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I really hope Brazil can keep a good level for the next Olympics. We shouldn't be making the event in the first place (much like the 2014 World Cup), but now that we are doing it, I hope we won't be embarassed at least.
It's also frustrating to see how badly Brazil always ends up in the Medal score department. Of course, with the majority of the athletes lacking any kind of sponsor and having to have a job while also training, it's a foregone conclusion.
Regarding the structure for the Rio de Janeiro olympics, here's a quick thing to make you think: Rio de Janeiro hosted the 2007 Pan-American games, sort of the American continent olympics. Despite having to build structures to have almost all the Olympic Sports for the Pan, they are going to demolish a lot of them and rebuild them, because the structures weren't conservated well enough or were not up to the standards. But how could this happen, if it has only passed 5 years? Sorry, nationalist rage here.
Anyway, there's one thing that I'm positive will be good in the Rio olympics. We won't be seeing all those empty stadiums and arenas, with no one watching the competitions. I'm pretty sure most of the events will be full.
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Taking a break from Brazil-centric things, i'm loving the games so far. I didn't have time to watch the opening cerimony (I'll try to watch it later, though), but I liked all sports I watched until now. Can't wait to see the Athletics competitions (even though there are just a few brazilian athletes in it  ).
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I feel like my beef with NBC over all of this is that they seem to have a tendency to turn it into a public interest piece or even shades of a reality show. The announcers talking a ton about odd facts of players without any relation to the event, the focus on the select few athletes, their horrible life struggles that they will finally get to overcome TM, and their insistence on focusing so much on the emotions of these superstars to the exclusion of sport coverage. I don't want to be a coldhearted bastard and say that they shouldn't have emotions, that's totally understandable. It's just when you only have 3 hours of primetime coverage once you take commercial time out of the count, I don't want 30 min of that to be interviewing Phelps' mom and sisters about his childhood pool and another 30 min about how terribly terribly sad Jordyn Wieber is and how her teammates are going to try and be nice to her even though they really wanted to win too.
Personally, I'd just be happy with less commentary and more variety of sports. When the primetime is Swimming/Diving/Gymnastics/Volleyball every night for the next 4 days I just don't care anymore. That's not too bad though, cause by now I've got my computer thinking it's in England so I'm gonna fire up some BBC streams and quit complaining.
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Ichabod Wrote:Anyway, there's one thing that I'm positive will be good in the Rio olympics. We won't be seeing all those empty stadiums and arenas, with no one watching the competitions. I'm pretty sure most of the events will be full.
Apparently it's a standard olympics problem with tickets allocated to national federations which don't turn up. Apart from the football which few people care about, there are plenty of locals who want to watch the events but can't get tickets.
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I've heard that a lot of it is also that they want to charge really really high prices, and aren't willing to consider dropping the price even if it would make more money because it would make them lose face not being able to sell all the tickets.
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Was it a little dusty in anyone else's house tonight during the women's gymnastics team finals?
"There is no wealth like knowledge. No poverty like ignorance."
Bobchillingworth
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Jordyn Fucking Wieber: Her soul burns brighter than most other people's (gag).
But seriously yeah, Team America's lady athletes are picking up a lot of slack for the men.
Also Ye Shiwen, holy shit.
Bobchillingworth
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Double post, to say that I've really been loving the Olympics so far. Haven't been so interested in sporting events since ever. London is doing a fantastic job with the Games.
NBC is devoting like at least 5 minutes of every evening news broadcast to Anglophile adoration, going on about how awesome Great Britain and London in particular are. Having been there myself for a while, I'm inclined to agree =)
Rio should be great, another "emerging superpower coming-out party" for Brazil like China had.
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I am amazed by how young all the athletes are. Women's gymnastics is always 15 yr olds, which really doesn't say woman to me, but whatever. But a lot of the swimmers and divers are 15 and 16. At 16, I was barely able to do my homework.
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Am I the only one a bit sickened by the US media double standard towards the female swimming events?
Missy Franklin does a prelim race to qualify and then 15 minutes later has to race the 100 final which she wins for the gold. US media is gushing over her, calling her amazing. Then we have a chinese woman swimmer who gives the race of her life and the media can't go five minutes without insinuating she's a cheat.
Keep being classy, US.
Suffer Game Sicko
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Not really the media making that up though - a couple coaches insinuated that the improvement she made in such a short time have never been done before without doping. Franklin's been at a high level for quite some time, the Chinese girl came out of nowhere. And the Chinese don't exactly have a sparkling track record on the cheating issue.
Those disclaimers aside though, I generally agree. I don't have a problem with them informing us that certain coaches have made comments insinuating cheating, but I'd rather them just leave it at that and not build it into whatever narrative they're angling for.
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