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jpasc95
Ladies and Gentlemen, here are the results so far :

thats great because the big USA events haven't awarded most of the medals yet. USA still has a lot swimming medals left to earn. plus track and field hasn't started yet. the usa mens basketball team is expected to get a medla and the USA womens gymnastic team is expecting to get several medals. also volleyball hasn't awarded medals yet

I don't see much surprise for these 2012 Olympic games
China-USA or USA-China ?
make your choice !

Surprised to see Spain knocked out of the Olympic football already after losing their first 2 games.

I guess I shouldn't be too harsh on NBC's coverage as they do have a dedicated football channel this time around.

Believe me, this is a big change here.

NBC apparently censored some of the opening ceremony (a dance piece that was seen as a tribute to victims of the 7 July suicide bomb attack on the London underground).

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keefriffhard4life
USA still has a lot swimming medals left to earn.

Sorry we stole you that one

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Koen

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stupidguy2
I'm wondering if we'll get to see the Chinese or Soviet men or women's first round in gymnastics....

Nope, only the US girls. And then they have a poll to vote which country is going to win. Well, you'll have to show all the teams so I can get a good impression who will be my favorite. F*cking morons.

I was watching the US women's Gymnasts last night and suddenly I realized that I had not seen a Romanian or Soviet....they did show them in the late-night coverage, but only a condensed version. How can you watch a competition when you only see one team?

And Sicilian, I remember watching all the rounds - gymnastics coverage used to showcase all the woman, not just the US.
The commentary was a bit jingoistic during the Romanian and Soviets' routines with Dagget and that woman constantly referring to their scores as 'inflated' or 'that's too high'. The US woman were stepping out of bounds all over the place...

Shame the other women are not highlighted in prime time. the Romanian and Soviet teams are always interesting to watch - with their more balletic and artistic routines.....they provide a cultural contrast to the Americans.
I miss Bart Conner.

Can we trust the Chinese?
Can this 90-pound 16-year old be faster than the men.....? Its not 'sour grapes' to ask...


[www.theweek.co.uk]



Ye Shiwen's world record Olympic swim 'disturbing', says top US coach
• Chinese 16-year-old who swam faster than Ryan Lochte compared to East Germans
• John Leonard says gold medal time was 'not believable to many people'
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Andy Bull at the Aquatics Centre
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 July 2012 10.28 EDT

China's Ye Shiwen competes in the women's 200m individual medley heats on Monday, when she said 'the Chinese team keep very firmly to the anti-doping policies'. Photograph: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images
The first major doping controversy of the London Olympics flared to life today after John Leonard, the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, described the gold medal-winning performance of 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen in the women's 400m individual medley as "unbelievable".

Leonard, who is also the executive director of the USA Swimming Coaches Association, described Ye's swim as "disturbing" and said that it "brings back a lot of awful memories" of Irish swimmer Michelle Smith's winning performance in the same event at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Smith, now Michelle de Bruin, was banned for four years in 1998 after testing positive for androstenedione.

Leonard is the first major figure in the swimming world to voice his concerns after Ye's world record swim shocked the sport. Ye won the 400m IM gold in a world record time of 4min 28.43sec. It was her final 100m of freestyle, in which she recorded a split time of 58.68sec, that aroused Leonard's suspicion. Over the last 50m she was quicker than Ryan Lochte, who won the men's 400m IM in the second-fastest time in history.

"We want to be very careful about calling it doping," Leonard said. "The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, 'unbelievable', history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved. That last 100m was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of 400m individual medley by a young Irish woman in Atlanta."

Stephanie Rice, the Australian who won gold in both women's medley events in Beijing in 2008, described it as "insanely fast". Ariana Kukors, the 2009 world 200m medley champion from the USA , said it was "amazing" and "unbelievable". Ye also won the 200m medley at the World Championships in 2011, and qualified fastest for the semi-finals of that event in Monday morning's heats, in a time that was 1.61sec quicker than her nearest competitor.

Leonard said that Ye "looks like superwoman. Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping".

Ye was more than seven seconds faster in the Olympic 400m IM final than she had been in the World Championship equivalent last July. Leonard said that improvement was possible, but very hard to do. "But the final 100m was impossible. Flat out. If all her split times had been faster I don't think anybody would be calling it into question, because she is a good swimmer. But to swim three other splits at the rate that she did, which was quite ordinary for elite competition, and then unleash a historic anomaly, it is just not right."

Asked about the accusation that she was doping, Ye replied: "The Chinese team keep very firmly to the anti-doping policies, so there is absolutely no problem."

Leonard also questioned why Ye was not competing in the 200m or 400m freestyle, despite her phenomenal performance in that discipline in the medley, saying that was one of "a whole bunch of other questions" .

Leonard has been executive director of the WSCA since 1989. "I have been around swimming for four-and-a-half decades now," he said. "If you have been around swimming you know when something has been done that just isn't right. I have heard commentators saying 'well she is 16, and at that age amazing things happen'. Well yes, but not that amazing. I am sorry." Leonard said that the consensus in the coaching community he represents was that the swim was "unbelievable" and "I use that word in its precise meaning. At this point it is not believable to many people."

Leonard is one of the most respected coaches in the swimming world. He helped found the World Swimming Coaches Association in 1988 and received the USA Swimming Athletes' Appreciation Award in 1996, for his strong stance on anti-doping. He serves on several committees for USA Swimming,, has worked for US Swimming at six Olympic games, and has written four books on the sport.

"No coach that I spoke to yesterday could ever recall seeing anything remotely like that in a world level competition," Leonard continued. "Where someone could out-split one of the fastest male swimmers in the world, and beat the woman ahead of her by three-and-a-half body lengths. All those things, I think, legitimately call that swim into question."

Leonard also argued that it was fair to point to the positive tests incurred by Chinese athletes in the past. In 2009 five junior Chinese swimmers were banned after testing positive for the anabolic agent clenbuterol at the 2008 national junior championships.

"You can't turn around and call it racism to say the Chinese have a doping history," Leonard said. "That is just history. That's fact. Does that make us suspicious? Of course. You have to question any outrageous performance, and that is an outrageous performance, unprecedented in any way, shape or form in the history of our sport. It by itself, regardless of whether she was Chinese, Lithuanian, Kenyan, or anything else, is impossible. Sorry."

Leonard rejected comparisons to Michael Phelps, who broke the 200m butterfly world record when he was just 15, back in 2001. "Phelps got consistently faster every year on a normal improvement curve. There has never been anything that you look at in any of Mr Phelps' swims that you look at and say 'well, that's impossible, that can't be done.'" He made a point of saying that he also had no qualms whatsoever about the performance of other Chinese swimmers, including the new Olympic 400m freestyle champion Sun Yang, 20. "He has a perfectly normal improvement curve, he is a dramatically spectacular athlete in our sport and I've no question about him at all. But a woman does not out-swim the fastest man in the world in the back quarter of a 400m IM that is otherwise quite ordinary. It just doesn't happen."

Blood samples taken at these Games will be kept for eight years. "I am sure that Fina and the doping authorities have taken every sample they can take," Leonard said. "The sample will be tested and available for testing for the next eight years. And over eight years, if there is something unusual going on in terms of genetic manipulation or something else, I would suspect over eight years' science will move fast enough to catch it. I have every faith that eventually if there is something there to be caught it will be caught. Right now all we can say is Olympic champion, world record holder, and watch out for history."

Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission and a veteran anti-doping official, said that as yet he had no particular suspicions around the Chinese swimmer. "Should I have my suspicions I keep them for myself, first of all, and take any action, if so, in order to find out whether something is wrong or not. You ask me specifically about this particular swimming. I say no, I have not personally any reason other than to applaud what has happened, until I have further facts, if so."

Ljungqvist added that he was unaware of which athletes had been tested in the build-up to the Games. "I simply don't know who has been pre-tested and not been pre-tested. We have a general, as you know, recommendation to both national Olympic committees and international federations to make as sure as they can that they don't send doped athletes here.

"We have a testing programme, as you know, that covers only the period from the opening of the village until the end of the Games, and any doping programme would probably be put in place long before then. So our mandate is pretty limited and it is therefore very much a matter of the international federations and the national Olympic committees to make sure that athletes are clean when they come here."

Mr Ljungqvist said that sudden advances in performance could bring athletes under closer scrutiny. "There are different reasons as to why we target certain athletes or a certain group of athletes," he said. "Should a sudden raise in performance or a surprise win be primarily suspected for being a cheat, sport is a danger for sure. But we are using many reasons for having target testing. Of course should a sudden rise in performance occur in a particular person, we could regard that possibly as a reason to do it, but I would rather say that it is tragic if that should be the primary reason for doing a testing."

Um, I had the TV volume turned down, was Mick in the DV section?

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Beast
NBC apparently censored some of the opening ceremony (a dance piece that was seen as a tribute to victims of the 7 July suicide bomb attack on the London underground).

Why? Who did they think it might offend? F**kwits.

I dont remember there was any dance ceremony dedicated to the bombings....

HUGE PROPS to Marianne Vos and Nederland Gold in the day 2 cycling race... that was amazing.

Hey Max, good to see you are watching the Olympics too.
I am having a great time watching all these different kinds of sports.
Besides Dutch TV I am able to watch Belgian TV, German TV and British BBC.
Lucky me

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Rolling Hansie
Hey Max, good to see you are watching the Olympics too.
I am having a great time watching all these different kinds of sports.
Besides Dutch TV I am able to watch Belgian TV, German TV and British BBC.
Lucky me

then you see from time to time some german TV reporters repeating a mantra...
because the germans didn´t win any medal yet...

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Rolling Hansie
Hey Max, good to see you are watching the Olympics too.
I am having a great time watching all these different kinds of sports.
Besides Dutch TV I am able to watch Belgian TV, German TV and British BBC.
Lucky me

Right On Hans!

I have always loved the Olympics... especially the more obscure events.

I am delighted to watch "the best in the world" play these games
every 4 years. They tend to save the premier events for tape delay
in prime time (with hilariously bogus commentary) but NBC is showing
live events in the states starting early in the morning... It is awesome
watching live "the best of the best" play... e.g. table tennis or badminton or rowing
or mountain biking.... heck I was even watching the Olympic horses play today

Its the back stories and all the cliches that drive me crazy. Everyone in the world has a sad story and has fought back from some type of hardship.

Joe BagaDoughnuts Who was injured in a horrific canoe accident as a child was told he would never walk again. After years of fighting back through the pain and torture of Physical therapy he regained the use of his legs. Thennnnnnnnn Suddenly on a june day back in 2008 a day that was suppose to be the happiest of his life he had made the Olympic team.

Tradgedy: the phone call, his parents Jane & Bill his true inspiration and internal sunshine were killed in Topeka Kansas when a Piano that was being hoisted to a six floor apartment bld let go and crushed the unsuspecting BagaDoughnuts couple. When the Ambulance arrived the couple was found holding hands under the rubble and Jane's last words to a local fireman (who's own parents were Ironicly also killed in a Piano accident 10 years earlier) were "tell Joe to bring home the gold".


Now with both his parents gone Joe sadly had to drop out of the 2008 games to help care for his younger sister Brandy. She has been a recluse who has been dealing with the physical and emontional scars that come with being diagnosed with Vagina Dentata at age 13. She has not left the house in 10 years.

Now 4 years later, here in London ,Joe, although a long shot has a shot at gold in the mixed doubles of table tennis. Since the tragic accident brother and sister have become so close that Brandy has come out of her shell of reclusion. She has an active social life and last year married the Local fireman who was on scene and past on her mothers last words to Joe.

Finally: The biggest surprise of all, thats right you guessed it Joe's younger sister Brandy is his partner in the mixed double's competetion.


YUK I have had enough. I watch sports to get away from this and just get lost in the game. I just do not care how or why they are there anymore.

sorry I am overloaded with this shit.

I am jaded and cold and pretty much uncaring to begin with so maybe that has a lot to do with it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-30 20:58 by virgil.

I was about to type congrats to the Brits for a silver in men's gymnastics, but the Japanese have won a review and taken the silver - unbelievably. Still bronze is pretty damn fine anyway. Still I feel like I've just witnessed a robbery.

Sweden will do its worst Olympic Games throughout history. There are many reasons for that but it will take to much time going through them, so I won't. We have had a debate here in Sweden however about the overwhelming chauvinism in Great Britain. Britain (especially England) is considered a very cool and august nation so some people here are a bit surprised.

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Gazza

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Beast
NBC apparently censored some of the opening ceremony (a dance piece that was seen as a tribute to victims of the 7 July suicide bomb attack on the London underground).

Why? Who did they think it might offend? F**kwits.

They made some lame excuse - and they don't take kindly to criticism of their coverage either:

#NBCFail: Journalist at The Independent has Twitter account suspended after complaining about NBC's coverage of London 2012 Olympics

[www.independent.co.uk]

How about that Italian women's volleyball team especially Francesca Piccinini.

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The Sicilian
How about that Italian women's volleyball team especially Francesca Piccinini.

Are they the same woman?

very much so, you can't tell?

I remember Eurosport had a series about Olympic medal contenders before the 2008 summer games (or was it 2004?). Francesca was one of the portrayed athlethes and I was a bit surprised as she did a nude (semi-) photoshoot on one of those programs. You didn't expect that on a Eurosport program! How beautiful she is though! Just magnificent!

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The Sicilian
very much so, you can't tell?

No her Elbows look totally different!

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virgil

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The Sicilian
very much so, you can't tell?

No her Elbows look totally different!

the mole on the right bicep gives her away.

let's carry on with the results. Nice surprise for the moment ...hopefully it will last which would be an even bigger surprise !

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beepee2

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keefriffhard4life
USA still has a lot swimming medals left to earn.

Sorry we stole you that one

what did you steal?

4x100m swimming

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beepee
4x100m swimming

usa still got a medal though

BTW, the Olympics have a great official website.
[www.london2012.com]
You can find literally everything there about the Olympics.
Info about the different sports, countries, sporters, playing schedules, results etc. etc.

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