[SilentHunter]

The Olympics is now the talk of the entire sports world(well almost i think)
The Opening ceremony kicked off @ 8.08+8 secs(Beijing Local Time), on 8th August, 2008 (Seriously roo many 8's!)
The Opening ceremony rocked! So many colours n stuff and i really liked the concept of that huge painting which was finished after the athlete parade.

Supporting India dearly

[Mezla PigDog]

I just logged on to make the exact same thread!

I'm generally rather apathetic about the Olympics but always end up watching some of it. I'm not that bothered how well the British athletes do either. I usually make sure I catch the Gymnastics and the horsey stuff. Olympic gymnastics is just incredible. I like it because it's so way out of my league to personally do (I can barely manage a forwards roll!). Not that I could run 100m in under 10seconds, but y'know.

The only thing I hope for my country in this Olympic games is that none of our competitors poop on the road this time! That's not very British at all.

[McLovin]

We're in for swimming and gymnastics. The opening ceremonies were quite amazing, until the point I fell asleep.

[Cougar]

I noticed they are holding the equestrian events in Hong Kong, which is about the same (distance wise) as having the Sailing for London 2012 off the coast of North Africa, or doing the shooting in Kaliningrad why have they done that?

Also Andy Murray, what a whingeing bitch I'm glad he's out the toss bag.

[amphibian]

Cougar;368751 said:

I noticed they are holding the equestrian events in Hong Kong, which is about the same (distance wise) as having the Sailing for London 2012 off the coast of North Africa, or doing the shooting in Kaliningrad why have they done that?

Also Andy Murray, what a whingeing bitch I'm glad he's out the toss bag.

Hong Kong's where the money is. Equestrian's always been an upper-crust thing.

[Cougar]

Yeah I guess there's lots of middle-class wankerism in Hong Kong - we used to own it after all!

[Bent]

A point of note...Most of the fireworks display during the opening ceremony was CGI. They shot them off a week or so before, and then generated the images onto the tv, due to the risk factor of so many people and so many explosives. Also, USA is now behind in the metals race.


~Ping pong and badmitton should not be Olympic sports.

[Cougar]

The USA should not enter the Basketball there's only one of 2 outcomes:

either

the USA wins and everyone shrugs and says, "well they should win they've got by far the best league"

or

They lose and are rightly pillioried for being beaten by Puerto Rico and not being able to win at a sport where they have the best league and almost all of the best players.

[Illuyankas]

I saw the US lose to Lithuania in a previous Olympics. It was quite funny.

[Bent]

Thats why, some of you may not know this, but in the 90's the BBall team was called The Dream Team....and then they sucked and are now called, I shit you not, The Redeamed Team.


~I hate Basketball, almost as much as badmitton.

[caladanbrood]

I've been watching Archery, Horsing, Swimming and Badminton so far...

Mostly very dull, but the Archery was quite interesting, since I'm trying to get back into it at the moment, and we won some stuff in the swimming last night, which was nice.

[frookenhauer]

I was at a clients house on Friday and we had to stop the presentation to enjoy the opening ceremony, we were both blown away. The presentation was ok too.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

The fun thing aobut the oklympics is watching sports I don't normally see. Handball? Odd sport, not knocking the athletes, I'm sure they have to be in good shape, but the sport seems like a game kids might play in gym class. Water polo is like that too. Again, it looks very difficult and requires a lot of skill and training, but the game looks like something some drunk guys in a pool decided to play. Enjoyed watching both though.

So it looks like at the point USA is leading total medal count, Chinese winning gold medal count. It's still early though. Olympics are fun.

[Cougar]

First up RLY, I agree about Handball, but it's insanely popular in continental Europe they have massive participation.

Water Polo is crazy hard, the levels of fitness those guys have is stupid and it's very violent.

I'm really pleased Phelps is still on for 8 Golds it would be great to see him do it, I'm not particularly a fan of Phelps or against him but I think it's a priveledge to be able to watch people do remarkable things and it's one of those acheivements that can only happen at certain times and with the right person. In future I doubt it will be possible as there might be 3 or 4 Phelps in each discipline.

[Cold Iron]

Medals per capita:

China: 1.354e-8
USA: 6.928e-8
Korea: 2.242e-7
Italy: 1.522e-7
Australia: 4.338e-7
Russia: 6.337e-8

No need to go on... we win.

[Cougar]

Cold Iron;369090 said:

Medals per capita:

China: 1.354e-8
USA: 6.928e-8
Korea: 2.242e-7
Italy: 1.522e-7
Australia: 4.338e-7
Russia: 6.337e-8

No need to go on... we win.

First of all, I can't make sense of the way that is written.

Second, does that take into account weightings for gold, 1st loser and brown loser?

[Cougar]

Ok cos I'm a sad fucker I worked out a weighted performance against medals and population and the top 3 so far were (I only did the top 10 cos I didn't want to skew it cos Vanatu got a Bronze or something) :
1. Australia
2. South Korea
3. Czech Republic

what's also interesting is when you measure medal success against wealth (GDP in this case)

1.Czech republic
2. South Korea
3.Australia

I'll plug the numbers in at the end of the events and see where it leaves us, I can already sense your excitement, convicts are going to be hard to beat though I reckon unless the Cook Islands or the Gambia have a late medal spurt

[caladanbrood]

This is all gripping stuff, it really is.

[amphibian]

Why are you limiting it to medals? That's only three finishers out of dozens or hundreds of competitors in each sport.

Take the top 30 finishers and see which country consistently puts its people highest. Heck, if you really want to evaluate how good a country is at developing athletic talent, take in account where the athletes train from early childhood on.

I bet China would be number one, with the US second and Japan third in that list.

[caladanbrood]

The gymnastics is on at the moment, and China are doing crazy good...