London Olympics 2012

Oh poor Japan. A great opportunity in the box that should have tied the game. And then give up a goal 15 seconds later on the counter.

Went to the sailing in Weymouth today. It was a decent atmosphere (though its difficult to build up tension when the sport is a couple of kilometers away) and everything ran really smoothly. Color me very impressed with the execution. At some point, I'll put up photos.

Carmelo looks terrible tonight. Missing everything. Missed a dunk.

However, Kobe, LeBron, and Durant are all having monster games. Kobe with double digits in the 1st quarter, a few steals... Durant with double digits in the 3rd quarter alone... and LeBron being LeBron, dunking or distributing.

Argentina pulled to within 5 early in the 3rd after a Ginobli 3, but now it's up to 17 at the end of the 3rd.

Holy Moses. I got chills watching the US women's 4x100 relay, especially watching Carmelita Jeter just truckin' down the final stretch all alone. Takes me back to Seoul '88.

Totally missed the soccer match this morning. But congrats to Mexico for gold! Very impressive.

Ugh NBC. Once again the women's team volleyball final featuring the USA is not being shown live, only on the web site, just like the beach volleyball was done.

But the men's teams all get shown live during the day. Awesome double standard NBC.

I'm also getting sick of their video stream not working in Chrome. It just sits there. But it works in Firefox every time. Of course in Firefox I get 3 commercials every time there's a stop in play. But the times I got it to work in Chrome the other day it stayed on the game feed the whole time. Really annoying, also the commercials blast double loud to the sound level of the feed of course.

Since we're approaching the end of the games I wanted to compile something, just for funsies. I think it captures the Olympic experience here at GWJ pretty well. I present with great pleasure, and in good fun, "Stele vs. NBC: Greatest Hits"

Stele wrote:

Blargh. No events today. Just ceremony. Tape-delayed ceremony at that.

Stele wrote:

It also looks like NBC are being jerks again with their primetime stuff. The Swimming finals that actually happen around 2-3pm here have no link for watching online, nor is it on any of the 6 or so channels covering stuff at the time it's actually happening. Tape delay for prime time advertising, very sickening. :mad:

Stele wrote:

So why not just let us see the damn video NBC?

Argh, sorry to gripe about the coverage but this is just dumb.

Stele wrote:

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.

Stele wrote:

So yeah... there are full replays up for lots of afternoon events, including the soccer matches that just ended within the last half hour.

But for Swimming... results, results, results... no video. So, surprise tonight, when Adrian wins the 100m freestyle for the US, and when the women's relay team wins gold, and sets an Olympic Record.

Stupid NBC

Stele wrote:

NBC is showing some sh*t with horses instead of the 100m final. So ridiculously lame.

Stele wrote:

Ugh. NBC stream is terrible. Lag and skipping

Stele wrote:

What, there's running? Stupid NBC... :mad:

Stele wrote:

Ugh NBC. Once again the women's team volleyball final featuring the USA is not being shown live, only on the web site, just like the beach volleyball was done.

But the men's teams all get shown live during the day. Awesome double standard NBC.

I'm also getting sick of their video stream not working in Chrome. It just sits there. But it works in Firefox every time. Of course in Firefox I get 3 commercials every time there's a stop in play. But the times I got it to work in Chrome the other day it stayed on the game feed the whole time. Really annoying, also the commercials blast double loud to the sound level of the feed of course. :mad:

Don't ever change man

Hahaha.

Sorry man. You should see my Facebook/Twitter streams. I am not alone.

No need for sorries, I get a grin every time.

Stele wrote:

I am not alone. ;)

I know it. I've been watching sort of casually, my TV is usually on the basketball-only channel, if not I just take in whatever they choose to show. If I were looking for any sports in particular other than b-ball I would have issues too.

Haven't been following the games all that closely, but caught the men's 4 x 100m relay last night. Bolt is really a step beyond human and Blake isn't far behind him. Shame for Canada losing their Bronze, what an emotional roller-coaster for them, but you run outside your lane that's what happens.

Our own Caster Semenya came from last with 250m left to get Silver in the women's 800m, pity she didn't start her push a few metres early, but a good performance.

Yeah, Semenya was powering along the back straight like she was on roller skates. The commentators over here opined that she'd run a very odd race tactically, let the Russki get an 8 or 9m start before turning on the burners.

Just watched the marathon, wonderful win by the Ugandan Kiprotich, almost sprinted past the two Kenyans at 35km and just kept cruising on. Crowds were absolutely huge all along the course.

The commentators on the BBC were split as to whether Semenya was tactically poor, or deliberately avoided gold to stay out of the merciless glare of her critics a bit. Whilst I wouldn't blame her for the latter, the former seems more likely.

My interest in boxing has really been reinvigorated by the Games. I am fed of the increasingly WWE-like nonsense of the professional game, but the technical 3 round bouts are fascinating to watch. The bantam-weight final last night was great, and not just because the lad from Hull got gold.

Edit to add a third sub-topic: Mitt Romney, as you may recall, expressed doubt as to whether London was ready to host the Olympics. I wonder whether he cares to revisit that comment. Man of the people that he is, Romney also owned a competitor, an equestrian dressage horse. Team GB won gold in that event. Shove that in your chud cannon, Romney!

spider_j wrote:

The commentators on the BBC were split as to whether Semenya was tactically poor, or deliberately avoided gold to stay out of the merciless glare of her critics a bit. Whilst I wouldn't blame her for the latter, the former seems more likely.

Yeah, she survived the earlier 'controversy' I don't think she would have blown it deliberately. I think she was just a bit slow to react to Savinova's surge.

davet010 wrote:

Just watched the marathon, wonderful win by the Ugandan Kiprotich, almost sprinted past the two Kenyans at 35km and just kept cruising on. Crowds were absolutely huge all along the course.

Yeah, it was awesome. He seemed to struggle for a few kilometres, but I think it was a case of marshalling his strength and maybe a bit of a mind game.

And a very nice turnout, pity a British runner couldn't do better.

The turnout for the free events has being huge, all those people who didn't get tickets, instead of moaning hit the streets. There were big crowds for the 50 km walking race! An event that has to be up there for most boring sport to watch at the olympics.

This Olympics was a huge success for all concerned, going to be writing some blog posts about my experiences down there so don't really want to repeat myself but I'm hugely proud to be British right now and show the world that we can put on the greatest shows on earth, just a shame that Fifa was too corrupt to care about things like that and denied us the world cup because the homophobic, sexists men in the east had loads of money, that would have really capped off a golden decade of sport for us Brits.

Yeah I'm not sure why the racewalk is in. It's not really walking, it's just some strange form of running where you don't lift your knees. Very silly. Golf, baseball, rugby, lots of other sports should be included over that.

The Spain-USA basketball game makes me wonder if things would have been even more interesting if

A) Ricky Rubio hadn't gotten hurt in March
B) Mark Gasol hadn't racked up four fouls by the middle of the second quarter

Apparently the bronze game between Russia and Argentina was the really good one, but I missed it live. Hoping it'll be replayed his evening.

Blind_Evil wrote:

The Spain-USA basketball game makes me wonder if things would have been even more interesting if

A) Ricky Rubio hadn't gotten hurt in March
B) Mark Gasol hadn't racked up four fouls by the middle of the second quarter

That was a terrible mistake by Spain's coaching staff to not get Gasol out after his 3rd foul.

A very chippy game though. Dislike the Spain team even more than I did in 08. That foul to Durant's head and that one elbow/hit plus taunt after the play that got the US a technical in particular were ridiculous. The intentional fouling to stop fast breaks is also a joke, but apparently that's just the FIBA way, since Argentina was pulling that too the other day.

Was watching the mens 10m diving last night so didn't see Jamaicans cane the 4x100 live, but just saw the replay.

How awesome was it that Bolt did the MoBot when he won? =)

Almost as awesome as Usain Bolt and Mo Farah stood next to each other doing each other's celebrations

Stele, you're more about the sports, so I'll take this one:

Hey NBC, how come you can show a sitcom as an early preview with no commercials, but the Olympic closing ceremonies are on a four-hour delay and full of ads?

Madness? Really? You want to commemorate British music, so you drag out a one hit wonder from 30 years ago?

Katy wrote:

Hey NBC, how come you can show a sitcom as an early preview with no commercials, but the Olympic closing ceremonies are on a four-hour delay and full of ads?

Oo, can I field this one? Because they're trying to get viewers hooked on their new series so they'll take the hit on commercials during the teaser, and the closing ceremonies are the last hurrah and chance to make money on their -- I assume -- considerable investment in getting the broadcast rights to the games?

I'm all for blasting the coverage, but let's not get nuts.

Elbow, one of my favorite bands, is there playing in the background now but NBC han't shown them, let alone mentioned their names. Heathens.

ColdForged wrote:

Oo, can I field this one? Because they're trying to get viewers hooked on their new series so they'll take the hit on commercials during the teaser, and the closing ceremonies are the last hurrah and chance to make money on their -- I assume -- considerable investment in getting the broadcast rights to the games?

I'm all for blasting the coverage, but let's not get nuts.

Oh, I know. It's really just the last wave of disgruntlement. I've been generally pretty happy with coverage, except for the prime time coverage. Most of my TV watching in the last few years has been with assistance of a TiVo, so I have less patience for ads than ever before.

That and it seems less like a ceremony and more like a party I wasn't invited to.

Spice Girls! Now my Olympics are complete!

If NBC has the coverage rights for Rio 2016, I am going to emigrate immediately.

Dominic Knight wrote:

If NBC has the coverage rights for Rio 2016, I am going to emigrate immediately.

Start packing?

AdWeek wrote:

The International Olympic Committee has awarded the media rights to the 2014-2020 Olympic Games to NBC.

[...]IOC president Jacques Rogge announced that NBC has put up $4.38 billion for the package, making this the most expensive TV rights deal in Olympic broadcast history.

Hopefully there will be a better way to stream BBC channels. Everything I hear about their coverage was great.

Only 18 months until Winter Olympics.

NBC cut Muse (performing the official Olympics theme song) from the closing ceremonies but showed Spice Girls and One Direction. A nice punctuation on their awful coverage and poor decision making throughout the entire thing. NBC, you suck.

Did you guys only have one channel to watch the Olympics on, and it was often delayed? Canada's coverage was shared by three networks (CTV, Sportsnet and TSN—all owned by the same company, obv) so there was quite a lot of live coverage, and if you weren't, for example, into the rowing on CTV you could flip to the volleyball on Sportsnet or water polo on TSN.

I'm not really big on the Olympics, but there was so much of the damn stuff on that I ended up watching quite a lot of it.