The one about the Olympic Games 2024

Bouldering and lead climbing are good for this: most decent walls have problems of a broadly equivalent standard these day. I’m sure that there are better climbers than me on here (Spin and generalist for starters!) but when I’m in decent shape and not time poor, I’d climb/train 3 times per week minimum. Obviously not properly structured training etc and I probably drink more in a week than most athletes drink during their career! I’m not too shabby though, most casual observers would think that I was good. Bouldering: can’t get off the ground, like literally won’t be able to hold the starting position…..the first move may as well be in a different postcode it’ll seem that far away. Lead: very very unlikely to get off the floor, not out of the realms of possibility, but literally no chance of making the first clip.

It’s been said before and I still think it would be a fun ide to have an ‘average Joe’ take part in some events just for comparison, so that everyone’s quite clear about what it is they’re watching

think they did that with the breakdancing this year :/

think they did that with the breakdancing this year :/

Less Joe, more Joey!

How is she going to go back to work after this! I just hope her students give her a bit of leniency (after mercilessly ripping the piss for a week or so as she richly deserves). Given her job, you’d think she’d have a vague idea of the standard and what a fool she was going to make of herself!

Sidenote – Forget about it’s Olympic relevance – is breaking still a popular thing? Did it not die off in the 80’s?

I’m calling out the Aussie break dancer as a social experiment…..in her videos from 2022, whilst not amazing, she’s much better than the standard of what she did in the Olympics. She wasn’t dressed as a PE teacher either! Cultural Politics of Break Dancing is her research area….. she’s probably now got enough material to work on for the next decade.

I’m calling out the Aussie break dancer as a social experiment

I have seen that theory, and you’re right – other videos of her do show slightly better “proper” breakdancing, but still no power moves like windmills etc (which she obviously cannot do) hence trying to win points via the “creativity” route instead (which in fairness is one of the judging/scoring categories). The tracksuit does make it look like a Chris Lilley sketch though!! Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was a handy sprinter a long time ago (sub 11s)  then ran against Jamie Henderson (a decent national and Commonwealth level runner) at schools level. And the 0.8s that he beat me by was massive on the track.

Even though I was in the mix at 50m my physiology/height played against me in the “cruise” phase.

A was decent off the base of a scrum though.

My Olympic ‘journey’ was karate.  Back in the late 90s the carrot of the Olympics was being dangled along with all the suddenly available lottery money that would come along with that.

Several years of training 20 to 30 hours per week with little to no official funding.  I was still starting to do OK at international level but the problem was you were competing against people who were fully funded and able to train full time.  Eventually the news came through that karate wasn’t going to be included in 2004 but maybe in 2008.

Round about 2002 I realised I was killing myself to train and work and the best I could ever realistically hope for was a medal at a European championships if the stars aligned.  And I would most likely end up being a 30 year old with lots of experience in a sport that still wasn’t getting any lottery funding and little recognition or respect from anyone in Scotland.

It was nice to see karate finally get a shot in 2021 but the fact it was already decided that it wouldn’t be in 2024 felt like a cruel trick.  Breakdancing at least came into it with the mentality that ‘the Olympics needs us more than we need them’.  The sport of Karate turned itself inside out to get into the Olympics for almost 3 decades.

It seems really unfair because the sport formed itself in a mould that would be most compelling for the Olympic committee and, imo, it wasn’t always the best thing for the sport itself.  Something I’m sure a lot of other sports can relate to.

I suspect that’s utter bollocks from cav.

The average power over an ‘easier’ entire tour stage is about 250 watts, which obviously includes all the surges and uphill bits as well. So the neutralized bit will be significantly less than 250 watts

Any cat one racer could easily keep up with that

As mentioned above, it’s less about power and more to do with being able to ride in a bunch, as part of a team.

At the National Road Race Champs, the general format is that the WorldTour and domestic pro riders smash it for 2 laps to get rid of the dead wood – half the field of the best amateurs in the country go out the back instantly.

Then there’ll be a lull for a lap or two, then they’ll actually start racing. At that point, any amateurs who have managed to cling on will also vanish.

Cav (and Millar) were entirely correct in their statement.

Remember when Richard Hammond tried to drive an F1 car? They started him off on a baby F1 but even he, experienced at driving supercars around tracks, could not compute the extra speed and quicker reaction times required.

?? Team USA marathoners Clayton Young and Conner Mantz have uploaded their Olympic marathon runs to @Strava.

Here's a look at their data ?

Conner Mantz (8th place): https://t.co/Mh68cGs1If

Clayton Young (9th place): https://t.co/g4LfEmKjLS

? That mountain at about Mile… pic.twitter.com/rh4hq6f2vX

— Chris Chavez (@ChrisChavez) August 10, 2024

Some data there from a couple of the marathon runners. Interesting thread showing the difference between club runners and pros!

Heart rate at 164 doing 5 min miles. [insert shocked face emoji here], those are just mad numbers. They’re essentially doing sprint speeds, at (admittedly pacey) leisure running heart rates for 2 hours…Genetic freaks

I did just LOL on R5, where they’re doing a call or text in on what sport people think they can get to Olympic standard in within the next 4 years. A guy had texted in reckoned he could probably get to track cycling’s level, and in fact reckoned it wouldn’t take as long as 4 years. His only concern was whether he had to supply his own motorbike or is that provided by the organisers

well he can train at Reading as we’re short of Derny riders. None of that electric nonsense either!

It’s been said before and I still think it would be a fun ide to have an ‘average Joe’ take part in some events just for comparison, so that everyone’s quite clear about what it is they’re watching

There are a few things on Youtube where a large treadmill is set at speed of 2 hour marathon runner and even fairly good runners can’t hold it for long so an average Joe wouldn’t even be able to get to the speed at all.

For anyone that has tried very high fitness speed/endurance sports we know full well that we could never come close.  I still stand by shooting though, if I practised for many hours a week for 4 years I would absolutely be very good at air pistol shooting.  Whether I would qualify is another matter but I would be in with a very good chance.

I reckon back in the day with a load of training and application I could have run a 3 hour marathon or close to.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c990yd94j7eo

Not with a **** broken leg though

I chose 10m air pistol  for a reason. You can practice at home. With no more than a pistol, pellets and a target. No need for a trip to a club, special clothing, or all that extra stuff. Just a pistol and a garage with decent lighting. And four hours a day practice. That’s a LOT of pellets and paper targets (invest in an electronic target if you are very serious about those Olympics (a lot less walking too and fro). About £3k in total plus pellets. I think it’s doable. Any 25m distance needs a dedicated range, so training, sign off, travel to and from range etc…. There are very few Olympic sports you can do at home to really get the hours in.

Did the beeb do a highlights package as part of the closing ceremony? Preferably one that wasn’t just GB + Biles + Marchand?

Last week I was watching the pros race for Olympic medals. This morning I was out on my bike in the hills of Northumberland. I’m sure those guys are good, but they didn’t have to choose between wading an icy stream and getting nettles on their legs crossing a rickety footbridge, did they? And they had folk handing them proper snacks, not carrying a pocket full of Lidl knock-offs. So chapeau to the Olympians, but it’s important to see these things in their proper context.

Anyone else go through their bookshelves looking for Harry Potter books to burn after reading the news this morning ?

Anyone else go through their bookshelves looking for Harry Potter books to burn after reading the news this morning ?

Firstly I’m 52 so about 30ish when the first one came out…..no HP books ever made it into the house!

But secondly, yeah – not good. I was always on the side of feeling JRR (and Navratilova and Sharon Davis) had a right to an opinion as we all got our heads around it (arguably more right than me as a man) but those words I’ve (now) seen are not good. As a professional wordsmith she can’t be forgiven any miss-placed nuance – she meant to inflame.

TiRedFull Member
I chose 10m air pistol  for a reason. You can practice robbing the post office

+1 Edukator & Convert, was willing to allow JKR to make her comments but that was just plain wrong & clearly lands her on the wrong side of the argument.

Nothing will come of it though

The law suit is in France, the barister admits he hasn’t got a clue beyond UK law. The lady isn’t trans and the IOC is happy so there is no ambiguity, she’s a woman. The tweets are factually wrong and cyber bullying.

I disagreed with Mark’s stance and Hannahs piece which was about trans and flew in the face of what seems to me a fair compromise by the IOC and many federations.

In this case Imane has competed within the IOC framework and does not deserve the OTT abuse from Musk and JKR.

So Raygun…….if you ever go on any form of social media, you’ll no doubt have seen some of the bazillions of mentions of it – copycat ‘dances’,  memes, sketches – you name it.

Turns out she’s not loving it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/articles/cq82yjw5xelo

Not sure I would either to be honest – but I’m enough of an introvert I wouldn’t have been ‘breaking’ on stage in front of millions in the first place.

My thoughts:-

1. Surely she knew enough about the scene to know what she was going to be doing was surely going to get some piss taking.

2. Gunn said she didn’t realise her appearance would “open the door to so much hate”. To be honest I’ve not seen any hate. I’ve seen seen lots of people ripping the piss, but I think everything I’ve seen could be described as joyous leg pulling, not hate. It’s like the world has had a big post Olympics smile at her expense. Raygun or the bloke with the brick in the plums – toss up (he won’t be doing any of that any time soon) which has made me smile the most and lifted my mood. But I guess it’s not my leg that’s being pulled by half the planet.

Some of the stuff on SM is hateful. Obviously given that she’s female there’s the inevitable misogynistic twist that these things take. There’s a petition with 50+ thousands signatures on demanding that she and Anna Mears apologise for bring shame to the nation….just can’t quite imagine it happening if it was two males as the breaker and head of olympic team.

Decent average (male) athlete tries to match female Olympic Gold (GB’s Keely Hodgkinson) pace. Spoiler alert. It doesn’t go well.

Raygun’s performance was massively disrespectfull to actual athletes that have trained hard for the olympic ganmes, and all the talented dancers that wanted to represent Australia, but lost somehow to her limited talents that managed to get her selected. That’s the reason she’s got the hate, not some misogynistic reasons.

And for Imane Khelif, the simple solution is just for them to publish their chromosomal tests to show that they are indeed XX and don’t have any ‘male advantage’, or if they are XY then why they do not have ‘male advantage’. The rules for gender identity in society and for gender identity in sport cannot be the same, you cannot have females with ‘male advantage’ competing against females without ‘male advantage’.

male advantage

Is that a technical term ?

Cheers for that gravedigger, very enlightening (facepalm emoji)

Do you get all your news from change.org petitions?

Is that a technical term ?

Seems to be a term that is recognised in by developmental biologist.

If you ignore Andrew Gold in this video, Dr Emma Hilton explains the problem well, and I seem to remember a very in-depth explaination of something similar in this forum by someone more knowledgable than me on this same issue :

Is that Emma Hilton who’s on the board of ‘Sex-Matters, the anti trans charity?

(making note this is NOT a trans issue) I hate to throw terms like TERF out there but…. I don’t consider her position to be unbiased, and even if she strongly believes her view of the science her disrespect for other humans (eg repeatedly misgendering transathletes in tweets and discussions) doesn’t make me ‘trust’ that evidence particularly.

I’d go back to what I said in this thread https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/not-in-my-name-trans-athlete-bans/page/14/#post-13343684

DSD occurs in 1/1000-1/5000 of births. If it’s a big advantage how come DSD women aren’t winning far more of the medals. It might be a genetic advantage, but all athletes have genetic advantage over the rest of the population.

If it’s a big advantage how come DSD women aren’t winning far more of the medals

it’s really an advantage in sports where explosive power, rather than endurance, are required. Boxing being an obvious example, sprinting being another. Typically DSD only becomes evident at puberty due to amenorrhea.

There are multiple forms of DSD, but the biological definition of female is clear. Absence of Y chromosome and presence of Barr body (which blocks all but one of the X chromosomes). So you can, for example, have up to five X chromosomes (with four Barr bodies). The DSD of interest for XY is where you cannot process testosterone into the more potent and virilizing (masculinizing) dihydrotestosterone due to a mutation in an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase. This means the sexualisation of the embryo into male does not take place, or is incomplete. The later anabolic effects of testosterone through puberty may still be evident, and this is where a sporting advantage may become evident. There are various grades of sensitivity to androgens from complete insensitivity to mild

I am of the opinion that the anabolic benefits of testosterone through puberty outweigh other arguments.  I don’t differentiate between trans and DSD, in that regard. I think the science is well understood, but individual rights are another matter! I have no idea of the genetic status of the athletes concerned, nor should I have. It was years later that Caster Semana was “outed” as DSD with 5-ARD. Whilst she is genetically male, I have no issues considering her female (as does she), but I don’t think her records should stand.

BTW, if you are being treated for enlarged prostate, you may be prescribed a drug that also blocks 5-alpha reductase, to limit the processing of testosterone, which is a growth factor for the prostate cells. They are also used commonly for hair loss, as the dihydro form is responsible for male pattern baldness. Finasteride is the generic name.

I am of the opinion that the anabolic benefits of testosterone through puberty outweigh other arguments.  I don’t differentiate between trans and DSD, in that regard.

I agree with pretty much everything you said, until there. While the arguments are still nuanced, I’m not going there for the TG/hormone taking or surpressing athlete…..but these athletes have not ‘chosen’ to have this genetic difference, any more than Jonas chose to have massive aerobic capability or Usain Bolt chose to have an abnormally long stride length. All convey advantages in their sport, and the rest of the field – well, bad luck to be around at the same time.

Raygun’s performance was massively disrespectfull to actual athletes that have trained hard for the olympic ganmes, and all the talented dancers that wanted to represent Australia, but lost somehow to her limited talents that managed to get her selected.

Gunn ranked 2nd in the Open B-girl Ranking in 2022 and topped the ranking in 2023 in Australia as well as winning or coming in the top three at many Australian breaking events over the past five to ten years.She represented Australia at the World Breaking Championships in Paris (2021), Seoul (2022), and Leuven (2023).In 2023, she won the Oceania Breaking Championships, securing her spot in the 2024 Summer Olympics according to the qualifying rules…………………..

Indeed, but there are plenty of genetic disadvantages that preclude being competitive too, some from the womb. I probably have a few myself. CTT arrived at the classification of Female and Open. Whilst Jonas may have a better lung capacity – and age on his side, I think it reasonable to presume he, like me, is XY and genetically male. Hence from a sex basis we are competing as equals.

Sadly, by the time DSD has been recognised in a professional athlete, the chances are they’ve already had much of the benefits, and testosterone suppression will not have the magnitude of normalising effect desired. After all, that’s likely how they stood out in the first place.

It’s a minefield for sure, but I think the science is well established. The ethics and implementation are not for me to decide (thank goodness). Different bodies have different opinions, but CTT, BC went with “Open” and Female, denying at least one trans cyclist a possible career in woman’s racing. Other sports have followed for trans, and the logical extension is to biological sex. That many other athletes with DSD.

And we’re off again: singing along with the tunes, delightfully joyful atmophere.

Velodrome sold out too. Been looking for tickets for weeks.

delightfully joyful atmophere.

Won’t argue with that! Lots I’m looking forward to, but particularly the archery, Phoebe Paterson Pine is from Cirencester, not too far north from me, so local-ish, but I’m really looking forward to seeing Sheetal Devi, one of the team from India. She was born without arms, her ability to shoot at Olympic level at 50 metres absolutely shames my meagre abilities.

Looking forward to this too!