can be rested.”
I have learned though at some meets they can swap out all four original swimmers.
Attention Olympians: If you pose for a picture biting your medal, I will not root for you to win any more medals. That is all.
Two of the Aussies played for my university. And of course there’s Klay Thompson on the USA team. A little Coug on Coug action.
What’s going on with canoe/kayak? Today was the second day in a row that the programming listed that, but showed something else.
So that’s pretty much all of them, right?
Watching the golf (it’s a shame they went with just a simple stroke play competition instead of something like the NCAA setup) and I heard that they have to deal with capybaras as well as the lousy weather. Sounds like we’ve got a setup for a Caddyshack reboot.
The weather is dreadful, high winds and such, it’s been playing havoc with the rowing/paddling events.
A Canadian girl, Penny Oleksiak, won (actually, tied for) the 100m women’s freestyle. IT’s her fourth medal in the games. She’s 16. Isn’t that depressing? What were YOUR accomplishments when you were 16? I was a stupid jackass. I had a list of accomplishments as long as your arm if your arm was cut off at the shoulder.
I can imagine what it’ll be like when she goes back to high school.
“Hey, Madison, what did you do for summer” “Oh, I did a lot of babysitting. MAde a thousand bucks. And this one weekend we went to an amusement park so that was fun.”
“Hey, Julie, what did you do this summer?” “Oh, this one weekend two friends and I, we snuck a couple of beers out of Dad’s beer fridge. Yup, had two thirds of a beer, got a good buzz on. Oh and I took a course in horse riding so now I can sit on the back of an old, docile horse and not fall off. What did you do, Penny?”
“Oh… well, July was kinda uneventful. Mostly just swam I guess. And then, in August, I became a NATIONAL SPORTING LEGEND. Yeah, I went to the most prestigious athletic event in the world and I went up against world class athletes and won more medals than some whole countries and etched my name into Canadian sporting lore for all time, and I signed a million bucks’ worth of endorsement deals. But, your summer sounded cool too.”
That was an amazing finish in that race. I’m a little surprised they didn’t go to thousandths of a second to determine a winner, but the double gold and double OR was nice to see.
Now watching archery in the rain. Did they not realize that it rains in Brazil in August?
IIRC, back in 1972, they did go to 0.001 second; Gunnar Larson beat Tim McKee in the 400 IM by 0.002 seconds. I read somewhere that they don’t go to 0.001 second now because the result might be affected by differences in the lengths of the different lanes that are still within the allowed tolerance. Somebody swimming 50m in 25 seconds goes 2mm (less than 1/8 inch) in 0.001 second.
How can the lanes be different lengths in a swimming pool? Surely someone makes sure the damn thing was built with square angles and straight lines?
Oh, it’s Rio. Maybe not.
Just exactly how straight is straight? I think to build a pool they dig a hole, lay down some rebar, and then trowel on concrete. Maybe the worker on one side of the pool makes a few extra passes with the trowel, or they pour one side in the cool morning and the other in the hot afternoon. I could see there being a 2mm difference, especially between lane 1 and lane 8.
I think timing details are spec-ed out in the rules of the various sports. I heard somewhere that luge is the only one that times to 1/1,000 of a second.
When I swim at meets I see them measure the pools after each day/meet. Even ones that they’ve measured a few months before.
As for how they can be off, they build the pools knowing which ends will get the touch pads. So if for one meet they only use pads on one end the pool will be longer, which doesn’t matter for any records, but it can’t be shorter. There is some variation allowed in the lengths, though I don’t know what the tolerance is. I would say that if the pool in Rio was off by an inch or so they would fix it if they had the chance or not count any world records if they couldn’t fix it. I’ve seen cases, in Masters swimming, where they wouldn’t give top ten times at certain pools because it was slightly too short.
I like the overhead camera they have in the swimming competitions, especially when they have it right in front of the swimmer. That’s a view we typically don’t see. They have had underwater cameras for a while, but this is the first time we get to be just a few feet in front of the swimmer.
One funny thing is when they show the whole field from high above the pool. I guess because of the lens (fish eye?), the swimmers farther from the center look more crooked in their strokes. They often look like they’re flailing off to the outside of the pool. The first few times I was like “WTF is that guy in lane 7 doing?!?”.
Don’t forget the nonstop party/orgy at the 10,000 strong Olympic village. (Since one of your mundane examples was sneaking a beer.)
If Canada dominated the Olympics like America did, Canadian coverage would be seen as just as bad as American coverage. This is true for all countries, because all countries focus their coverage on themselves. But when you run out of “our athletes”, you fill time by focusing on athletes from other countries. America just never runs out of “our athletes.”
Consider that right now google says America has 39 medals, Canada has 8. So multiply Canada’s participation in the games by a factor of 5, and how balanced would the “mostly focused on Canada” coverage really be?
Did anyone watch the women’s soccer quarter-final between the US and Sweden today? The Swedes played really well, and the US, like in their other games at these Olympics, never really quite looked at the top of their game. Certainly not as strong as the team that won last year’s World Cup.
The 1-1 draw at the end of regulation, and at the end of 30 minutes extra time, was probably a reasonable reflection of the way the two teams played, although the US put a lot of pressure on the Swedish goal in overtime. Ending in a penalty shootout is never a very satisfying way to finish a game, and poor Christen Press is going to see her penalty shot go over the bar in her nightmares.
I was not really rooting for either team. Support for the underdog would generally dispose me towards Sweden, but i like the US women’s team, and like to see them do well. But when Hope Solo delayed the last kick of the penalty shoot-out to change her gloves, in a blatant piece of gamesmanship and an effort to put the Swedish kicker off her game, i started rooting for the Swede, and was really happy to see her bury the ball in the back of the net.
64% possession to the USA and outshot Sweden 26-3. Sweden played exactly the way they needed to to win, but a 1-1 score hardly reflected the run of play.
I concede that the US were the stronger team, but they didn’t make the most of their opportunities. I’ve also never been convinced that shots on goal or possession are an iron-clad indicator of performance, in the men’s or women’s games. I’ve seen games where a team dominates, get a half-dozen good shots on goal, and wins 4-0. I’ve seen other games where a team manages 20 shots, but basically none of them even trouble the keeper very much. Quite a lot of the US shots fell into the latter category.
I’m not arguing that shots or possession are irrelevant, and i think they point up differences in overall quality, and in the specific strategies adopted when a weaker team plays a stronger one. I have no doubt that, in 9 out of 10 games they play, the US would beat Sweden. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story in a game of soccer.