London Olympics 2012

In terms of events that aren't taking place, there really should be cricket in the London Olympics, as was stated up-thread. Full test cricket is clearly out of the question, but limited overs should be possible.

I know that there are a fair percentage of Olympic nations who would not be interested, but enough would be.

To be brutally honest about baseball, I know that it is popular in a lot of countries, and a national pastime for some, but it has practically no traction in the UK at all. There would be some empty stadia if it was still part of the games.

To display my ignorance, how long does a game take?

jowner wrote:

Trying to get interested/involved but CTV's coverage in Canada so far has been painful.

I think I finally got a feed working of an actual event happening that doesn't involve Canada or is a main stream sport/event.

Mens fencing! who cares but it sure beats hearing the non stop news cycle of how Canada is doing.

From what I have read, pretty much the only way to get decent coverage in Northern America seems to be pirating the BBC streams. There was a guide on Lifehacker earlier today, if I recall my RSS feeds properly, and I think that Techcrunch had one too.

spider_j wrote:

To display my ignorance, how long does a game take?

It varies pretty wildly. Can be anywhere from 2 hours to 4 hours, with the average sitting around 2.75.

Most games are 9 innings, but the game doesn't end til someone wins. The longest single game in MLB history stretched to 25 innings and lasted a little over 8 hours.

TBH I'm a bit sick of the constant doping allegations levelled against Chinese athletes, it comes out every games like clockwork. Australian commentators will flog that horse like you wouldn't believe. To my knowledge China's only been convicted once and it was a volleyballer who was cleared of intentionally cheating. The US have been busted 8 times.

China's a very big, very wealthy nation with a long history of athletic and sporting prowess. That'll produce some amazing athletes.

I wonder if part of the problem with baseball in the Olympics is the required facility. You can't hold baseball in just any old stadium, you need a baseball diamond, right? And if baseball is not popular in that country, then after the games they'll have to spend money to revamp the baseball diamond into something else (I looked it up, and several became soccer/football stadiums).

Maq wrote:

TBH I'm a bit sick of the constant doping allegations levelled against Chinese athletes, it comes out every games like clockwork.

These got leveled against the Irish swimmer Michelle Smith when she turned in an amazing performance a few Olympics ago. Lance Armstrong has been the target of doping allegations forever. Marion Jones was stripped of her medals after she won big. Canadian Ben Jonson raised suspicion when he beat Carl Lewis and later lost his medal. This year, there was one Chinese swimmer who wasn't sent to the London games after failing a test earlier in the year.

Every country's endurance athletes will incur suspicion under the right circumstances because we know that doping is so common. It's not just Chinese athletes. It's everybody's athletes.

It's always the Chinese swimmers. Every games. Never proven.

In this case it's a single Chinese swimmer. Do you hear anyone talking about all the other Chinese athletes that have won medals so far?

Fun facts

Rebecca Addlington's last 50metres in the 800 metres was also faster than Lochte's
In percentage terms Meilutyte's jump in PB is bigger than Ye's
Ian Thorpe took 5 seconds of his PB in a similar amount of time as Ye
And most important of all Ye has passed all her drug tests so far.

But lets not these things get in the way of a good old fashioned witch hunt.

The fun part was after the game, when the Tunisia player takes off his shoe and asks Kobe to sign it.

onewild wrote:

And most important of all Ye has passed all her drug tests so far.

That's pretty unimportant, since many doping cases are brought well after the event when blood is tested with new methods.

Also, I wouldn't call it a witch hunt. I admit it's just speculation. It's not like I'm going to run out and strip her of a medal.

Blind_Evil wrote:

And since when does Venezuela not count as part of South America?

Since they've never played in the Olympics. That's when. US, Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico are the only teams from the Americas to play. And, the last three only played once each.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

And since when does Venezuela not count as part of South America?

Since they've never played in the Olympics. That's when. US, Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico are the only teams from the Americas to play. And, the last three only played once each.

Aren't Belize, Costa Rica, Panama and Guatemala all at the Olympics? I noticed those countries had athletes in the procession of countries because I've visited all those countries. You mean in the Olympics writ-large or baseball?

DSGamer wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

And since when does Venezuela not count as part of South America?

Since they've never played in the Olympics. That's when. US, Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico are the only teams from the Americas to play. And, the last three only played once each.

Aren't Belize, Costa Rica, Panama and Guatemala all at the Olympics? I noticed those countries had athletes in the procession of countries because I've visited all those countries. You mean in the Olympics writ-large or baseball?

Baseball.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

And since when does Venezuela not count as part of South America?

Since they've never played in the Olympics. That's when. US, Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico are the only teams from the Americas to play. And, the last three only played once each.

I was talking about the World Baseball Classic, though.

Everyone seems to be complaining about their local host network. NBC in the US. Ch9 in Australia. I don't get it.

Given the massive piles of cash it takes to win the broadcast rights these networks need to treat their customers as well as they can to ensure they get a return on their investment in reselling the product.

As long as you realise that you and your eyeballs are not the customers - you're the product.

Heck now I've got friends on Facebook and Twitter Female Doggoing about people revealing results early. It's not other people's fault that NBC is showing things delayed. They happened 6 hours ago, everyone knows who won. If you really want to go on media blackout to watch in primetime, then you need to go on full media blackout. If not, it's your own fault for being on the internet and being spoiled.

I'm really missing the BBC coverage here on holiday =(

Funkenpants wrote:
onewild wrote:

And most important of all Ye has passed all her drug tests so far.

That's pretty unimportant, since many doping cases are brought well after the event when blood is tested with new methods.

Also, I wouldn't call it a witch hunt. I admit it's just speculation. It's not like I'm going to run out and strip her of a medal.

When I was talking about the witch hunt, I was refering to the press coverage it is getting, not anything you have said.

Hey the hosts finally got a gold. Congrats!

Saw Cycling live a few min ago. Looks like they also got one in women's pair rowing.

Yep, gold and bronze in the cycling (Not satisfied with winning the Tour De France, Bradley Wiggins took the time trial too; guess those sideburns arent causing too much drag!) and gold in the women's rowing pair.

A couple of random thoughts / questions.

#1 - Can we stop calling Michael Phelps the "greatest Olympian ever"? First off is "greatness" literally just defined by pure number of medals? Not what kind of athlete they are, what sports they compete in, etc. Michael Phelps is a great swimmer, but shouldn't it count for something if someone competed in other events? Thinking Carl Lewis or someone like that.

#2 - NBC coverage sucks. There have been some reports today of how the US Women gymnasts had already basically locked up the gold due to a huge mistake by one of the Russian gymnasts. Yet in this relentless drive to play up the drama and the human interest angle they didn't bother showing that or really covering the sport overall.

#3 - In an age of Twitter and on-demand video through your XBox/PS3/Apple TV/Roku, etc. I feel like this is the last Olympics that will be "controlled" by one network. It should be much easier for a person to just dial up a sport they like and actually watch the sport. Including athletes from foreign countries.

Well at the NBC Olympics site, you can actually stream everything live, and watch replays.

Except for the events they want to delay for primetime. For those they have a story on the frontpage listing the results. And photos usually. But no link to the video replay until later, after it has aired on NBC. At least that's what I've seen the last few days, trying to check on the swimming races. It's possible the video replay has been up before, but it certainly hasn't been up like most of the sports.

For tonight's listings, they are showing lots of swimming in primetime again, and those events start in about an hour. So I'll look again in about 3 hours maybe and see if there is any video posted with results. I doubt it though.

EDIT: It looks like the Men's All-Around Gymnastics final is actually streaming live now. That's another event listed for tonight's primetime segment. So maybe they're not blocking everything.

It may be on the website. I feel like, though, the Olympics are still a TV event. As such it would be easier if they made this available on TV. We have the tools now.

In other actual sport news... 8 women Badminton players DQed.

Apparently these doubles players were throwing pool matches to get a better seed in the elimination round.

OMG BADMINTON IN CRISIS WORLD WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.

I watched the footage of one of the games being thrown. Absolutely disgusting display of gamesmanship (gameswomanship?). I don't think that I've ever heard a BBC commentator get so angry, but watching 2 teams trying lose deliberately, and blatantly, justified it. I am very happy that they have have been thrown out. That kind of behaviour goes contrary to the spirit of the event and the Olympic oath.

Waiting for the men's 200m breaststroke final. Fun fact: I can't do breast stroke due to a bad hip. I end up going in circles.

Well yeah isn't the whole point of the simultaneous final matches in all of the pool play sports is to keep teams from losing or drawing on purpose?

Sadly just watched USA not medal in epee. We lost in the semi and bronze match in overtime both times.

And women's water polo with a silly tie to Spain. Had a 3 goal lead with 2 min left and blew it. Still had last possession and shot, but took the shot with 4 sec left, despite having a player advantage. Still, just pool play, and I guess they are tied for the lead with Spain, so nearly guaranteed to get to the elimination rounds.

Whoa! Defending gold medalist Zaguinis just lost the sabre semi after being up 13-5. 10-1 run to close it. Holy crap.

DSGamer wrote:

#1 - Can we stop calling Michael Phelps the "greatest Olympian ever"? First off is "greatness" literally just defined by pure number of medals? Not what kind of athlete they are, what sports they compete in, etc. Michael Phelps is a great swimmer, but shouldn't it count for something if someone competed in other events? Thinking Carl Lewis or someone like that.

It's obviously silly to define greatest Olympian by number of medals won because every sport offers a different amount of medals. Most of the top medal counts belong to swimmers, gymnasts and track stars because those sports let a single athlete win multiple medals a year. That doesn't mean they're better than someone competing in a sport that only offers one medal a year.

#2 - NBC coverage sucks. There have been some reports today of how the US Women gymnasts had already basically locked up the gold due to a huge mistake by one of the Russian gymnasts. Yet in this relentless drive to play up the drama and the human interest angle they didn't bother showing that or really covering the sport overall.

If you're talking about women's team last night, they definitely did show the large mistakes by the Russians. They showed both of the wobbly beam performances and the Russian girl who completely left out half of a tumbling pass on the floor. They did point out, as the Americans went on the floor, that they had the gold in the bag, and Aly Raisman apparently replaced a planned tumbling pass with a less difficult one for safety.

My major beef with the women's team gymnastics coverage was that it was hyper-focused on Jordyn Wieber's "redemption story" at the expense of the other girls. Gabby Douglas turned in four performances to Wieber's three and probably got less screen time.

Oh, and the usual inane chatter and America-centric coverage but that's every year.