The 32nd Olympiad, Tokyo 2020 - Chit Chat Thread

[bluenosey]

Adam Peaty. Personally, I cannot remember a Brit so dominant in a sports event

Never mind Brit, rarely has an athlete of any nation been so dominant. Imperious.

Impressive stuff elsewhere, that was a breathless start to the day!

Yes, 7 years unbeaten, that’s in the Ed Moses league. If he can make it a nice round decade there’s another gold there for the taking!

Great to see persistence pay off for Tom Daley, in a sport where the Chinese are always such formidable opponents. The skateboarding gold medallist was less than a year old when Daley first appeared in the Olympics!

I used to love watching Ed Moses. 9 years, 9 months and 9 days unbeaten I think.

Peaty has something ridiculous like all of the top 20 fastest times of all time. He could be a second slower than his pb and still win gold. You do tend to get dominant streaks in swimming, but he's got to be right up there with Hackett (1500 Free) and Phelps (200IM) in terms of dominance in one event. Maybe even more so - there's almost no chance of anyone else getting close unless he has a major disaster. There was a guy called Tamas Darnyi as well that used to swim when I was at uni who was unbeaten in 200IM and 400IM for 10 years, but he's not exactly a household name!

Really nice to see Daley get a gold. Never thought it would happen so what a fantastic feeling to see all that hard work finally pay off with the big prize

I though Moses was great too. Him and Yifta the Shifta. Seb Coe, Carl Lewis and Daley Thompson were also legends. Always as a kid played olympics. Be about ten of us. 800 m was round the block, the javelin a piece of wood, high jump two mates holding a rope and so on. Great days, although would usually end up in an argument!

Does anyone remember Moses winning a dead hear against another American and German, think it was Harold Schmidt? It was 0.01 separating the three, or thereabouts.

[bluenosey]

I think East Germany had a little bit of extra help back then

Yes, I am well aware of that and some of the Eastern block athletes. A woman sprinter in particular, Kratochvilova or something. Was a right eff beefcake.

[forestfan]

I think East Germany had a little bit of extra help back then

Yes, I am well aware of that and some of the Eastern block athletes. A woman sprinter in particular, Kratochvilova or something. Was a right eff beefcake.

And as for those in the throwing events…

[murf]

I think East Germany had a little bit of extra help back then

Yes, I am well aware of that and some of the Eastern block athletes. A woman sprinter in particular, Kratochvilova or something. Was a right eff beefcake.

She was Czech, 400 or 800m. Damn fast but you just wouldn't.....

[bluenosey]

I think East Germany had a little bit of extra help back then

Yes, I am well aware of that and some of the Eastern block athletes. A woman sprinter in particular, Kratochvilova or something. Was a right eff beefcake.

She was Czech, 400 or 800m. Damn fast but you just wouldn't.....

[forestfan]

British athletes called Tom have more gold medals than France…

[unc.si.]

Should still be 4 or 5 more medals to come in the pool

In particular, we must be in with a great chance in the mens 4x100 medley relay. The USA men have never lost that event in the Olympics, but if it goes right for us we've got a good chance. Peaty pretty much gives us a 1 second advantage on his own

[forestfan]

Should still be 4 or 5 more medals to come in the pool

In particular, we must be in with a great chance in the mens 4x100 medley relay. The USA men have never lost that event in the Olympics, but if it goes right for us we've got a good chance. Peaty pretty much gives us a 1 second advantage on his own

Remember when our rowers were dominant, and the medal-less swimmers were “just there for the party”?

Have to applaud our coxless four’s valiant attempt to sink the Italians though, they haven’t forgotten the football either One of the Norwegian boats seemingly didn’t need any help to sink it…

[blahblah]

Go Fiji

[unc.si.]

Is this the first time the german coach isn't involved in the rowing (Jorgen someone), or has he been gone a while?

GB famously got no medals in the Sydney 2000 pool meet, so brought in Bill Sweetenham to set up a high performance unit, He wasn't very popular amongst a lot of the old guard, to say the least (as an aside, one swimmer moved to Australia, citing her dislike of Sweetenham as a big reason why, only to find out the following year that Sweetenham was going to be the new Australian coach!), but he's the main reason for the tide turning I think.

If you look at GB Swimming, Gymnastics and Cycling, they have all been far more successful after setting up hardcore high performance coaching setups. All of those though have come with allegations of bullying and abuse at one level or another.

Its coming into focus more than ever now. Can you be consistently successful at these pure athletic performance sports without compromising the athletes mental and physical health, or as one GB gymnast recently said, do you have to treat the athletes as 'pieces of meat' to be able to compete at the highest level?

[unc.si.]

Go Fiji

Sevens is their national sport I think. Waisele Serevi the greatest and most entertaining 7's player of all time. There will be some grog shared tonight, no matter what t he Fiji president says

[forestfan]

Yeah, Jurgen Grobler apparently retired last year. Could be our first Olympics without a rowing gold since pre-Redgrave.

It is a difficult balancing act, whatever the sport - you obviously can’t succeed in elite sport and have it easy, which is why 99.99% of us aren’t cut out for it, whether or not we have any natural talent to start with. If you want to pursue it and are driven by the prospect of Olympic gold you must have an idea of what you’re letting yourself in for. But even the best aren’t machines, everyone has a breaking point, as we’ve seen with a few high profile cases recently among people in the superstar category.

[unc.si.]

German horse pilot looked quite happy.

Charlotte of the Garden up next

[unc.si.]

No idea whether this is any good or not. Who on earth came up with this event though? There must have been a serious amount of acid consumed when they were inventing dressage

[unc.si.]

Nobody going wild so I'm guessing its not quite good enough?

[blahblah]

No idea whether this is any good or not. Who on earth came up with this event though? There must have been a serious amount of acid consumed when they were inventing dressage

Or you're not taking enough?

It'll be Synchronised Horse Prancing next

[forestfan]

Never mind ice dancing and ski jumping, they need to get Z-list celebs having a go at this…

[blahblah]

Never mind ice dancing and ski jumping, they need to get Z-list celebs having a go at this…

I quite like the Ski Jumping, well the crashes and injuries

[bluenosey]

No idea whether this is any good or not. Who on earth came up with this event though? There must have been a serious amount of acid consumed when they were inventing dressage

It just looks so unnatural.

[bluenosey]

Should still be 4 or 5 more medals to come in the pool

In particular, we must be in with a great chance in the mens 4x100 medley relay. The USA men have never lost that event in the Olympics, but if it goes right for us we've got a good chance. Peaty pretty much gives us a 1 second advantage on his own

Remember when our rowers were dominant, and the medal-less swimmers were “just there for the party”?

Have to applaud our coxless four’s valiant attempt to sink the Italians though, they haven’t forgotten the football either One of the Norwegian boats seemingly didn’t need any help to sink it…

Yeah, that was bizarre. Took evasive action in the end but we lost all momentum. And I couldn't see an iceberg anywhere

No idea how you steer those things. String attached to a rudder or something?

[forestfan]

Never mind ice dancing and ski jumping, they need to get Z-list celebs having a go at this…

I quite like the Ski Jumping, well the crashes and injuries

I think that’s why they scrapped it eventually, some were doing themselves permanent damage for the sake of a bit of TV airtime!

[blahblah]

Never mind ice dancing and ski jumping, they need to get Z-list celebs having a go at this…

I quite like the Ski Jumping, well the crashes and injuries

I think that’s why they scrapped it eventually, some were doing themselves permanent damage for the sake of a bit of TV airtime!

Some people shouldn't be protected from themselves

[unc.si.]

Yeah, Jurgen Grobler apparently retired last year. Could be our first Olympics without a rowing gold since pre-Redgrave.

It is a difficult balancing act, whatever the sport - you obviously can’t succeed in elite sport and have it easy, which is why 99.99% of us aren’t cut out for it, whether or not we have any natural talent to start with. If you want to pursue it and are driven by the prospect of Olympic gold you must have an idea of what you’re letting yourself in for. But even the best aren’t machines, everyone has a breaking point, as we’ve seen with a few high profile cases recently among people in the superstar category.

Probably made worse by the constant glare of social media. I guess Daley Thompson could ignore the papers and get away from it all if he had a bad event, but now people cant touch their phones without seeing a barrage of abuse from the type of little shits that sit on their fat arses eating crisps and criticising everyone with little fear of any comeback.

There's no escape. No downtime. Always someone with a phone happy to take a pic of you at any time and stick it all over instagram or to slag you off for what you're wearing or for 'only' coming second

one side of it is the sexual, psychological and physical abuse that Biles and others have suffered at the hands of people in positions of trust, which still goes on and needs stamping out, but the way that the popular press and social media trolls behave needs sorting as well.

[Mav3rick]

I think I need a break day today where I actually have a proper nights sleep... Been getting up or going to bed at all kinds of hours to pick live events, and my body clock is shot - feels like jetlag but I can't even have an 8am pint at the airport spoons to help

[forestfan]

You can have an 8am pint from your fridge

[forestfan]

I hate these round-up items with background music on the BBC highlights show. They even did it with dressage yesterday, where the actual music is a pretty significant part of it!

[forestfan]

Andy Jameson has to be my favourite Olympic commentator, he just lives absolutely every second of each race with the swimmers in the pool. Could make any procession sound like a thriller!

[murf]

British athletes called Tom have more gold medals than France…

Earlier today Maidenhead were ahead of Germany

2 bits picked up from tonight's catch up show-
1. One of the rowers is tasked with steering by using a bit of string attached to his foot and the rudder.
2. When Fiji won the last Rugby 7s gold the country got 3 days of bank holidays and a new banknote. The value..... 7 dollars.

[Mav3rick]

Think I'll be up again tonight for the swimming finals, some good races on the cards and the mixed relays are always quite fun.

Would be nice if the rowing team could join the party with another medal but looks like it will be a fairly bad regatta by their standards.

Should think that will hurt the overall medal tallies, speaking of which, Japan - what incredible performances they've had. Their ratio of gold is really high too so whatever they've been doing to focus in on their strong events/athletes has been working.

[murf]

Great British 1-2 in the canoeing earlier.

OK the winner says she is Australian but her dad represented us in the Olympics (came 4th) and you can't transfer (her Mum represented France but that obviously doesn't count).