Beijing Olympics Thread

[browna]

So who's the flag bearer going to be for the closing ceremonies?

IMO its between:

Ian Miller - 9 fraking Olympic appearences, first medal...a clutch clean round to put Canada into the jumpoff, months after wife dying.

Simon Whitfield - In addition to the medal, great story, great guy, and great effort to match the expectations put on him.

Maybe Carol Huynh, who exceeded expectations. Maybe playing a bit of the fact that her mother is a Chinese immigrant.

[JayP]

I love the Olympics, but watching judged events can be painful.

I'm just watching the 10m platform diving now and clearly there's some biased judges. The Chinese diver was last up and diving for silver or bronze. He does a tough dive, but doesn't do it very well (according to the announcer who picks out obvious flaws) and creates the biggest splash I've seen in any diving event thus far (and I've watched the 3m springboard men's, men's synchro, women's, and 10m women's). The splash basically looked like a cannonball (from your typical micro Chinese diver too). Most of the scores are 6.5 or 7.0 and surprise, surprise there's an 8.5 sitting there. The score got thrown out, but there's absolutely no way you can make a splash like that and get what is basically your average score for the 3rd or 4th place divers.

[Frequitude]

I just don't want to see Lamaze carry it. Despite the fact he brought home the biggest haul, he doesn't represent the type of character I want carrying our flag. Give it to Ian Miller.

[GirlySports]

How did everyone find these Olympics?

China wanted to put on a great show but to me it lacked alot of atmosphere, mostly because of the empty seats in the arenas.

I found these Olympics pretty average. Maybe a little bit better than Athens but definitely worse than Sydney.

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

How did everyone find these Olympics?

China wanted to put on a great show but to me it lacked alot of atmosphere, mostly because of the empty seats in the arenas.

I found these Olympics pretty average. Maybe a little bit better than Athens but definitely worse than Sydney.

Agreed. Also found it tough to get into because of the time difference too - simply couldn't watch enough of the events live. That's a challenge for most of the games, but this year for me because of my job it was simply impossible to stay up late to watch a lot of events I really wanted to.

I found Bolt to be the biggest story of the games, even bigger than Phelps.

[troutman]

Simon should carry the flag - his performance lifted the entire team and country. I'll never forget him throwing off his hat, and laying down the law.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

How did everyone find these Olympics?

China wanted to put on a great show but to me it lacked alot of atmosphere, mostly because of the empty seats in the arenas.

I found these Olympics pretty average. Maybe a little bit better than Athens but definitely worse than Sydney.

To me they'll be remember as a bit of scam. The IOC got scammed into awarding the games to Beijing with promises of change that have not been followed up on, and we've also seen a fair bit of suspicious officiating favoring the chinese. Big PR stunt by China, which in my mind has backfired. London 2012 might not match the same level of theatrics as Beijing, but they won't be censoring athlete's blogs or limit protests to official protest zones - and then deny every single application to use those zones. These games we're supposed to be a chance to show the world China has arrived, but all they've shown is that China has the ability to put on a good show without making any real progress beyond expanding their economy, which we already knew. Lipstick on the pig, so to speak.

As far as the Athletics go, Bolt and Phelps put on huge performances, and nothing can take that away from them.

[browna]

Found them to be far superior to Athens.

All the doomsdayers worried about restrictive security and overbearing hosts were incorrect.

The CBC rolled out a COC member who came to Beijing last year to do air quality tests to judge how it may affect performance and if Canadian atheltes should train different, and he debunked the air quality thing right away, in the first two days,....it was rarely brought up on CBC.

From all accounts tranporation, traffic and logistics were miles ahead of Athens.

The first few days of competition were slow, but I found the crowds after that to be far ahead of Athens in numbers and enthusiam. Look at how full rowing was, something the Chinese are just breaking through in...a 20K+ seat venue. Some of the sports are more obscure to the Chinese, but you'll find that in every Olympics. Seeing 60K for the end of the race walk in the main stadium was pretty cool, considering it was 11am and there weren't many marquee events that early. Considering it was 90% chinese (as opposed to Athens which was a Euro melting pot) in the stands, I think they were well attended.

So as far as an event goes, they looked really well run, venues looked top class. Vancouver and Chicago (2016 hopefull) basically said they're no way they can match these games and their expansiveness.

So all in all, I liked them and I think China put on a good show and a well run, well attended event, which is all you can ask for the Olympics.

I guess you'd be disappointed if you were expecting the Chinese government to use this as a world stage to come out daily and make amends and apologies for all thier historical policies or not, or to change their current societal restrictions, and ask to be instantly intergated into western society, but there certainly wasn't some of the sensationalistic worrysome, negaitve vibe that the western press had drummed up in the years leading to the games either.

As far as Olympics go, sounded like everything went off better then expected and a lot of the myths about how things were going to go down were debunked.

[OILFAN #81]

Cockburn has officially been named the flag bearer for the closing ceremonies.

http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id...=topStory_main

She's only the 4th Canadian ever to win medals in 3 straight Olympic Games.

[Dion]

I did end up watching some of the Olympics and was disappointed with all the empty seats. I'm sure the athletes felt the same way.

Bolt and Phelps were the stars of the Olympics.

There were rumours that all the smog and pollution would prevent rcords from being broken. Guess Bolt put that rumour to rest.

From all acpunts they say it was a well run and organised Olympics.

[browna]

Originally Posted by OILFAN #81

Cockburn has officially been named the flag bearer for the closing ceremonies.

http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id...=topStory_main

She's only the 4th Canadian ever to win medals in 3 straight Olympic Games.

Watch out for the PQ...Heymans also just has won medals in last 3 Olympics, but the COC picked the anglophone......

[bluejays]

Any guesses on what the US-Spain Basketball final will end up like? I'm gonna go 113-83 US. Aside from Carmelo Anthony, I think the US finally took some players who have some class and a desire to respect their opponents and win...and it's showing. Spain hasn't looked very powerful at all, and I'm gonna guess this is going to be a rollover unless Gasol can pull off the most amazing game of his life.

High Scorers: US - Bryant 22; Spain - Gasol 23.

[Machiavelli]

^ Hmm, I'll go with 117-95 for the U.S.

[troutman]

I think CBC wants us to watch some show called Sophie.

[getbak]

So, after all the hand-wringing and bridge-jumping of the first week, Canada had its third best performance ever at a non-boycotted Summer Olympics (behind 22 medals in Atlanta, and tied with 18 medals - but fewer golds - in Barcelona).

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by getbak

So, after all the hand-wringing and bridge-jumping of the first week, Canada had its third best performance ever at a non-boycotted Summer Olympics (behind 22 medals in Atlanta, and tied with 18 medals - but fewer golds - in Barcelona).

And alot of fourths!!

[Bagor]

Middleweight boxing final between the Brit and the Cuban has to be a serious contender for the worst reffed match of the games.

Probably more throws and dumps to the floor than your average judo match. Poor ref didn't seem to know the word "break". Just seemed clueless.

FWIW the Brit won.

[bigtmac19]

Closing ceremonies were spectacular as well.

Loved the London bit, that was a great surprise.

[HelloHockeyFans]

It's awesome seeing all the athletes come into the stadium randomly and almost mingling with other countries... good stuff!

[icarus]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

And alot of fourths!!

10 of them apparently. We are the winners of not winning!