Olympics 2021 (nee 2020)

[Trader Pat]

Looking forward to seeing how the Namibian girl gets on in the 200m, she had serious speed on the straight even though she had poor starts in both heats. Don't think she'll win the race but good chance of a bronze.

The 2 Namibian girls in the final were originally 400m runners but are not allowed race above 200m because of high levels of testosterone (which I think is a load of bo##ocks, or maybe too much bo##ocks!) I thinks its very unfair that they had to drop down to a new event through no fault of their own.

[rik]

0.76s knocked off the 400m Hurdles WR.
I'm calling that one dodddddgy as fuck. He broke the 29 year old World Record last month with 46.70 then does 45.94 for the first sub 46s 400m hurdles ever.
Bollox bollox bollox I'll call bollox to the moon on that one, 400m hurdler improving almost a second in a month? The fukkouda here ya cheating fuck

Cant call someone a cheater just for exceptional performance even if its naive to assume otherwise.
Track definitely must be fast but maybe there is a new drug around, not tested for or on the doping list yet?

[Trader Pat]

0.76s knocked off the 400m Hurdles WR.
I'm calling that one dodddddgy as fuck. He broke the 29 year old World Record last month with 46.70 then does 45.94 for the first sub 46s 400m hurdles ever.
Bollox bollox bollox I'll call bollox to the moon on that one, 400m hurdler improving almost a second in a month? The fukkouda here ya cheating fuck

Cant call someone a cheater just for exceptional performance even if its naive to assume otherwise.
Track definitely must be fast but maybe there is a new drug around, not tested for or on the doping list yet?

New shoe technology to take into account as well.

[rik]

The 800m womans final just now had 6 personal bests!

[greenmark]

My insomnia has just gifted me the skateboarding. What joy in what you do! What lack of nastiness! Truly Olympian, be the best you can be and encourage and support your competitors to be better by being brilliant.But not knock them down with words. Fabulous!

[greenmark]

Insomnia part 2. 50k walk. Ridiculous event.
Appallingly difficult to apply the rules, but even I can see walkers lifting (including the likely gold medal winner).
Just silly.

[andy28]

Most successful games for NZ ever, with 20 medals, thanks mainly down to Lisa Carrington, what a ledgend she is. She has 1 more shot at Gold, so heres hoping the tally keeps climbing

[gazuty]

Most successful games for NZ ever, with 20 medals, thanks mainly down to Lisa Carrington, what a ledgend she is. She has 1 more shot at Gold, so heres hoping the tally keeps climbing

Well done NZ. Awesome effort for a small nation (outstrips Denmark and Norway with roughly similar societies).

If we still competed as Australasia (Australia and NZ combined in the first few olympics) we'd jump Japan and be third on the medal table. Probably go even better in some of the team sports.

[greenmark]

Most successful games for NZ ever, with 20 medals, thanks mainly down to Lisa Carrington, what a ledgend she is. She has 1 more shot at Gold, so heres hoping the tally keeps climbing

Well done NZ. Awesome effort for a small nation (outstrips Denmark and Norway with roughly similar societies).

If we still competed as Australasia (Australia and NZ combined in the first few olympics) we'd jump Japan and be third on the medal table. Probably go even better in some of the team sports.

Well done both NZ and Aus. If you did compete as one you would have 24 golds compared to GB's 16 with less than half the population.
How do you guys do that?

[gazuty]

Well done both NZ and Aus. If you did compete as one you would have 24 golds compared to GB's 16 with less than half the population.
How do you guys do that?

It's a game of population, money and focus.

The bigger the population the more likely you'll find humans within that population closer to the end of the bell curve that can excel in a particular sport.

Then its money which comes out these ways:

1. you need to live in a society where there is reasonable amount of social harmony etc (you don't see many of the war torn nations at the top of the medal table). Those humans you do find need to live in a society that allows them to devote almost all their time to sport. Bascially, a society with an advanced economy = money at a whole nation level.
2. you need a society with some liesure and social type activities focussed on olymic sports - for Australia a great example is swimming, which provides the bulk of our medals and also is a wildly popular in north of Melbourne (that's not to say Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart don't produce swimmers, just that the weather and sheer number of olympic swimming pools in the northern states attracts a bigger pool of kids). NZ focus almost all their sport energy on Rugby (of course NZ have also had swimmers, sailors and other olympic medals). Again, this requires money at a whole nation level.
3. you need money to spot talent, capture talent in a programme, train the talent and send the talent to the games - again for Australia that is swimming, rowing, cycling etc This is the focussed money directed at actually developing talent over a long period to produce olypic medals.

Finally, it's focus. A country can't excel in everything (unless it's the USA or China). Focus on the sports popular in the nation with a wide enough pool of athletes etc to produce outlier performers.

It does build national pride and cohesiveness in Australian society (not saying that Olympic performance would matter in other societies but it does matter down under).

[Dallas]

Mens 4 x 100m final was one of the best races I've seen in long time

[greenmark]

Well done both NZ and Aus. If you did compete as one you would have 24 golds compared to GB's 16 with less than half the population.
How do you guys do that?

It's a game of population, money and focus.

The bigger the population the more likely you'll find humans within that population closer to the end of the bell curve that can excel in a particular sport.

Then its money which comes out these ways:

1. you need to live in a society where there is reasonable amount of social harmony etc (you don't see many of the war torn nations at the top of the medal table). Those humans you do find need to live in a society that allows them to devote almost all their time to sport. Bascially, a society with an advanced economy = money at a whole nation level.
2. you need a society with some liesure and social type activities focussed on olymic sports - for Australia a great example is swimming, which provides the bulk of our medals and also is a wildly popular in north of Melbourne (that's not to say Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart don't produce swimmers, just that the weather and sheer number of olympic swimming pools in the northern states attracts a bigger pool of kids). NZ focus almost all their sport energy on Rugby (of course NZ have also had swimmers, sailors and other olympic medals). Again, this requires money at a whole nation level.
3. you need money to spot talent, capture talent in a programme, train the talent and send the talent to the games - again for Australia that is swimming, rowing, cycling etc This is the focussed money directed at actually developing talent over a long period to produce olypic medals.

Finally, it's focus. A country can't excel in everything (unless it's the USA or China). Focus on the sports popular in the nation with a wide enough pool of athletes etc to produce outlier performers.

It does build national pride and cohesiveness in Australian society (not saying that Olympic performance would matter in other societies but it does matter down under).

Excellent as per usual Gazuty.
Over here in GB. It seems sporting excellence is now dependent on the lottery. The govt are standing back and saying ' if the public are really interested in this then they'll foot the bill". And by all accounts failure is not an option for an individual, which may dovetail with the sudden mental health issues across athletics.
Nonetheless, Oz and NZ punch above GB with half the population. It's not that surprising I guess. Dreary, wet and windy Tuesday in Chesterfield or a sun-kissed Ozzy beach. Personally, I'd take soggy Chesterfield every time.
But I can't handle heat above 25C. I'd collapse in sustained 30C+ temps.

[Trader Pat]

Alternative medal table is an interesting read even though it doesn't take into account how much each country allocates to Olympic funding.

https://ig.ft.com/tokyo-olympics-altern ... dal-table/

[Dublin_Flyer]

This will probably be the headline I remember from Tokyo 20/21

[Trader Pat]

This will probably be the headline I remember from Tokyo 20/21

When I first saw that headline today I thought it was something like Roberto Duran!

Not that bad thankfully but the poor horse looked terrified. Don't understand the logic of being drawn a horse. Apart from the horses being spooked, the outcome of an elite sport should have as little to do with luck as possible.