Team USA losing late to Japan for the baseball gold medal.
I have to congratulate Japan for winning the gold medal in baseball.
- Baseball is obviously super popular there.
- They have never won the gold medal before. Kind of surprising.
- They won it the first time in their home country.
- They massively outplayed America in this game.
I’m really happy for them.
On the other hand, the USA women’s water polo team won their third straight Gold Medal. Very happy for them.
It does cause a 3 week shutdown in the middle of the season. But, they’ll play in 2022 to ‘grow the game’ in China.
It hasn’t been officially confirmed, but the NHL schedule does have a gap in it for the Olympics
Wow, I hope that is correct. I totally support a break in any pro season to support the Olympics.
Brazil vs. Spain for the gold medal in men’s soccer. Went to full extra time(120 minutes) and Brazil scored around minute 115 to put it away.
Tough loss for Spain, but a lot of fun to watch .
U.S. Olympic coverage has been terrible forever. There are complaints every single time.
And yet they never really change it; the coverage is bad time after time, and nothing is done. They have to get complaints; they know a lot of people despise it. So there must be a huge, huge market out there of people who LIKE watching personal interest stories instead of sports and really spotty coverage of actual events.
Well yeah, it’s the most popular sport in Japan. 
This year was the first time the Dominican Republic has ever won a medal of any color. While these results may sound weird, you have to bear in mind that the major baseball powers don’t have access to their best players, because the big leagues - be it MLB or NPB - don’t shut down for the Olympics.
Consequently, Cuba has fared better than most, because they still have their very best players who haven’t managed to escape Cuba, while Japan, the USA, South Korea, Canada, Venezuela et al. all have to put together a team of the best amateurs, second-tier players and has-beens they can find. It’s a scramble for them and makes it an unpredictable tournament. The starting pitcher for the USA in the golod medal game (who pitched pretty well) was Nick Martinez. Nick did pitch in the major leagues for awhile but not since 2017. I mean no disrespect to the guy, a major leaguer is a major leaguer, but he probably isn’t one of the 100 best American starting pitchers.
There’s also just the fact that in a very limited number of games, baseball is highly random.
Drama from the womens modern pentathlon, a sport that was ridiculed in the past but seems to be getting some credibility, it is a real all around mixed bag but interesting. Anyway the German Annika Schleu had a disaster on the show jumping section , the horse ,Saint Boy, refused to jump and Schleu went out of contention. The horses are randomly assigned and the competitors have 20 minutes to familiarize themselves with the horse prior to the event, and now the German coach has been thrown out for punching the horse in the warm up, also was calling for whipping the horse. The horse may have had a bad experience with a previous rider and appeared to be not at all happy.
I will forever be paying to get access to their app. It has all the footage and I have not seen a single human interest story or anything else to break up coverage of the sport. I’ll never go back to watching the live-feed of TV primetime coverage. It’s better to just watch it at my leisure and get the entire event with minimal breakup.
Yes…I know. My obviously didn’t mean “you can tell from this game”, but meant “everyone knows this already”.
I definitely disagree, that’s a huge hole in the NHL season and it causes a lot of back to backs during the compressed regular season
Agreed. Though it’s annoying to have to skip through the halftime intermission of a handball match myself.
Sure, some downtime is not fun, but it works fairly well with the skipping. I’ve been very happy.
Instead of the Russian national anthem, what theme/music plays when ROC wins something?
FTR the NPB did shut down for the Olympics to allow its players to compete.
“The Japanese benefited from Nippon Professional Baseball — the country’s top league — pausing its season for the Olympics and letting players participate. The host country’s entry was essentially an All-Star team from the second-best league in the world.”
Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto 1.
As I said earlier, I’m days behind, and I finally got to see Simone Biles on the balance beam. Did anyone else hear the cameras? Tchtchtchtchtchtchtch…It sounded like one of those old manual typewriters, like Ring Lardner was pounding away on his Olivetti. And of course, those photos are going to enhance a story about how much pressure is on Biles and how everything she does gets watched and judged.
Any trivial complaints I had about Canadian Olympic coverage vanished after watching it on American TV. In addition to there being athletes from many countries, they continuous use split-screens to either advertise (which is terrible) or show the athletes supporters cheering at home. (Which is fine in short stints but annoying in long ones).
So would everyone agree that these Olympics have been a success given the circumstances. The empty stands definitely reduces the atmosphere but you sort of get used it and ultimately it’s the performances that count. I have only watched in bits and pieces but my sense is that the overall performances have been of the usual standard. There have been some minor Covid outbreaks among Olympians but not to the point where it has significantly affected the games, at least to my knowledge.
I still think the best solution would have been to postpone to 2022 but holding it now was definitely better than complete cancellation.
I did not think they should have held the Olympics, but I am happy to admit Zi have often enjoyed some events.