The one about the Olympic Games 2024

I’m sure that it’s very very fast, but good god that Lotus Hope looks awful.

By comparison to what? It’s a custom built track bike created to do one thing – go as fast as possible as efficiently as possible, form follows function. It doesn’t need to look pretty, it has one job to do, and being a glamour puss isn’t it. However, I think it’s a stunning piece of design.

The sprint team and Keeley’s run were stupendous, and Duplantis’ pole-vault, was just astonishing, I just can’t understand how someone can propel themselves up and over a bar 20 feet up, using a bendy pole! And he makes it look so bloody easy! Going back and having another go just to get another world record, and so easily is almost taking the piss!

The kayak cross is just nuts!

Humpback whale in the surfing wins it for me!

By comparison to what? It’s a custom built track bike created to do one thing – go as fast as possible as efficiently as possible, form follows function. It doesn’t need to look pretty, it has one job to do, and being a glamour puss isn’t it. However, I think it’s a stunning piece of design.

You could just make it so everyone has to use the same bike, like in Keirin in Japan.  There shouldn’t be competitive advantage in the Olympics because one country can spend £60K per bike versus another being able to spend £1K.

Compare it to shooting for example, never watch it but would guess that everybody has to use the same gun and you can’t turn up with some very high tech gun that is way better than everyone else’s?

For shooting it looks like specs are set to some degree but they don’t have to use the same equipment:

https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/shooting-101-olympic-equipment

The shooting rifles are in the same league as track bikes for expenditure. Pistols are about the same as a disk wheel, and there is little customisation other than the grip.

Cycling is a sport where you can buy speed, and there are meaningful gains to be had. Time in a wind tunnel, together with time practicing on the track, will be a strong predictor of success. For reference, you can get the most up to date Look bike, with twin disks, skinsuit, helmet and aero socks and shoe covers for under £20k per rider.  Accessible for a national cycling body (e.g., China). Switch to a Dolan and you’ll spend half that. The bill for the Silverstone Sports wind tunnel will be vastly higher! British Cycling have unlimited access to a wind tunnel. By contrast, there is no indoor velodrome in Ireland. Which country has the better track squad?

Watching surfing at breakfast, the mens gold medal tube ride was so fast. SUPER STOKED

There shouldn’t be competitive advantage in the Olympics because one country can spend £60K per bike versus another being able to spend £1K.

Japan’s costs £100,000. Will they even get a medal?

But, TBF, the ‘price tag’ is a notional amount and to qualify, the bike has to be commercially available – I don’t believe the value bears any relation to the actual cost to design and manufacture.

you can’t turn up with some very high tech gun that is way better than everyone else’s?

You can. But all the shooters will already have bought it for the Worlds. My stepfather spent £3k on a new stock for his rifle that made him shoot worse at the nationals. His kitbag makes my track kit look minimal. For pistol, everything fits in a case smaller than a briefcase. pistol is both cool and accessible. But the shooting shoes are £200. A Turkey T-shirt is cheap though 😉

For expensive kit, I don’t think much comes close to equestrian. The vets bills alone!

I was watching the interview last night with Keely then the race. She is fast, successful, beautiful and speaks really well to camera. So her career is mapped out for her. Ultra successful athlete, then pundit, then presenter taking over for Gabby Logan etc. Keely will be around in the public for long time. Very well deserved as well.

You could just make it so everyone has to use the same bike, like in Keirin in Japan.  There shouldn’t be competitive advantage in the Olympics because one country can spend £60K per bike versus another being able to spend £1K.

Similar arguments in the Road Race though – some countries are scrapping around on borrowed kit, their soigneur is the rider’s cousin, the mechanic barely knows one end of a wrench from the other and they’ve had to self-fund their flights vs countries like Belgium/Netherlands etc where they’ve got the combined expertise of the various trade teams that their riders are drawn from.

Isn’t moaning about kit and facilities the same as us moaning that Scandinavian countries win loads of medals in the winter Olympics?

We always used to be just OK at track cycling but it was always dominated by other European countries – then we decided to change that and chucked money and resources at it and we’re now one of the worlds best on track.

We’re still not the best at many other events, we’ve picked ones we can do something about and focused on those.

Actually, we were nowhere in track cycling until Chris Boardman put us on the map. Then having identified Track cycling as a potentially rich medal stream, we invested. First Newport, then Manchester. And with dedicated access to that fundamental resource, an indoor Olympic track (as opposed to snow) and full-time funding, we mined that medal stream.

Now we have Newport, Manchester, London, Derby, Glasgow – all Olympic sized tracks. And Calahott indoors, Herne Hill, Welwyn, outdoors. By contrast there are only 12 Olympic swimming pools in the UK. There used to be more in Paris ands Dublin has still to start construction of its long approved velodrome.

I’m watching the show jumping, if you think the best bikes and guns are expensive, check out what the horses change hands for – if you can find an owner willing to sell at any price. Literally priceless.

Even Madame Edukator’s docile ned that would struggle on the bottom bar of any of the Olympic jumps cost more than my Zesty and TCR combined.

I’m watching the show jumping, if you think the best bikes and guns are expensive, check out what the horses change hands for – if you can find an owner willing to sell at any price. Literally priceless.

absolute nonsense. There were loads at the youth club you could just borrow if you fancied doing a bit of showjumping, some of the dads would get hold of old ones that’d been left out & gone a bit rusty and fix them up. Total grass-roots sport that anyone can get into. I don’t know why they don’t have even more horsey sports at the olympics.

Sky Brown has just fallen, hopefully she’s able to carry on with her dislocated shoulder injury and get into the next round.

Edit: the next round at 4.30pm.

“By contrast there are only 12 Olympic swimming pools in the UK.”

Am currently in rural New South Wales. Biggest town near here is Nowra, population about 25000. It has two 50M pools!

Jeez you’d think a post about the price of Olympic show jumping horses on an Olympic thread while the jumping was on would be taken in that context, but as this is STW I obviously wasn’t specific enough.

This forum is the picky pickiest place this side of a very picky place  (where emoticons show as punctuation)

Enjoy your Olympics folks.

The diving will be well worth watching, Chinese diver getting 10’s in the first round!

I thought Zilog was taking the piss and supporting your point Educator…. Maybe the forum needs the smileys fixed.

Even Madame Edukator’s docile ned that would struggle on the bottom bar of any of the Olympic jumps

I didn’t even know you could ride docile neds.  You’d think showjumping would be more popular in Glasgow if that’s true.

I didn’t even know you could ride docile neds.

By definition, a docile ned would fail a drugs test?

Maybe the forum needs the smileys fixed.

¯\(°_o)/¯

There were loads at the youth club you could just borrow, some of the dads would get hold of old ones that’d been left out & gone a bit rusty and fix them up. Total grass-roots sport that anyone can get into. .

That is the thing with yachting. And it is the only way some of those kids are ever going to make it out of the ghetto. That and dressage.

For that full Reservoir Dogs experience, I can recommend watching the Men’s 25m rapid fire pistol on Discovery+, and watch to the end. Obviously this is not an event Team GB will excel in – you can’t practice in the UK because the pistols are banned. But the discipline is quite an event. Surprisingly hard, like archery. Hitting five 13cm targets at 25m with hand held pistol within 4 seconds. The World Record is 39/40 shots.

The diving commentary is funny.

Diver executes incredible precision whirlwind of twists, turns and tucks.

Commentator 1: ooh that was very sloppy, what a poor effort there from [diver].
Commentator 2: I agree, she won’t be at all happy with that one, [proceeds to list catalogue of errors]

Am currently in rural New South Wales. Biggest town near here is Nowra, population about 25000. It has two 50M pools!

I’ve got a friend from Kansas City whose school had two 50m pools.  They didn’t get used, mind.  They were just built because one of the school governors also happened to own a construction company, and seemed to get a lot of lucrative contracts from the school….

I’d hate to think how much it costs to heat one. Our local pool had broken glass (swim club don’t have to follow the no glass rule) so had to be drained.

It was filled from a tap using a garden hose, would have taken 24+hrs but thankfully the fire brigade turned up and filled it in a couple of hours.

Just heating it back up cost £70k and that was pre cost of living hikes.

Wow – French speed climber gets his heat by 0.01 seconds, crowd has just gone absolutely wild! This is still just the elimination runs, not even the finals yet.

Just heating it back up cost £70k and that was pre cost of living hikes.

Nah. Olympic pools are 2,500,000 L, assume 12 degree increase from baseline, and the specific heat of water as 4,200 J/kg/degree, requires 1.3E11 Joules, and there are 3.6E6 Joules per kWh, so 35,000 KWh at 25p for electric and 6p for gas would be about £8750 and £2100. Still have to KEEP it warm though! And you might want it warmer.

^^^ yeah, was going to say, only if they are heating it by burning £10 notes 😉

Track cycling just getting underway again – Team Pursuit finals up first.

Educator – you know this place by now.
Also a lot of people misguidedly thinking that horsey folk are rich and entitled. This definitely wasn’t the case when I owned one. Very expensive hobby, but so is mtbing ( if one has the typical  stw garage full of bikes).

TT helmet bingo for team GB.

I struggle with the notion that horse dancing is an olympic sport, utterly bonkers.

PRC riding two Look T20’s and a Koga Kinsei, which is an interesting choice. Lovely frame. Australia men all on Argon 18’s and struggling to hold wheels. Japan on their custom Toray with reverse sided chain set and wide forks. Germany all ride FES, and GB all ride Hope Lotus – checkout the width of those bars and think about the tunnel time to get the position in that last lap. The Dutch also all ride Koga Kinsei. And that last lap. Wow!

Bloody hell, that GB vs Denmark Men’s TP was tense! This way, that way, up, down…

Both teams riding absolutely on the rivet.

Team Pursuit world record absolutely demolished there!

Going to be a pretty epic gold medal final tomorrow, GB vs Australia.

Curse of the montage back again then

Well well.

Who?