Miscellaneous Olympic Chatter

[Garden Kitty]

Funny SI article on the badminton "scandal"

[Johnny_Fever]

Does anyone else find the purple backgrounds a turn-off? I would probably watch more Olympics coverage were it not for the purple backgrounds. I suspect that they had no choice. They've already used every other color in previous Olympics.

[mkats]

Waterpolo is a serious game. The men are hot and the women are scary. They elbow each other in the head, grab suits underwater and try to drown each other. I don't know what position this US woman is playing, but I'd hate to get on her bad side. This game between the US and Spain is something else. This may be my new favorite sport. Spain just tied the game with 46 seconds left because of two penalty shots they got from fights.

I remember reading an article from a 2004 competitor that said she goes through some 40+ swimsuits a year, because people grab and pull and they break.

[reckless]

One should also consider participation within nations. GBR participates in Handball this year, yet they had to basically cast together teams from athletic people in other sports. I'm sure many countries will be able to field teams in baseball/softball for the Olympics yet they will often look like the badminton women who were dsq. because there is only about 20 people playing it in the whole country. The same cannot be said of table tennis. All over Europe there are (semi-)professional leagues, regional leagues, youth leagues etc. So it is not for lack of players that Asia dominates but because they have more population and even greater popularity. I really cannot however comment on how popular baseball/softball are worldwide.

I think that is more of a reason not to limit the tournament to eight teams. The host country gets automatic entries to every sport, so you've basically limited the other competitive nations to seven spots. With Europe getting two spots and Africa/Oceania each getting another spot (or two if one of them is the host), the bulk of the competitive nations wind up fighting for four spots. For the next World Baseball Classic, there will be 24 teams involved. The twelve teams that won a game at the last WBC will get automatic qualification, and 12 other teams will compete in a qualifying tournament for the remaining four spots.

[suep1963]

My mom's comment on the grey podium outfits (keep in mind that Mom always, always tries to put a positive spin on things)

"Looks like they let them out of the prison cell for a day"

[Blondie12]

Why is no one Inthe stands for the medal ceremonies? I have been watching swimming and no one stays. It is pretty pathetic, it looks like a high school gym with just the parents and family staying around. Even w Phelps, etc, the stands empty out.

The ceremonies are right after the meet, so I do not understand why people would not wait around to see the medals awarded. I have never seen that before in an Olympics.

I know the scandal about them not feelin seats from sponsors, etc. this is different. The people are there for the meet but they are not there for the ceremony. Stands are bare.

Maybe britains like different sports? Or they do not stay for other country athletes.

[sweetsparky]

I hadn´t really noticed so. I guess you´re talking about the last swimming ceremony medals of every day. Maybe the crowd have to travel back home by subway or bus and timetable are tight ?

[manhn]

People leaving after the event but before the medals ceremony occurred in 2010. I saw folks leave the ice dance, for goodness sake!

[skipaway]

Japan's Woman's Soccer team coach admitted to playing for a tie so they wouldn't have to fly to Scotland in the next round.

[Allskate]

Japan's Woman's Soccer team coach admitted to playing for a tie so they wouldn't have to fly to Scotland in the next round.

And the coach admitted this after seeing what happened in badminton?

[skipaway]

Article on Japan Soccer

[DimaToe]

Funny SI article on the badminton "scandal"

When I saw the first picture I was like "I didn't know men could compete with women in this sport" then I noticed the boobs on the Chinese team ...bad i know

[maatTheViking]

I didn't know there were table tennis leagues in Europe. If it really is that popular- what do they need to do to be able to compete with the Chinese?

Sweden have had comptitive Table Tennis players, Denmark won men's doubles bronze in 2004 at the Olympics.

It is a game of numbers of talents, amount of money and willingness to try and compete. China can be somewhat unstoppalbe if they take something popular and devote a lot of money to the sport, much more than any European nation can spend on developing talent.


Badminton has many of the same issues - but I am hoping for some Danish medals here

[my little pony]

i didnt realize that badminton was in the olympics, i thought it was something from the onion

[IceAlisa]

Competitive forum posting is going to be in the Olympics soon. They just haven't decided Summer or Winter.

[Ziggy]

I can't keep up with what's being discussed in what thread.

There's a thread for each day where events are discussed as they unfold.

Softball is routinely mentioned as being dropped from the Olympic program because there are not enough nations who are competitive at it. Clearly- not many nations are competitive at table tennis, even if they have someone they can send to play.

This is over MANY disciplines of table tennis- singles, doubles, men's, women's- China dominants them all. If you compare that to figure skating, you'd have to look at all the disciplines. Nine different nations share the top 75% (178 medals out of 238) for figure skating. Eight countries share 75% of the gold medals.

Softball and baseball are simply not played outside a handful of countries.

As Mazzy said, table tennis has professional leagues, youth leagues, regional leagues, etc. in many different countries. There are many national and international tournaments. Clubs buy players from different countries.

Poland is being represented by a Chinese player who was bought by a Polish club and played in Poland for so long, she ended up getting Polish citizenship.

It's a sport which is much better represented worldwide than baseball.

[maatTheViking]

i didnt realize that badminton was in the olympics, i thought it was something from the onion

It is REALLY popular in Denmark - the cisty of 40K people I grew up in, had a huge badminton only facility - not like here where for instance in my gym the badminton takes place in the basketball courts Thursday and Sunday afternoon only...

[tchaikovsky_177]

I did look, but I also looked at the medal tables- China has 41 out of 76 medals awarded. South Korea has 17. That means two countries have over three-quarters of all the medals every awarded in the sport.

To me, that is not a sport with competitive geographical representation.

Your comparison with softball is a bit misleading, because softball, being a team sport, means that if the USA automatically occupies the golden spot, there are two medals available for other countries. At least in table tennis, even if China goes 1-2 in both singles and wins gold in team, at least there are 6 other medals for grab by other places.

Also, not to worry. The Table Tennis federation has already taken steps to reduce Chinese dominance in the sport. Why do you think they have women and men's teams now (since like 2008) instead of women and men's doubles like tennis or badminton? Because this way, China can only take gold instead of taking gold and silver in doubles like before.

[Japanfan]

This may seem an odd question, but are the swimming pools heated?

Just curious - I can't imagine that the shock of cold water would be welcome to any swimmer/diver, but perhaps they are used to it and it is physiologically more beneficial than heated water?

[my little pony]

japan won the gold in softball in 08