Ayup, in spades.
Judo athlete defends coach for a couple slaps to get her ready for a match. I see her point. Sleepwalking into a judo match is a very bad idea. She apparently doesn’t mind some stimulation to get her ready to kick butt. The coach didn’t hit her hard.
By doing what every amateur bike racer does: pay fucking attention to the race. The Dutch rider’s excuse is bullshit. They didn’t have situational awareness in the event they were competing in.
Ever hear Tuukka Rask say that the reason he gave up a goal was because nobody told him there was an odd man rush headed his way, so how was he supposed to know about it? Of course not.
As I mentioned earlier, had she done this in any individual competition I would completely agree. She wasnt forced to compete in a team event. She could have refused especially after suffering through the horror that is USA gymnastics. As an Olympic vet she is well aware of the stresses that go along with competing. But she has three other teammates who might never again have this opportunity to win gold. She should have done it for them imo.
I have a feeling that the full story hasnt come out so my opinion can change.
I don’t see an issue here, I’ve known of athletes in other combat sports to ask to be slapped a bit right before a match to get them amped up. The key is she asked her coach to do this as part of her warm up ritual, he wasn’t striking her out of anger or etc.
Yes, but Rask isn’t in a crowd of 60 riders, and having to keep an eye on all of them. If someone is at the back of the peloton when a group breaks away from the front, it might be hard to see if the breakaway is 5 riders or 6.
Plus, I’ve often heart the announcers during the Tour de France say that the peloton doesn’t want to catch a breakaway too early. Once a breakaway gets out of sight, there’s no way to tell if they’re 5 minutes ahead, or 10. How does the peloton time their effort to catch them?
Or are these just the things that make the Olympic Road Race different from the grand tours?
I can see your point, but it’s also possible that she felt off enough that she honestly thought they’d stand a better chance without her. Seems unlikely since she’s normally so good, but maybe they wouldn’t have even won silver. In any case the US was second in the prelims with her, and second again in the finals without her, so who knows.
Agreed. It was a sad moment.
I’m watching that, and thinking, “Hey! That’s not how water works!”. Some kind of fuckin Rain-X on the bottom of those boats that make them go upstream almost by will. Amazing shit.
There were 67 riders in the women’s road race. That’s a decent field size, but it’s not huge. That being said, only five teams, including the Netherlands, had a full contingent of four riders. If all four Dutch riders were in the back and not watching how the race was developing, that’s a big tactical error. They should have always had a rider near the front.
The five rider break went early, but not one of the teams that had four riders (the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Germany and the USA) covered it. I think that is another error, but it may have been a reasonable decision that early in the race. Still, counting and tracking five riders off the front doesn’t require Mensa levels of brainpower. In fact one Dutch rider, Marianne Vos, said after the race that she knew that one rider was still out front. I don’t know if she explained why that wasn’t communicated, but you don’t need radios to talk to another rider. Just like you don’t need radios to know the approximate time splits, a moto official has those splits on a whiteboard that they show to the riders.
I didn’t watch the race, but the reports I’ve read said it was a stupid race with stupid tactics. Except the for the early five rider break. That turned out to be a great move.
The Olympic race is different than other races due to the small (and varied) team sizes, which require a different approach to strategy and tactics. The winner, Austria’s Anna Kiesenhofer, had no teammates which freed her up to play her own game. The Dutch and other teams failed to adapt. Van Vleuten making up the excuse about not having radios is just silly. They fucked up, plain and simple.
I disagree. All apart from front crawl are sub optimal in terms of speed. It is the equivalent of hosting a 100 metres backwards race, sideways race and hopping race. All different, all needing specific skills and techniques and all interesting in a “dog on hind legs” way but all objectively slower that the straighforward sprint.
The objective is to be the fastest using a specific swimming style. Now in track we have sprints, intermediate races, the marathon and even walking competitions. Part of the fun of the Olympics is getting to watch the different events once every four years.
And for all the running events you mention there is no restriction on how you cover the ground.
Walking is deeply dull and pointless to me as well.
Not trying to be pedantic but the restrictions on running are self imposed. You wouldnt sprint a marathon or walk a 100 meter race.
Ino the Olympics are too short as they are. I get into the Olympic groove and they are over. I love the unusual to me events and athletes from all over the world.
I don’t see that as being pedantic but rather an obvious description of every athletic event that requires energy expenditure. It isn’t a restriction on method but rather a test of your race management.
However, you are free to choose whatever method of locomotion you desire and execute it a manner that means you are the fastest (and so are first).
I was watching a bit of canoe slalom, a sport I didn’t even know existed and I have to say it looked like one of the most fun sports out there. Has anyone tried it?
Yeah, having to use the breaststroke or butterfly in in a swimming event would be like running a race where you had to jump over things between the start and finish.
I get that it was a mistake, I was just trying to figure out how the riders are supposed to keep track of the situation. Thanks for the explanations.
I’ve seen the moto with the whiteboard in the TdF, but didn’t notice it in the Olympic road races. I also don’t see women’s cycling nearly as often as men’s. I don’t know how many women’s events there are that are run with trade teams and radios. I wonder if van Vleuten was so accustomed to getting info by radio that she didn’t have much practice on what to do without it.
Backstroke was added in the 1900 Olympics. Breaststroke was added in 1908. Butterfly (which started as a variant of breaststroke) was added in 1956. The 4 stroke medleys and IM were added soon after that. So, multiple strokes have been part of the swimming events since nearly the beginning of the modern Olympics.
Other previously held events were underwater swimming and obstacle.
Germany and France finally getting interesting in handball, Germany just looked awful to start but the Germans have definitely woken up and this is getting good.