2012 Olympics Thread

Considering how Britain would stand by us when nobody else would the past decade, this was particularly insensitive. NBC is not part of our government, but still a bad call.

 

Regret to report that no 7/7 tribute was included in the China Central TV coverage.

They are running 2 to 4 channels of delay coverage in the daytime, so I can pretty much see how all the CH sports are doing.

Some other things get in also, so this morning could see the end of USA Tunisia Mens' basketball. I won't spoil that outcome for you

 

The highlight for me so far was Boris getting stuck on the highwire whilst flying the flag

Only Boris eh?

Boris Johnson gets stuck on a zip-wire celebrating Olympic gold | Politics | guardian.co.uk

 

Phelps just won his gold in the IM 200... 20 medals so far... one more race...

 

Make that 21 medals for Phelps... he took gold in the 100 fly...

 

12 more British quirks in 212 words for 2012 visitors

BBC News - London 2012: 12 more British quirks in 212 words for 2012 visitors

 

I was gonna post them but they're not really that accurate. More done for the sake of it and some very localised opinions. do not know what they mean calling tea charcoal. Never ever heard that before. It's called char up north, but that's an old Indian or Chinese word for tea and nothing to do with charcoal. I guess the moral is don't believe everything you read! lol.

Same as the first 12 in that earlier post where one of them says not to talk to fellow passengers on a bus. That's true in London and the south, but the opposite is true up here. You're more likely to get attacked if you don't talk. lol. My girlfriend is from London and she said she found it really weird that people up north would talk to her in the street or on the bus or train and at first was quite put out by it. Now she know's it's just folk being friendly and does it herself now.

 

If your vaulting pole breaks you are pretty much assured a spot in the highlights reel. Happened to Borges, a Cuban vaulter.

Feynman fans will remember that he spent a lot of time on why sticks break into 3 (or more) using the spaghetti model. Without success, surprisingly. The problem has been reworked since, finally here
http://www.lmm.jussieu.fr/spaghetti/audoly_neukirch_fragmentation.pdf

For which the authors snagged an Ig nobel prize. Therefore we would expect no future studies on the subject

But vaulting poles break in the same fashion, even though quite a bit more force needs to be applied. A screen capture from the highlights reel might give just as good an image as has been presented in spaghetti physics.

 

The TV coverage has been OK, and maybe I can get out of bed for the overnight closing.

I've made (and lost) a bet about CH-team medal golds. They were long runnning above 16% but lately have been below 3%. Stuff happens.

English-second speakers here do not appreciate my limerick/pun

Liu Xiang the hurdler
Had hoped for his ascendancy
But he’s not, because he’s got
A weak Achilles tendency

So I just toss it off.

I think that Phelps and Bolt have been breakout guys. Yes, as expected, but who else? Who will we long remember from Londinium 2012?

 

I've actually thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Considering we're a small, skint country in a double dip recession in what is possibly the worst financial situation since the great depression or maybe ever, I don't think we've done too badly.

Regarding memorable moments for me; it would have to be the look on the face of Mo Farah (team GB) as he ins his second gold.

Mo Farah wins second London 2012 gold medal | The Sun |Sport|Olympics
London 2012: what the papers say about Mo Farah's victory | Media | guardian.co.uk

Oh and I also liked my counties success at the games too. To say Yorkshire only has a population of 4 million in a country of 70 million, we've made up 25% of the medals! Which I believe was a similar result to Australias total

Yorkshire athletes propel Great Britain up the medal table at London 2012 Olympics - Telegraph

But being Gods Own County, I knew that success would come our way Yorkshire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Pleased to watch Mexico beat Brazil in the soccer match for Gold. The last 15 minutes were pretty exciting.

In semi-related news, after watching the 100m sprints I got excited and told my wife I thought I could do 100m in 25 seconds or less. She thought it would take me at least 30 seconds. Only 1 person out of 10 at work I asked believed I could do it in 25 seconds or less. Background: I'm 29 years old, don't exercise besides weekly 10-15 mile bike rides, and I probably haven't really run since high school. It just didn't make sense to me that these guys could be 3 times faster over such a short distance.

Anyway, since nobody thought I could do it I decided to give it a try. Warning: you won't get back the seconds you waste after watching this video.

 

I haven't watched the video but 25 seconds should be easy. I don't think I have a fast-twitch fiber in my body, ran flat-footed and as a teenager I still managed to run it in (a horrendously slow) 15.5s