Highlights/lowlights/memorable moments of London 2012: How was it for you?

[allezfred]

Closing ceremony is just hours away, so a chance to reflect on the past few weeks.

Highlights:

- First time to travel to a Summer Olympics. What a wonderful experience it was to see the Olympic flame (never got round to it in Torino ).
- The Irish boxers and Katie Taylor in particular. Amazing atmosphere in the country after what have been a few tough years. Hearing the Irish anthem sung so beautifully in a boxing arena was so special.
- David Rudisha, Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and of course Usain Bolt. Incredible athletes!
- Burt Le Clos!
- Clare Balding!!
- Getting hooked on the incredibly voidy Modern Pentathlon
- The British public who were there to cheer on their own of course, but were also very respectful and enthusiastic for athletes from other countries. And in individual sports for actually using the persons name and not just shouting "GB, GB".
- Not having jet lag without leaving home.
- Liz and Daniel Craig jumping out of a plane
- The Olympic rings in the opening ceremony
- The Olympic cauldron
- The excitement of the mens 10m diving event
- McKayla Maroney not being impressed

Lowlights:

- Officials not measuring Betty Heidler's hammer throw properly the first time. WTF? At least they got it right in the end.
- Irish sailor winning her first four races and then finishing FORTH at the end of the regatta.
- LOCOG copping out with their choice of who to light the flame. Pick someone famous innit
- Suspected and proven dope cheats, especially in the middle distance events
- The swimming being all about Michael Phelps and very little else
- Victoria Pendleton making Nicole Cooke look endearing

There's probably more, but that's all I can think of for the moment. Overall it has been fun and made even more enjoyable by being on FSU too.

[Fergus]

Highs:

HMQ and James Bond! Corgi rollovers!!!!

Bob & Mike Bryan winning Men's Doubles gold!!!!

All the tennis, really. It was a great and exciting competition.

USA Women's Gymnastics team.......and especially Aly Raisman on floor!

Tom Daley's bronze medal celebration!

Great Britain gets a massive for putting on yet another fantastic & show!

[mazzy]

Highs:
what allezfred said,
Uchimura!!! Epke!!! Great MAG EFs in general.
Great performance by the US WAG team. I lurve me some Russian headcases, but the Americans were super solid.
Mustafina, the queen of copter legs.
Dibaba, Defar, Chicherova & Ennis are the athletics queens. Totally delivered.


Lows:
Beautiful Russian headcases in WAG.
Phillip Boy
Lysenko, Perkovic & Pischalnikova.
Randomness of many field events due to conditions. Walcott & Greg freaking Rutherford Olympic champs?
Incompetent athletics officials. DSQ for Schwarzkopf because they couln't count to six, questionable measurements in the Deca SP, messup with Heidler. The organizers probably should not have taken the same officials as in '48.

Very good games overall. Not quite in the same league as Barcelona/Sydney, but better than Atlanta or Athens.

[Yazmeen]

Highs:

The Fierce Five, especially Aly Raisman bringing it home in the end, for both the team competition and the event finals
Gabby's megawatt smile and attitude
Michael Phelps breaking the medal record
Mo Farah, the man is just a rare gem, my favorite athlete of the entire games
Allyson Felix and Sanya Richards Ross bringing home their individual golds and all the US ladies in that amazing relay
Attitude-wise: McCayla Maroney, Aliya Mustafina, Dawn Harper, and Kellie Wells for having the guts to say and/or act how they really feel
Rebecca Soni joyfully singing the Nat'l Anthem when she received her first gold
Missy Franklin, period
Andy Murray bringing it home for Britain
And hell, Usain Bolt, how can you not enjoy this guy??????

Lows:

US women's volleyball taking the silver
Jordan Wieber not making the all-around and her out of bounds steps in FX
Komova giving up when things didn't go perfectly
Attitude-wise: Ryan Lochte and LoLo Jones. How about shutting the feck up and just run your events? Forgive me if performance counts more than image in my book. (And yes, they are both great athletes overall, but their images and big mouths overshadowed the accomplishments they had in London)
The media overlooking medalists and other fine atheletes while breathlessly hanging on the words and images of the overhyped (see: Ryan Lochte and LoLo Jones...)

[floskate]

HIGHS
Opening Ceremony
Team GB as a whole sooooo proud of them.
Mo Farah, Jess Ennis, Bolt and David Rudisha
GB MAG team & Tweddle
US WAG team
Aliya Mustafina
Clare Balding
The country as a whole - after years of moaning and over the whole thing, we've really come good as a nation.

I'm so very proud to be British right now

[Citlali]

Highs:

Opening Ceremony

Gymnastics, Gabby Uchimura and the GB mens team

Mo Farah, Usain Bolt, Jessica Ennis, Allyson Felix, Shelly-Ann Fraser and Kirani James

Diving

Latin American athletes Colombia, Brasil, Argentina and Mexico

FSU, London looking great, royal watching and my two weeks vacation from work

Low:

Perú without any medals again, not even top ten finishes

That is ending and I have to wait two years till Sochi and four to Rio

[Loves_Shizuka]

HIGHS:

Basically living down the ****ing road from Olympic Park!!!!!
Going to see the Gymnastics live
Gabby Douglas
Mo Farah
Jess Ennis
Christine Ohurougu
Aliya Mustafina
Deng Linlin
Serena winning singles and then S/V winning the doubles
del Potro grabbing the bronze
All the foreign hotties who've been wandering round my area

LOWS:

Ksenia Afanasyeva in the FX final
How robotic and un-artistic womens gymnastics is getting.
Komova's little meltdown
The empty seats
Silly officials

and especially Aly Raisman on floor!

Get. Out.

Overall I feel so lucky to have lived on the doorstep a Summer Olympics. I'm never going to forget this. It's been like residing in the middle of a two week long carnivale!!!

[beepbeep]

Highs

• The opening ceremony (corgis, Mr Bean, the industrial revolution bit, awsome music)
• Team GB !!
• Mustafina (chopper legs FTW)
• 1st brazilian medal in gymastics (and it was gold!)
• Girl's volleyball defending champions!!
• Decathletes
• 3 brazilian guys finishing top 13 in the marathon
• Brazilian boxers, 3 medals (1 girl!!!)
• Pentathlon (last medal, so unexpected )
• Brazil leading the medal board for a split second on the 1st day
• Bolt
• Mo Farrah
• Brazil not winning the men's football title (they need to learn not be so self absorbed )
• Pretty horseys

Lows

• Empty (corporate) seats on sold out events
• Brazilian athletes on top of the rankings chickening out when it matters... again! (Hypolito, Murer, men's volleyball, girl's football)
• The wind inside the olympic stadium, fecking up all field events.
• Alleged duruggies winning medals

And bring on Rio 2016, ugly rude brazilians, coming your way

[Fergus]

Get. Out.

Hava nagila to you, too.

More highs:

Mexico's gold medal in Men's Soccer!

USA's 1-2 in the Decathlon!

The END of USA's drought in Olympic diving!

To paraphrase Elaine Stritch: Here's to the LADIES from across the globe and on EVERY team.....I'll drink to that!

[allezfred]

And bring on Rio 2016, ugly rude brazilians, coming your way

So looking forward to the Rio presentation bit tonight!

[morqet]

Highlights:
Team GB gymnasts. Amazing to have people to cheer for in the finals instead of adopting the Japanese and Russian teams!
Mustafina
Super Saturday (both of them!) in the athletics
The afternoon where I got unreasonably excited about canoeing and shooting...
Chad Le Clos and Chad's Dad
No transport chaos and in fact it being much more pleasant to get around London than usual.
The wonderful atmosphere everywhere, especially in the Olympic Park.
Nicola Adams and Katie Taylor

Lowlights
Struggling to think of much at all - I wasn't that overwhelmed by the swimming this time round & it's always frustrating to see "former" drugs cheats coming back and doing well but that's about it.

[Lexxandra]

Highlights:

Open ceremony and HMQ
Amazing cheering crowd
Absolute perfection that is Anna Chicherova!
USA Women's Football team!
Erick Barrondo winning silver medal in 20km walk (first Olympic medal for Guatemala)!
Victoria Komova getting two silver medals despite an inflammation of the periosteum and constantly being on painkillers
Iordan Iovtchev (39) and Oksana Chusovitina (37) making finals in Gymnastics
Decathletes and Heptathletes especially Jessica Ennis
Fantastic 800m finals: Maria Savinova, Caster Semenya, David Rudisha and Nijel Amos (first Olympic medal for Botswana)!
Elena Isinbaeva winning bronze despite her injury.
Men's Diving
Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka.
Watching Equestrian for the first time and Zara Phillips getting silver.

[Spareoom]

I just wanted to say, thank you to Great Britain for hosting such an amazing Games! I can't remember the last time there was a Summer Games with so little controversy, drama, scandals and whatnot. The people of GB have been nothing but gracious and welcoming to everyone and it sounds like the athletes have had just a wonderful time and enjoyed themselves in the time during the competition and the time afterwards.

Well done, and thank you!

[oleada]

Highlights:
Hot foreign boyyzz
McKayla Maroney's team final vault & her being not impressed
Aliya Mustafina
The tennis event, even if Andy Murray won
Usain Bolt & his showboating
Mariana Pajon's gold in BMX
Colombia doing so well
Rythmic gymnastics
Mexico winning the gold in football

[gingercrush]

Highlights:

* New Zealand wins five golds
* Aliya Mustafina amazing comeback from her ACL injury
* Rebecca Soni winning 200m Breastroke final and getting a new WR
* Shannon Miller. ^_^
* BMX racing
* Team GB
* Eventing was fab.


Lowlights:

* Too many falls in gymnastics
* Field events in track and field. Long jump distances were ........
* The wah-wah over Valerie Adams here.
* mysky being a huge pain in the ....... and half my recordings seriously mucking up

And ugh once you start making a list you suddenly end up forgetting everything.

[rfisher]

Highs that the US women won more gold medals than the men did. Women athletes really do not get the respect they deserve in the US.
Thrilled for the US diving program; their hard work payed off
Misty and Karrie threepeat
Phelps went out a superstar
Kim Rhodes: 5 golds in 5 games
Gabby Douglas
McKayla Maroney (Agents should be waiting for her when she walks out of the Village).

Lows: sad for the US women volleyball team to tank at the end and that the men's basketball team will get more raves than the women's team which has 5 gold medals in 5 games.
No other lows. Some teams/athletes won and some lost. That's the nature of the games.

Bring on Sochi

[Clay]

highlights:
Finding a BBC feed.
Cheering on the Team GB more than the Americans
Clare Balding y'all
Juan Martin del Potro’s Bronze Medal. I don’t think I saw anyone more grateful for the Olympic experience.
Andy Murray
The excitement of the Mens 10m. And Leon Taylor made it even more exciting.
Friendship: All of the gushy man love between Mo Farrah/Gaylen Rupp or Trey Hardee and Ashton Eaton
Dressage: I’ve been following the Games as long as I can remember, but I’ve never seen horses dancing to music.
The fact the Olympics are a huge distraction. When I had a frustrating day, I enjoyed feeling happy for someone else
...and why the hell not? Beth Tweddle!


lowlights
NBC: Annoying that I needed a cable package to watch online. The prime time coverage was lacking anyway: viewers didn’t really get a sense of how the competition unfolded in Gymnastics.
Pharmelita
US Men’s Gymnastics
Tyson Gay crying: but WTF, he’s going to end up with the bronze medal once Gaitlin gets caught.
Paula Radcliffe, Liu Xiang
Shin A-Lam, the South Korean fencer, crying for an hour while waiting the results of her protest. That looked heartbreaking.
Ryan Lochte: I don’t know why exactly. I wasn’t excited for him.

Special thanks to FSU for making it so much fun. In some ways, it reminded me a little bit of FSU pre-COP days

[Karina1974]

Highs:

- US womens' gym team winning gold
- Gabby's gold in AA
- Aly's gold on floor and bronze on beam
- Opening ceremony
- Watching Marianne Vos winning the womens' road race and hearing how she once finished 2nd in a previous race after a fall and getting back on the bike with a broken collarbone, while I'm rehabbing my own shoulder injury from a fall off my bike.

Lows:

- Crapshit TV coverage by NBC. They need to realize that not everybody has access to the internet feeds (sorry but my employer pays me to WORK, not to watch sports! I also hear that some of our state workers got reprimanded for watching the feeds on company [aka paid for by us TAXPAYERS] time), so primetime TV coverage that is more than mere highlights would be nice. Beijing yielded almost 14 hours of coverage for just the women, exhibitions & rhythmic gym; this time around I could fit all the womens'artistic on one 8-hour tape. And don't get me started on the mens' team final coverage! That was a joke and a half.
- Speaking of the exhibition... the fact that there wasn't one this time around.
- It's painfully obvious that they need to bring back compulsories. I was watching tapes from Atlanta during one of the "off days" when gym wasn't on... what a difference!
- The sniping about Gabby's hair & the Nosy Nellies publicizing her family's financial status. I hope those jerks all feel proud of themselves for tearing down a 16-year-old at what should be the happiest moment of her life.

[Karina1974]

Double post. Stupid phone was acting up again.

[duane]

Highlights:
Gabby Douglas
Allyson Felix (...and I'm gay!)
Diving
Rhythmic Gymnastics
Tennis (Would have been MUCH more memorable if Federer won gold)
Mens Track and Field--400m and below (hottie after hottie after hottie... )
Mens 4x100m relay
This awesome mens volleyball finals match between Russia and Brazil that I'm now watching!

Lowlights:
NBC's coverage
Michael Phelps overload
Opening Ceremony