Watching my 8 year old daughter going mental shouting for Jess tonight made me temporarily forget my air of world weary cynicism. Quite Frankly I’ll never forgive them for that! Bastards! 😉

i think its great, loving it as are all my friends & family

I hate to be a douche bag who couldn’t enjoy it, how grim would that be 😈

WE ARE DOING GREAT

Let’s not spoil it by wheeling out old leatherface McCartney to close it all off, . . . .coneverse hi-tops in your 60’s , . . . . just get lost

Macca fail, . .get the Who on, . .half original, but still kicking ass, failing them the Weddoes . . . this Bowmore is effecting me . .. lol

Thats effin it… Got to moan about the Olympic HIGHLIGHTS coverage on the BBC: I have not seen anyone given a medal unless they are team GB. I have only be shown sports where we are winning. From where I am sitting the Olympics is only cycling, rowing and now heptathlon. I am not shown highlights. I am shown slow motion, highly edited cuts (brit out in front, no one else in shot) with motivating pop music, inane commentators, dumb questions and this is the grind…. not the actual race.

And then a sports celebrity commentator “goofs” across the studio (oh look we have a crazy and whacky side too) to a spandeau ballet tune and moves the gold-o-meter up a notch. This is not reporting. This is not journalism, this is not even sport. This is crap and nothing more than sloppy nationalist propaganda at best.

When I tune in for highlights, for me, a highlight is a good race/event, and I pretty much don’t care for the nationality of any of them. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics they were probably kinda selective over who got coverage. Meaning I don’t think Jesse Owens got much recognition within Germany. Hands up, certainly an extreme example. But the point is sport is sport, it should not be anything more and I fear it’s being used for other purposes here. The worst economic month in 100 years of UK peace time history is not news (inferring we only had it worse when we had food rationing, bombs falling on us, and hitler was 26 miles off the South coast) but a gold in rowing is the top of the news.

Yes the olympics are still shit, the IOC are still corrupt scumbags as seen in the recent Azerbaijan match fixing (boxing), continuing sponsorship by corporations with appalling human rights records, co-operation with nation states that have appalling human rights records, continual doping by sportsmen, the fact that the games are turning out to be a vain ornamental fish pond for the political elite as opposed to something that actually helped our economy, the fact that most of the Olympic sports are just another form of nationalistic war/competition that don’t really contribute to human advancement except in the ability of certain individuals to jump 1 cm further (oooh **** yay, someones proved that their boring enough to spend hours a day jumping in sand to gain a cm length instead of doing something useful).

So yep they are self masturbatory shit and If I wanted to hear about that I’d listen to avant-garde jazz.

Loving all the negative comments guys….sigh.

As for the cost: all the transport infrastructure was going to be built regardless, the aquatics centre and the velodrome were also going to be built even if we didn’t get the Olympics ( part of the reason London won the bid…)

It’s still costing less than two big boats that the navy is getting built, one of which is going to be mothballed as soon as its built…or to rebuild a knackered old plane for £4Bn and then scrap the whole thing becasue we dont really need them and cant afford it…and I am also pretty sure that the Lottery isn’t funding those…

As for the rather pathetic comments about how all the money gets spent in the south…

I am pretty sure Manchester (commonwealth Games) and soon Glasgow ( ditto) had or are having a rather large boost from something similar

I think that if we work on it, we can prove that was a complete waste of time, effort and money.
I had a passing interest in the games, but seeing the emotion in seeing British athletes winning in a British games has had me forgetting al about the politics and petty point scoring that’s going on in the background.

Bunch of moaning gits.

Bunch of moaning gits

True, but at least this thread (almost) keeps all of the moaning in one place!

Team nz not won much then?

conversely do we all love Tony Blair ? there is no doubt that his glad-handing brought us the games.

NZ has done quite well really on a per capita basis thanks, as a plastic kiwi I get to celebrate GB and NZ. Being honest we’re spanking Aus in the golds so the is all that matters. Be proud, you have a beautiful country, a stunning history and a chance to shine.

It was noted that Blair was there in the velodrome t’other day. As the Guardian noted ”driven, no doubt, by nothing more than his life long love of track cycling'”

Indeed

to come back to a couple of points, if paris had won what difference would it have made to the UK?

Other than the obvious of not having to spend large amounts on a stadium that no one is actually sure what to do with, an olympic village that will have to be substantially remodelled, a vast security bill etc.

What would have benefitted if we hadn’t spent the money on what is politicians vanity project? Spend the money on infrastructure and on sport, but the olympics? a self appointed bunch of blazer wearers who i suppose aren’t as corrupt as FIFA…..

I suppose one good side, but i doubt politicians will pay any notice, G4S have been publicly displayed as being incompetent before a global audience.

Does anyone really think that a couple of weeks of sport is actually going to change anything? yes a few people will be inspired to get off their arses, and in a few years some of those people will win things, but most will have another beer, pick up the remote and go back to the footie.

Nz col. Thank you ,you are a nice man.

I certainly dont hate the Olympics.
Its not that important to me to give it that attention.

Still think its a total waste of money though.

charliethebikemonger

Pick your own highlights, its the digital age 😉

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/live-video

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/sports

There’s always been nonsense on telly in the middle of the night, don’t blame the Lympix for that.

Can’t be all bad
http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8511061

I’m off to our office tomorrow where we have a whole bunch of Aussies – I’ll be diplomatic 😉

bwaarp – Member

Yes the olympics are still shit, …..

So yep they are self masturbatory shit and If I wanted to hear about that I’d listen to avant-garde jazz.

One of two things at work here –

Returned from the pub pished and what followed was this drunken effluvia?

Or

Cat run across the keyboard before you did a spell check and hit send post?

poor ol’ KP sensational innings at Headingley smashing the best and fastest bowling attack in the world to all parts of the ground and he hardly gets a mention.

Am I following the argument right:

(1) “We” aren’t happy that this country has a culture which means participating in sport is weird.*
(2) “We” aren’t happy that this country is investing in a massive sporting event that might just change some attitudes to sport.

Is there actually a fear that participation in sport will become mainstream and STWers will need to find a new niche to set themselves apart as being different?

I was never excited about the Olympics coming to London but I’m impressed so far, and hope Glasgow can follow on the coat tails with the Commonwealths in 2 yrs time.

If we really expect it to have an effect on ‘the man on the street’ though we will need to do something about the number of top level athletes who come from privileged backgrounds and private school education.

* Personally I find the concept of competitive sport a bit weird, I’m not sure where our compulsion to beat our fellow man comes from, but I’d love to see a change in culture where the majority of people were active in some way; even if that means we need to encourage bizarre competitions for people to challenge each other in.

Ioum: the highlights show is crud,

I could pick my own highlights but I would pick what I am familiar with.

I also don’t wanna sit through everything, sit down for an hour at the end of the day. I want to see the best bits, the highlights, and I want to see sports I am unfamiliar with. You have the best (insert any sport here) players in the world, so even the tiddly winks should be good viewing.

The bbc has editors, it is there job to pull the best bits from the day and present them to us. They spend their time on sickly montages, rather than showing the actual race.

Red button detailed coverage does not excuse the highlights programme.

Not complaining about the Olympics, just highlights coverage that does not show highlights or coverage well.

Does anyone really think that a couple of weeks of sport is actually going to change anything?

Very unlikely. It simply means that some fat lardy slob laid sprawled on a sofa in front of his TV clutching a can of lager and cheering, can bask on the personal glory of a dedicated sportsmen/sportsmen, who through their own tireless determination have spent countless hours training every day for years, claiming pride and credit for their achievement on the basis that they too are British.

And those same fat lardy slobs are just as likely to have enthusiastically voted for politicians who in the last 20 years have shamefully sold off over 5,000 school playing fields to developers, with the pointless short term one-off aim of saving themselves a few pennies in tax.

Yes it doesn’t matter whether the Olympics costs Britain £8 billion or £16 billion just as long as people are “enjoying” themselves, but God forbid that school kids should run around enjoying themselves playing games and sports on fields which can be sold off to developers.

I’ve seen tonnes of other stuff that I’d never seen before, with other nations competing. Of course the BBC is going to be GB biased, but it’s nowhere near as skewed as some are making out.

So… If we are such a great sporting nation, why does Mo have to train in the US?

Because that’s where His Cuban coach (Alberto Salazar) and the Nike Oregon Project are based.

If the offer was extended to them, do you think the Aussies would move their cycling program to Manchester under Shane Sutton.

OK, I haven’t read a lot of the above although I do agree with the comments about the journalism and reporting from a lot of it, it’s very jingoistic and with a tendency to use “celebrities” rather than people who actually know what they’re talking about. I hate the hype around it all and the corporate love-in.

But the actual event itself – WOW.
I’ve been in the velodrome for a lot of it and (to me) it’s frankly no different to a lot of the World Track Championships or World Cup events I’ve worked on – same athletes, same officials, same (very good) atmosphere.

But outside that, walking round the Olympic Park with people from literally every nation on earth, hearing the roars from the stadium, the crowds sitting on the grass watching the big screen, everyone friendly and smiling and helping each other – that’s priceless.

Being on the train or tube when the driver reads out a result from an event and everyone cheers. Being out and about on the bike and people stopping to talk about Wiggins or the team pursuit. I know this sounds corny but it has brought out the best in people however it’s something you need to be actually there for – even watching on TV you just don’t get the feel for it that being in the Olympic Park with 200,000 others gives.

To all those ” haters ” who remain unconvinced I would say … it’s your loss …

BUT

If you are determined not to watch any of it at least get a copy of Isles of Wonder … I defy any one not to be impressed by the soundtrack of the opening night … having been there and loved every minute I can say listening to the CD brings great memories flooding back of the best show I have ever EVER seen live .. and that includes a lot of concerts including Queen at Knebworth, Bruce Springsteen, U2 at their best , The Who , Rolling Stones etc etc

I would also encourage folks to take a look at other sports while there is chance, I went to a basketball match last Tuesday and had no idea just how physical it is

😀 😀 😀

So… If we are such a great sporting nation, why does Mo have to train in the US?

Altitude training .Loads of Athletes go abroad to get above 6000ft or so where they condition themselves to a lack of oxygen .Its either that or sleep in an oxygen tent in the spare room

Very unlikely. It simply means that some fat lardy slob laid sprawled on a sofa in front of his TV clutching a can of lager and cheering, can bask on the personal glory of a dedicated sportsmen/sportsmen, who through their own tireless determination have spent countless hours training every day for years, claiming pride and credit for their achievement on the basis that they too are British.

Ah well, so long as you feel you are better than them its probably OK! That attitude becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Does anyone really think that a couple of weeks of sport is actually going to change anything?

Its not just about 2 weeks though. Theres been a huge investment in team GB leading up to this, and there is definitely a feel good about british sport right now, and not just about football like it usually is – that has to have some positive legacy.

It may be too late for the ‘adults’ but I genuinely believe that it (and its spin off effects) have helped motivate my 8 and 4 yr old. The older one has been doing stuff all year that culminated in all the local schools have a “Local Olympics” (although they did have to change the name at the last minute for fear of getting fined!). The youngest came home from nursery last week with a gold medal and claiming to have been in the olympics – because the staff had decided to run some sports. Would they have bothered if the olympics were not in London – past experience would say no! Will my kids end up in the olympics – not likely with these genes but they have been motivated to pay attention to sports they didn’t know about, they have been doing exercise they wouldn’t have done otherwise etc.

Does it mean that if a teenager today aspires to get to the top level that his teachers, parents, coaches, etc might believe it is possible for someone from the UK to achieve that, and encourage him/her – I hope so!

Quite frankly i couldn’t give an old mans nutsack either way. I don’t knowingly avoid at much as i don’t watch it. I’m sure i’m missing out, but i find 90% of it boring regardless where it’s held. I’ll maybe catch the mountain biking and i’ll watch the closing ceremony like i watched the opening, drunk, so i forget how much it’s costing

If the offer was extended to them, do you think the Aussies would move their cycling program to Manchester under Shane Sutton.

Probably not but they do have a lot of athletes in the US
The Chinese swimming team pretty much live and train full time in Australia

I’m going to carry on running, gymming, riding my bikes, enjoying my sports regardless. Up to others if they choose to participate or not…

Very much looking forward to getting on that track when it opens to the public and making the best of whatever legacy there is…

It won’t make money, promises will be broken, it may not turn us into a nation of participants but who cares… why not just make the best of it?

Can’t say I hate the Olympics. Do find it jolly boring though, not really sure why people are suddenly interested in sports they generally have no interest in(generalization I know)

Good luck with Olympic legacy, Olympic success does not translate to sporting development of the population.

Most successful Olympic country : USA
Fattest developed country : USA

Some of the coverage has been pretty crass. Like the rower guys who got silver at the last minute, beaten by some Danes. They were very unsporting, didn’t even try to hide what a tragedy this was for them, in spite of the fact they had just won silver for their country. The interviewer should have cut away, not shove a mic and camera in their face. Worse poor losing than the Aussies, and that’s a significant achievement.

And interviewing obscure relatives of British bronze medal winners during the presentation ceremony, when the winning anthem is played. That’s just disrespectful !

I thought Olympics extra with the medalometer and cardboard cutout faces of medal winners was a bit tacky. I thought I was watching Blue Peter or Going Live.r

The crying like babies thing, Adlington pleading behind teary eyes for the public to understand how hard it is to medal in swimming and everything being ‘unbelievable’ and ‘amazing’ have annoyed me, but other than that I’ve enjoyed it.

I’m waiting for one of the track side beeb presenters to get angry if tears aren’t forthcoming. It will happen.

Most successful Olympic country : USA

Presumably you are basing that on the US’s huge population, which doesn’t exactly suggest an Olympic success story.

The US has a population 5 times that of the UK, and yet it has less than twice the amount of Olympic medals that the UK has. At this present moment in time Great Britain would appear the “most successful Olympic country”.

nah, just basing it on medals won throughout the history of the games