*** robfosters official 2016 Olympics opening ceremony thread ***

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I've got so little enthusiasm for these olympics, mostly because of the doping scandal surrounding Russia. Every single medal they win will be tainted by question marks over whether the winning athlete is clean or a doper.
 
marc2003 said:
Different organisation. IOC showed they had no balls, the IPC did.
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It was probably the other way around tbh, IOC stood up to political pressure, IPC caved in.

I don't know why the IPC are worried about drug abuse anyway it's not like paralympic athletes are on an even footing without it, you often get someone with a less severe condition destroying the rest of the field.
 
Why can't they make all tests public? Publish the dates, times and results so people can actually see what's going on.

There's a whole world of difference between an athlete that misses two tests in the space of a few days but takes a test a few days later to an athlete that misses two tests over the space of a few months and doesn't get tested again.
 
Table Tennis is so weird in the way they serve... Some of them serve all twisted and bizarrely hunched.
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
Why can't they make all tests public? Publish the dates, times and results so people can actually see what's going on.

There's a whole world of difference between an athlete that misses two tests in the space of a few days but takes a test a few days later to an athlete that misses two tests over the space of a few months and doesn't get tested again.
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Privacy of the athlete? Im not saying its correct, but I can understand why there are legitimate reasons not to release the results.

I agree there is a difference in you examples, but then you get onto the thorny issue of medication on the banned list that has no performance benefit at all, shoudl they be there and should the athlete be banned if they have taken it.

(So Im clear, if its on the banned list then thats it. If you are caught taking it you get a ban end of story. By all means get dr's or who-ever to propose get it taken off for medical reasons, no problem at all - but until the substance is off the list the athlete and his/her team should not take anything on that list and anyone taking anything at all should get the full ban).

Nexus said:
I'm not sure I agree, it's a dangerous descent. In the men's race there were even more crashes, but they weren't caught on camera. A number reported how there is a lot of off camber, so it forces you into the wrong position and wants to throw you into the gutter.


I know there are a lot of concerns in Brazil about the money being spent, but the games are on and happening now, so you may as well enjoy them. That said, I don't see that it's going to take over their nation in the same way it did quite quickly here once everyone got in the Olympic spirit.
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Listening to the commentary on both the mens and womens road race, Chris Boardman made a lot of sense (and he should know given his experience).
Some of the stuff they had on the side of the road was completely stupid and no-one (official) seemed to care to get it taken away. Both men's and womens races were far too dangerous in the decent.


You have to remember (from what I recall) the whole road race in London was right through the centre so big crowds were to be expected. In Rio they are actually quite a way out of town, especially the climbs which were 30km or so from the finish or so . Its a pity the attendances arent that great but given the poverty I can appreciate why.
 
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A lot of the camera work seems superior to London
- in the pool, slow motion, overhead shots vertically down and better underwater cameras for individual swimmers
- cycling, road race, slow motions
- gymnastic vertical shots too
Only negative is that the freeview red-buttons are not HD
Is there a particular technology evolution that provided these ?
 
I think we're going to be miles short of the medal target. So many epic fails so far, we don't seem to have the midas touch of 2012. I think they were aiming for about 48 medals. We're 10th in the tables so far, with China and then USA at the top I believe.
 
Its still early days, but its looking like Team GB wont get anywhere near as many medals this time round. 2012 we got 65 medals, with 29 gold, 17 silver and 19 bronze. That was enough to put us 3rd in the medals table.

I imagine the games being hosted in our nation made it easier on them, since they'd had all the local support and the comfort of performing in their home territory.
 
Very early days, we didn't get a gold in London till day 5! Once the rowing/cycling/sailing medals start rolling in we will get going. No one is expecting London levels of medals that's not realistic as you always get a boost from a home games (even China didn't do as well last time as they did in Beijing!)

We got 47 in Beijing that's a more realistic target. Though we're going to need some of the other sports to make up the shortfall in Cycling medals as the velodrome team isn't as strong as the golden Hoy/Pendleton days.
 
Most irritating thing was this morning going and thinking I could watch the highlights of the swimming, first page on bbc that opens, hey, Peaty won, go to olympics page, hey Peaty won, look at list of videos, hey Peaty won, go through several pages trying to find just the highlights, eventually found it, news listed under the video "and peaty wins gold".

Hey BBC, as people won't always stay up and you're offering the actual coverage that I can skip through and watch them, how about hiding the results on specific pages with news with the link to the page being called.... olympic results. I would have really liked to see a replay of the Peaty race without knowing the result before hand, and several other races.

We're in this news place where coverage and 'watching' the sport doesn't matter any more, it's all about publishing news the second it's available, being first is more important than delivering content in it's highest possible quality. When it comes to sport from the other side of the planet and it's not a one time event like a single boxing match of football match but eleventy billion hours of sport a day and over night, how about using your brain and giving people a chance to catch up with some events without spoilers.

Years ago even in the internet infancy you would have the BBC actually show delayed highlights without screaming the results in your face before hand. They need to separate their website streaming/coverage content from their 'news' content.
 
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drunkenmaster - Agree some(most ?) of the swimming events do not have the complete race individually on catchup either eg Jazz Carlin dumbed down with only end of race.
so you have to fast forward through red-button iplayer recording

*update* not even sure the iplayer recordings are the same as the red button broadcasts was trying to rewatch womens 200m freestyle semi on iplayer, original broadcast had good comments on the style/strokes but the iplayer version seems a re-edit :(
 
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jpaul said:
drunkenmaster - Agree some(most ?) of the swimming events do not have the complete race individually on catchup either eg Jazz Carlin dumbed down with only end of race.
so you have to fast forward through red-button iplayer recording

*update* not even sure the iplayer recordings are the same as the red button broadcasts was trying to rewatch womens 200m freestyle semi on iplayer, original broadcast had good comments on the style/strokes but the iplayer version seems a re-edit :(
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You can find the full swimming events playback for the previous day. I did eventually find it for day 2 which I watched yesterday morning, problem was I went through like 8 pages all telling me the results before I found the video.

Links to replay streams should be front and centre, particularly before any events have started for the day and results should be listed under a specific results section with zero spoiler news on the rest of the website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/olympics/36656744

that should be a link to last nights action which being not live means you can just nicely jump through to the start of every race easily.

You have to go to the schedule for the day(today not yesterday), click on the sport you want and the big link/button is for todays events but there is usually a small box with another play button on the right which links to yesterdays video for the events.

Again to find this I saw the results of the diving and several video links to results for some of the swimming.
 
Thanks, found it, had not previously seen any examples where the timeline was labelled with events and tags for English competitors participation for a quick jump.
If you are into freestyle : this at 16:00 impressive from 200m womens freestyle heat
 
Merlin5 said:
I think we're going to be miles short of the medal target. So many epic fails so far, we don't seem to have the midas touch of 2012. I think they were aiming for about 48 medals. We're 10th in the tables so far, with China and then USA at the top I believe.
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There are quite a few events (like rowing and track cycling) were GB could win quite a few in each

We arent going to compete with China and USA, but then we never do and its not to be expected to be honest.

I dont see why GB couldnt get between 40-50 medals (and if we are lucky double figures in Gold)
 
jpaul said:
Thanks, found it, had not previously seen any examples where the timeline was labelled with events and tags for English competitors participation for a quick jump.
If you are into freestyle : this at 16:00 impressive from 200m womens freestyle heat
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The tags can be useful for swimming but really bad for football/other things as basically every tag means, here's a goal/red card/something, clearly you're wasting your time watching everything but this point. I actually thought about that the other day, that tag thing needs to be an option. Actually for swimming on the highlights it sucks also because if you hover over I'm fairly sure it said things like Peaty wins goal or Peaty WR the other day.

Again there needs to be a spoiler/non spoiler version, today on the swimming the tags on the live show were just highlighting when English competitors were involved(well scheduled, it was a little off), which is great. If it shows kick off, start of second half for the football that would also be great. Then if you just want to watch highlights you flick the spoiler option and it tells you when goals/penalties/red cards happened so you can just watch those moments.
 
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