Athletics

Simply brilliant by Mo to claim the double double and allow Team GB to equal the London 2012 medals total.

Very well done to the women's 4x400m team for helping Team GB to surpass the total from London. Sure it would have been nice to be even closer to the top two but both were simply too strong so it was only ever really bronze available to them and they won that. The first part is always beating your opponent(s) and the second would be aiming for a time if you have a chance of breaking the record. Ultimately I think winning the medal is what people will remember, not that they were 5 seconds or 0.01 seconds behind.
 
marc2003 said:
You can see the split times on the official rio2016.com site. USA basically had 4x50 second runners. We had 2x52 followed up by a 51 and 50 to leave us 5 seconds behind. Nothing wrong with that.
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Exactly what cram said in the commentary if everyone else chose to listen :)
semi-pro waster said:
Simply brilliant by Mo to claim the double double and allow Team GB to equal the London 2012 medals total.
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Mo has indeed been absolutely fantastic. Cant believe how easy he made it look , turning it on in the last lap (dont get me wrong, I know he does 1000's of miles of running and spends months away from his family every year) absolutely fabulous.

Wouldnt like to suggest its better or worse than Hoy, Redgrave but I believe they won golds over 3 Olympics vs Mo's 2 currently (He was of course at the Olympics in 2008, but wasnt successful).
 
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robfosters said:
I don't understand, Michael Johnson is such a font of knowledge, an awesome pundit and a US Olympic legend, how comes he is on British TV and not been signed up to a big US sports network?
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I have to regularly pinch myself when I see the legend Michael Johnson doing our little British telly. He should be given an OBE or whatever other honour overseas applies to non-Brits, just to cement his position. I also think his no nonsense winning mentality has definitely rubbed off on British athletes in his analysis with them, ever since he started with the BBC. I just think he is the main dude, glad to have him on the BBC.
 
muon said:
Both Thiam and Johnson-Thompson would have won the Women's High Jump today if they entered and replicated their Heptathlon effort.s
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Not sure why she doesn't enter that as well as the Heptathlon. Might be worth her switching to the high jump if she can't improve her throwing, which massively lets her down. There were suggestions of an arm injury, which might explain her poor 36m throw. Thiam though also had an arm injury, but still managed an impressive 53m PB in the javelin.

Hopefully she can help her throwing by working in the gym to build some strength, so she isn't having to rely on hitting many PBs in order to win.
 
Merlin5 said:
Imo, eilidh doyle was responsible for the medal colour only being bronze and not gold or silver and I can't believe team GB don't have a better runner than her. From what I've seen of her running, she's pretty average by olympic standards. She was lagging behind by miles.
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I rather skipped past this before but a couple of points - Eilidh Doyle is a 400m hurdler rather than a pure 400m runner so you wouldn't typically expect her to be as fast as a specialist, she was running the start leg which is also a slower leg than the others normally because you're starting from a complete halt. Perri Shakes-Drayton might well have taken part in the 4x400m if she had been fit for longer and able to qualify for the team since her PB is faster than that of Doyle but sometimes you've got to go with what you've got and Doyle did what was needed.

Bubo said:
I have to regularly pinch myself when I see the legend Michael Johnson doing our little British telly. He should be given an OBE or whatever other honour overseas applies to non-Brits, just to cement his position. I also think his no nonsense winning mentality has definitely rubbed off on British athletes in his analysis with them, ever since he started with the BBC. I just think he is the main dude, glad to have him on the BBC.
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He is a great commentator, like you I'm slightly surprised he still does TV for GB but I'm very glad he does.

The analysis with Martyn Rooney in the studio was quite interesting - he was still absolutely fuming and I'm not really surprised, the rules and the camera positioning need looked at so that such situations can be settled conclusively one way or the other. It's just not acceptable to have these sort of things determined in such an unsatisfactory way when the technology exists to remove doubt and arguments.
 
You guys dont realise how poor Olympic coverage is over in the US compared to how good we have it over here (but it could be better!)

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
A lot of sports coverage could learn a thing or two from our athletics coverage. We've got living legends covering all aspects of track and field and we're truly blessed to have MJ on our TV :)
 
ps3ud0 said:
You guys dont realise how poor Olympic coverage is over in the US compared to how good we have it over here (but it could be better!)

ps3ud0 :cool:
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That's really surprising. The Americans usually love patting themselves on the back. Considering their leading the medal table, you'd think their media would be slobbering all over it.
 
Craig1981 said:
That's really surprising. The Americans usually love patting themselves on the back. Considering their leading the medal table, you'd think their media would be slobbering all over it.
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I dunno, the americans are generally leading medals so its more of a business as usual thing.

I suspect there are issues with covering vast numbers of events, sometimes simultaneously and especially when much of that time is taken up by athletes who will not medal. Or worse, are not american.

Somehow they need to justify covering all of that, satisfy advertisers and generally make money out of it.

It's relatively easy for the large and pre-funded BBC since there's no monkey on their back screaming HOW CAN WE GET MONEY OUT OF THIS, WE PAID MILLIONS FOR THE RIGHTS.

Sooo there's lots of live coverage, replay facilities, a decent range of commentators and endless IP spoofing americans snooping on it.
 
Craig1981 said:
That's really surprising. The Americans usually love patting themselves on the back. Considering their leading the medal table, you'd think their media would be slobbering all over it.
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The thing is that while thats newsworthy and coverage is far better than it was say at Sydney its still not in the same ballpark as the BBC. While Rio coverage has been worse than normal because NBC got the rights and so its full of even more ads, it still less likely to be shown live or unedited (on a major network) and not behind a paywall (differing ones too dependent on what kind of coverage you expect).

Just look at iplayer, every piece of coverage is up there (well thats an assumption but Ive largely followed the games using the service) unedited in full with the event commentary for the next month.

We are lucky that Olympics is one of the few events/sports that have to be shown FTA, F1 used to have that privilege but that was removed the last time it was reviewed (think its every 10 years).

With that knowledge its obvious why MJ doesnt work on the US networks - he probably gets to work with other sporting greats and has an audience that appreciates the quality of his work.

Regards to getting it better, well a dedicated channel would be a start...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
I don't know if anyone else here was watching the men's marathon but a great run by Eluid Kipchoge to win, he crushed the rest after a comparatively slow first half. A very impressive performance by Callum Hawkins to finish 9th as well.
 
I didn't watch it but I'm always in awe of the times they run. Just over 5minutes per mile maintained for 26 miles boggles my mind. :D
 
ps3ud0 said:
The thing is that while thats newsworthy and coverage is far better than it was say at Sydney its still not in the same ballpark as the BBC. While Rio coverage has been worse than normal because NBC got the rights and so its full of even more ads, it still less likely to be shown live or unedited (on a major network) and not behind a paywall (differing ones too dependent on what kind of coverage you expect).

Just look at iplayer, every piece of coverage is up there (well thats an assumption but Ive largely followed the games using the service) unedited in full with the event commentary for the next month.

We are lucky that Olympics is one of the few events/sports that have to be shown FTA, F1 used to have that privilege but that was removed the last time it was reviewed (think its every 10 years).

With that knowledge its obvious why MJ doesnt work on the US networks - he probably gets to work with other sporting greats and has an audience that appreciates the quality of his work.

Regards to getting it better, well a dedicated channel would be a start...

ps3ud0 :cool:
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Just thought Id add to this as just found out that Eurosport have picked up the Olympics license for all(?) of EU from 2018 to 2024, it seems BBC will keep the license til 2020 and then share (sub-license) from 2022/2024.

So good chance after that we might not have a FTA terrestrial service covering the Olympics and reduced service after 2020 :(

http://www.eurosport.co.uk/olympic-...mpic-games-partnership_sto5099029/story.shtml

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/02/olympics-bbc-discovery-deal

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
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