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The Olympics 2020/1 Japan.

neilm said:
On historic world records, I was surprised yesterday to observe that the women’s discuss WR has been around since 1988, and some distance further than the current crop of athletes are able to throw
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The various throwing events don't have the technology changes that have boosted the track events records.
Notice though that it is mainly the womens events that have these extreme outliers, making male hormones the suspect.
I would not be surprised if womens tennis and golf has similar hidden problems. Giving a teenager male hormones during puberty and then stopping them well before professional level testing starts is going to be very hard to prove, while giving career long advantage.
 
Caught a few highlights of the womens freestyle skateboarding, very impressive and a very cool bowl/course thingy. I’ll watch the whole thing on red button later. Track cycling is good too, the GB bike is just bonkers, see vid upthread.
 
I get uneasy seeing them not wearing helmets, i would hate for fatality or major injury be needed to get some common sense. Even dressage riders wear helmets!
 
Tony L said:
Caught a few highlights of the womens freestyle skateboarding, very impressive and a very cool bowl/course thingy. I’ll watch the whole thing on red button later. Track cycling is good too, the GB bike is just bonkers, see vid upthread.
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I get the impression the riders are not very impressed by the bike...Team Pursuit just said "we've improved by 5secs since Rio on effort alone"...unless I missed some context.

What a final race...Forza Italia again...Ganna's a beast and the Danes must be gutted...the gap just kept coming down. Half a second on the last lap!
 
ciderglider said:
I watched the qualifying for the lead climbing yesterday. Tuned in just to see what it was like, and stuck with it for the best part of two hours, really compelling stuff. The mad DJ is a bonus.
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it is brilliant - we got hooked on lead a while ago when sitting in a pub in Brighton and they had their TV on some obscure sports channel.
 
Weekender said:
I get the impression the riders are not very impressed by the bike...Team Pursuit just said "we've improved by 5secs since Rio on effort alone"...unless I missed some context.
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It is hard to figure out as the GB team has smashed their 2012 times in just about everything, but other countries have moved even further forward. I’m sure there will be a lot to emerge afterwards as to what is good/bad about the bike and the team etc.

One thing was touched upon in the Peak Torque video I linked to upthread is the potential for an IP conflict. As I understand it the Olympic rules regarding bike design have been relaxed hugely and are now pretty much a) has to fit in a virtual box of defined dimensions, and b) be commercially available. Based on the video I link it appears there is a pre-existing patent from IIRC 2016 that pretty much defines this form and logic, and it is not owned by either Hope or Lotus, so whether this bike could be sold may prove a tad controversial!
 
Just finished watching all the women’s park skateboarding. Wow.

Moans first - the camera work was very poor, terrible angles - especially the overhead camera. Sucked the life out of it, gave no impression of the height or length of the airs/moves and the scale of the park. Boo. The commentary was a bit sucky-la-la as well, and they got some trick names wrong.
The competition standard was higher than I expected, fantastic. They were all having a great time and the sense of fun was palpable. Skateboarding in 34°C. is bonkers, that would have made the concrete very hot to fall on, or even put your hand on.

Nice to see Dora (Brazilian) doing Gay-Twists, a trick that I used to pull on Vert. (backwards 360°, land forwards)
The speed of Poppy-O (Australian) was great, burly stuff.
Bad luck for Okamoto Misugu (4th place - Japan) 13 yrs. old - making Sad-540°s and Varial-540°s
insane stuff. Robbed.
Kokona Hiraki (12 yrs. old) placed Silver. Lovely style, Backside Kickflip-Indie grab was solid, also enjoyed the Crail Tail slide.
Sky bailed two runs, missing her Backside Kickflip Indie air twice, made it on her last run.
The Frontside-Blunt Sky made was silk, as was her Frontside Smiths. Liked the Alley-Oops, smooth style with height.
Gold for Sakura Yosozumi (Japan) - another day Okamoto or Brown could have took it.

The smiling of the competitors, and obvious fun they were having shone through. Bryce Wettstein (USA placed 6th) slammed hard, but was up and foot-planting straight away.

Really good to see what are regarded as ‘old school’ tricks being performed, the Fast-Plants, Boneless footplants, wonderful.
Impressive backside and frontside Ollies as well, smooth as you like.

The Men’s Park skateboarding is tonight. I expect to see some mental lines. The highlight of the Olympics for me.
Strange that Freestyle isn’t featuring, I expect Rodney Mullen could still get a medal, they don’t do Platinum medals though. :) He is God in skateboarding terms.
 
Great to see the racing pushing the boundaries , compared to a couple of pacemakers and a suitcase of dollars.
 
Big Tabs said:
Moans first - the camera work was very poor, terrible angles - especially the overhead camera. Sucked the life out of it, gave no impression of the height or length of the airs/moves and the scale of the park.
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I've thought the same thing a few times over different events, lots of shaky hand held stuff and as you say, terrible angles.
I was watching the mens bouldering and there are four climbers each on a different problem, they seemed to randomly choose who they would put on the feed even if they were just standing around meanwhile in the background you can hear the crowd going off because another climber is getting close to completing one but they would never switch the feed and often no replays either.
 
Tony L said:
It is hard to figure out as the GB team has smashed their 2012 times in just about everything, but other countries have moved even further forward. I’m sure there will be a lot to emerge afterwards as to what is good/bad about the bike and the team etc.

One thing was touched upon in the Peak Torque video I linked to upthread is the potential for an IP conflict. As I understand it the Olympic rules regarding bike design have been relaxed hugely and are now pretty much a) has to fit in a virtual box of defined dimensions, and b) be commercially available. Based on the video I link it appears there is a pre-existing patent from IIRC 2016 that pretty much defines this form and logic, and it is not owned by either Hope or Lotus, so whether this bike could be sold may prove a tad controversial!
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I listened to Mark Cavendish on Eurosport this morning and he was asked about our cycling team losing their advantage - his view was that other countries (Italy/Denmark/Germany/Australia/Netherlands/China) have invested considerable resources in velodromes and their specialist road racers (Italy's pursuit team have the world champion time trialist - Filippo Ganna) can now train in these new environments and focus on the track and not just the grand tours... interesting perspective I thought?
 
kicker said:
I've thought the same thing a few times over different events, lots of shaky hand held stuff and as you say, terrible angles.
I was watching the mens bouldering and there are four climbers each on a different problem, they seemed to randomly choose who they would put on the feed even if they were just standing around meanwhile in the background you can hear the crowd going off because another climber is getting close to completing one but they would never switch the feed and often no replays either.
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It is irritating when this is supposedly the worlds best athletes that basics like camera angles have not been thought out properly for each sport.
The trampoline was poor as well.
Never mind the irritation of switching camera shots rather than sticking with what is obviously the cleanest, clearest view.
They have had a long time to prepare for this, so there is little excuse.
Sometimes it has felt more like watching a music video rather than premier sports.
 
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