The Olympics Thread

[Amz]

I agree with you, but if you watch the the World Championship races you'll see that they all usually work together on the bike as it is. The fact that it's draft legal (which I don't agree with) means it almost always comes down to who has the best 10k run, or as we saw yesterday who has the best sprint finish. GB have a domestique in the Men's race on Tuesday too, but they're one of the few countries with the luxury of choice as they had more than the max 3 to pick from, based on World Ranking. They feel the domestique is their best hope of getting a medal. I don't feel the Brownlees need the help, but there ya go!

[suisse]

Great night last night with the football....

Thought this might be interesting. Medals v population. NZ the best nation at the Games.

http://simon.forsyth.net/olympics.html#GMPM

[tackle-bag]

Great night last night with the football....

Thought this might be interesting. Medals v population. NZ the best nation at the Games.

http://simon.forsyth.net/olympics.html#GMPM

Those lists really do put us to shame. Several countries of similar population have nowhere near the same financial resources as we do, yet we're languishing behind them. All things going well over the next few days though, we should appear somewhere on that list.

[Cianostays]

Well done John Joe Nevin. Ireland's first medal of the games in the bag

[Fitzybobs]

Well done John Joe Nevin.
A bronze guaranteed and hopefully more than that.

Fingers crossed for 2 more medals tomorrow.

[tackle-bag]

Unfortunately Annalise Murphy made a complete balls of the medal race and is going home with nothing. I don't know much about sailing but from the pictures and commentary it seems that she chose a different route to all of the top competitors and that proved to be her downfall. The frustrating legacy of "plucky" Irish competitors giving it a lash but coming up empty handed continues.

[mikey]

Unfortunately Annalise Murphy made a complete balls of the medal race and is going home with nothing. I don't know much about sailing but from the pictures and commentary it seems that she chose a different route to all of the top competitors and that proved to be her downfall. The frustrating legacy of "plucky" Irish competitors giving it a lash but coming up empty handed continues.

Really thought she was going to get a medal - I refuse to be drawn into using 'medal' as a verb!! - people don’t medal, they are medalled.

Hopefully we will get some before the 16 days are out....

[Dave Cahill]

My work collegues in National Grid UK tell me there has just been a massive usage spike in 'Air-uh', at 14.19. Lots of tells and kettles being switched on!

[Amz]

I never really cared about a boxing event before, but I'm so friggin' nervous for Katie.

[tackle-bag]

I never really cared about a boxing event before, but I'm so friggin' nervous for Katie.

Jesus, she might knock this bird out.

[Donny B.]

Well done Katie. Great performance. 2 medals now for sure.

[Dave Cahill]

That was a fantastic fight, a real slobberknocker of a scrap.

[tackle-bag]

The scores of spineless Irish sportspeople should be forced to put down their fags and pints for ten minutes and watch that performance from Katie Taylor. You can have all the talent in the world, but there is absolutely no substitute for the sheer purity of purpose that she possesses. Probably as much pressure as any Irish Olympian has ever felt and she absolutely destroys her opponent. We almost don't deserve to have an athlete like that carrying our flag.

[Hornet]

Unfortunately Annalise Murphy made a complete balls of the medal race and is going home with nothing. I don't know much about sailing but from the pictures and commentary it seems that she chose a different route to all of the top competitors and that proved to be her downfall. The frustrating legacy of "plucky" Irish competitors giving it a lash but coming up empty handed continues.

Really thought she was going to get a medal - I refuse to be drawn into using 'medal' as a verb!! - people don’t medal, they are medalled.

Hopefully we will get some before the 16 days are out....

From the BBC website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19047586

'Medal' and 'podium' as verbs.

You might have it as "winning a medal" or "earning a place on the podium" but since the 2008 Olympics the verbs "medal" and "podium" have been gaining prominence, among commentators at least.

For example, "he'll be hoping to medal" or "she'll know that performance is good enough to podium".

But while some might suspect both to be neologisms, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was Lord Byron who first used "medal" as a verb.

Twitter users have spent days exploiting the Scooby Doo-inspired "we could have got gold if it wasn't for you medalling kids" gag.

"To medal in [a sporting] context has been on the radar for the Collins English Dictionary since the 1990s," says Collins consultant editor Ian Brookes. The earliest is from an Australian newspaper in 1995.

The first example of "to podium" in the dictionary's database is a 2004 story in the Denver Post relating to a skiing article. The writer uses the reference "to podium" and adds an explanation "to finish third or higher".

Turning a noun into a verb is something that's been going on for centuries - it was Shakespeare's Hamlet who says Claudius "out-Herods Herod".

[Hippo]

Unfortunately Annalise Murphy made a complete balls of the medal race and is going home with nothing. I don't know much about sailing but from the pictures and commentary it seems that she chose a different route to all of the top competitors and that proved to be her downfall. The frustrating legacy of "plucky" Irish competitors giving it a lash but coming up empty handed continues.

A little harsh maybe? She's ranked 10 in the world and finished 4th. Yeh she seemed to make a bags of the final race but had a fantastic tournament. She's only 22 and will be better in 2016. She wasn't being a gallant loser afterwards, she was devastated.

[nelly the elephant]

That was a fantastic fight, a real slobberknocker of a scrap.

L.O.L......you're quite the wordsmith DC.

[Dave Cahill]

Big Vic just makes the comparison between the winner of the Ladies shot putt and 'a former leinster and ireland colleague of mine'

[tackle-bag]

Big Vic just makes the comparison between the winner of the Ladies shot putt and 'a former leinster and ireland colleague of mine'

Didn't see that, but reckon he must have been referring to Shane Byrne. I thought it was ridiculous that the men's and the women's shot putt finals were being held simultaneously, until the penny dropped.

[blockhead]

The scores of spineless Irish sportspeople should be forced to put down their fags and pints for ten minutes and watch that performance from Katie Taylor. You can have all the talent in the world, but there is absolutely no substitute for the sheer purity of purpose that she possesses. Probably as much pressure as any Irish Olympian has ever felt and she absolutely destroys her opponent. We almost don't deserve to have an athlete like that carrying our flag.

If self-loathing was an Olympic event, you sir, would be a shoe in for the gold.

[tackle-bag]

The scores of spineless Irish sportspeople should be forced to put down their fags and pints for ten minutes and watch that performance from Katie Taylor. You can have all the talent in the world, but there is absolutely no substitute for the sheer purity of purpose that she possesses. Probably as much pressure as any Irish Olympian has ever felt and she absolutely destroys her opponent. We almost don't deserve to have an athlete like that carrying our flag.

If self-loathing was an Olympic event, you sir, would be a shoe in for the gold.

What would you prefer? The old "give it a lash" attitude. As a proud Irishman, much of these Olympic Games has been painful viewing. Many of our athletes have crumbled under the pressure, departing without so much a whimper. The problem, as I've alluded to above, is twofold:- (i) the resources and facilities which we, as a nation, make available to our athletes; and (ii) the attitude of the athletes themselves.

Katie Taylor receives €40,000.00 this year from the Irish Sports Council. I can't find the individual figure for Natasha Jonas, but the top 39 amateur boxers in the UK (a group in which she is treated with priority) will share just under £10,000,000.00 between them in government funding over the next 3 years. To put that in context, that's more than the Irish Sports Council will give out to all funded athletes this year. There are also a whole host of additional funding sources available to UK-based athletes which aren't available to ours.

In other words, the State has done relatively little to help Katie Taylor to get to where she is, but you can be bloody sure that every government hack in the country will be there to welcome her home when she wins gold later this week. She's extremely fortunate that her old man is her coach, and that Adidas have taken a shine to her. Most importantly, however, she has bridged the gap in resources with near fanatical dedication to her sport. It's just a pity that there aren't more like her.