Tokyo Olympics 2020

[GreatAuk]

Janja Garnbret as expected takes the gold in women's climbing. Great seeing the two Japanese climbers Miho Nonaka and Akiyo Niguchi pick up medals too. Good competition! Lead setting was good again.

Was a nice result and glad Janja won, she did just seem in a different league at times! Always nice seeing athletes celebrate together, but does seem that climbing is one of those sports where there is some really great camaraderie and genuine good will between everyone involved which is nice to see.

I was rooting for Seo to beat Janja on the lead though, so impressed at how well she did and so close! Only a couple of moves from a bronze medal! Still, her age I'm sure she has bright future ahead in the sport if she does continue pursuing it.

I felt like the setting of the lead climbs was a lot better than the bouldering tbh - not sure the 3 boulder problems (in the men's or womens finals actually) really did that good a job of letting the climbers show their strengths and differentiate in a fair way.

Glad this is the last time they'll shoehorn speed climbing into the same event with a questionable scoring system to enable it. Shame it happened in the first place though.

 

[Merlin5]

DQ for GB, definitely out of the zone for 1st handover!

Fortunately they did get their bronze in the end. At the post race interview, those girls sure talk fast. Gotta be about a 100 words a second.

 

[Merlin5]

Oh, now the men's 4 x 100m relay. Come on men!

 

[Merlin5]

Damn, so nearly gold! Silver though.

 

[marc2003]

That was.... unexpected.

 

[SoliD]

Oh wow thought we had that then! How is the Italian so quick!

 

[Mik3]

Did we get that first change?

 

[LOLN1]

 

[Merlin5]

Only 1/100th second between gold and silver.

 

[BaZ87]

When did the Italians become such good sprinters. We threw it away on the last leg.

 

[fez]

Was a nice result and glad Janja won, she did just seem in a different league at times! Always nice seeing athletes celebrate together, but does seem that climbing is one of those sports where there is some really great camaraderie and genuine good will between everyone involved which is nice to see.

Climbing tends to attract non competitive people in general. If you go to a climbing gym in the UK it will mostly be people who haven't got on with traditional sports and team sports. Its a really social activity as well. Especially bouldering as you only spend about 10-15 minutes actually on the wall in a 2-3 hour session so you just chat the rest of the time. They are all really friendly with each other because they travel around the world competing against each other.

I felt like the setting of the lead climbs was a lot better than the bouldering tbh - not sure the 3 boulder problems (in the men's or womens finals actually) really did that good a job of letting the climbers show their strengths and differentiate in a fair way.

Its much much easier to set a good sports route for competition than it is a boulder. Far more moves to play with and you can play with things like difficulty, power, endurance etc. Bouldering you generally only get to test their co-ordination, a bit of strength and then technique. Bouldering has also moved towards setting very parkour-esque routes in the past decade or so which leads to very technical movements that some climbers either get or they don't Its quite rare to see a problem that rewards pure strength these days. I can almost guarantee that if those climbers had a session on the boulders afterwards with the routesetters they would probably all climb them with relative easy within an hour or so.

Glad this is the last time they'll shoehorn speed climbing into the same event with a questionable scoring system to enable it. Shame it happened in the first place though.

Yeah, its a real shame they did this. No proper climbers care about speed. It would be like Creating an event where you asked runners to do 100m, 5,000m and power walking as a combined event.

 

[robfosters]

When did the Italians become such good sprinters. We threw it away on the last leg.

We didn’t throw it away, we ran the best race we could.

 

[BaZ87]

We didn’t throw it away, we ran the best race we could.

We threw it away. That last leg was terrible - Johnson and Lewis are spelling it out now how bad it was and how it cost us.

 

[jonneymendoza]

damm it the italians beat us yet again!! so so close on the 100x4 relay!!!

 

[fez]

Damn, that horse was stone cold. To have a gold taken away from you because a horse decides that today is a good day to act up must be heartbreaking. She looked distraught.

 

[SPG]

Just caught up some of the coverage on the BBC.... Why do I even bother paying a licence fee. The actual commentary is appalling apart from the usual suspects who are quite good at it.

I wont even go into the Clair Balding, I am woman on the Gravy train issue.

Modern Pentathlon is just as stupid as the rest of the donkey events though

 

[RoboCod]

Just caught up some of the coverage on the BBC.... Why do I even bother paying a licence fee. The actual commentary is appalling apart from the usual suspects who are quite good at it.

I wont even go into the Clair Balding, I am woman on the Gravy train issue.

Modern Pentathlon is just as stupid as the rest of the donkey events though

Oi, you leave Balding alone you!

 

[Merlin5]

I didn't realise JJ Chalmers was a lance corporal in the Royal Marines and got blown up by an IED in Afghanistan, plus he also won a gold medal in athletics in the Invicta games. Very impressed, I had no idea. I think he's done really well as a presenter for this olympics.

 

[200sols]

Oi, you leave Balding alone you!

She's awful.

 

[GodAtum]

Yeah it's not a great message really. I noticed the same when England lost to Italy. Half of the players just got their medal and walked off but some chose to wear theirs.

As a proud Britain I'm happy with that. I'd rather they do that then accept 2nd best.