Random Random Chat Thread XL

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Mercurial89 said:
It depends what drives the athlete really. Of course there is that nice moment of triumph.

But Once they are convicted of drug cheating all records of that accomplishment are erased. For many their reputation being destroyed and left in tatters, no one cheering for you, you are always the villain, everyone always cheers for the other guy, it would be a horrible fate.

Im not an athlete, but I know what drives me whenever I compete or try to accomplish something. Its to be remembered, for people to remember your name. For me and im sure many others it would be to be remembered in a positive light in addition to that.

These drug cheats have a fate that in the short term when their name is known it is always in a negative light, they are derided at every opportunity, just look at these current Olympics as proof. In the long term with their name scrubbed from the history books they are largely forgotten.
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My mate has said a few times he reckons there should be an Anything Goes Olympics and a Clean Olympics, they can even be the same Olympics but with different events for the different categories. Anything Goes Olympics has people that can juice up on anything they want, Clean is exactly that.

The issue with this model is you'd inevitably get people trying to dope in the Clean Olympics and we'd be back to square one. I think it'd be interesting seeing an Anything Goes Olympics though, some of the displays would be breath taking.
 
fodzilla said:
There's a school of thought (mine! I don't know if anyone else subscribes) that this weight of events is ridiculous. Running backwards would rightly be seen as farcical, the only reason swimming backwards is an event is it was considered a viable technique until freestyle showed up and demonstrated itself superior, but whiners weren't willing to give up the stroke they were invested in. Axe everything bar distances and obstacles.
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how about the who can swim quickest from a to b in whatever way you can get there, free dive under water dolphin kick if need be. That would quickly sort out which strokes are viable
 
Pweter said:
My mate has said a few times he reckons there should be an Anything Goes Olympics and a Clean Olympics, they can even be the same Olympics but with different events for the different categories. Anything Goes Olympics has people that can juice up on anything they want, Clean is exactly that.

The issue with this model is you'd inevitably get people trying to dope in the Clean Olympics and we'd be back to square one. I think it'd be interesting seeing an Anything Goes Olympics though, some of the displays would be breath taking.
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Your mate and me have similar mindsets by the sounds.

At the moment we are seeing the peak of human ability. Id personally like to see how far we can push the human body using enhancements. That goes for strength, sport, age, resistance to disease, absolutely everything.

I don't know to many that follow that train of thought but if we ever want to improve as a species then I would think outside help through enhancement is inevitable.
 

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Mercurial89 said:
Your mate and me have similar mindsets by the sounds.

At the moment we are seeing the peak of human ability. Id personally like to see how far we can push the human body using enhancements. That goes for strength, sport, age, resistance to disease, absolutely everything.

I don't know to many that follow that train of thought but if we ever want to improve as a species then I would think outside help through enhancement is inevitable.
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I guess if you look at it analytically most , or a lot of athletes ahead of their time, or ahead of the curve push a boundary of some kind that allows them the edge to win before the practice gets added to the next banned list and is called cheating.
 
Howard Moon said:
how about the who can swim quickest from a to b in whatever way you can get there, free dive under water dolphin kick if need be. That would quickly sort out which strokes are viable
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Apart from having to surface after 15m, that is freestyle. We only call the front (or 'Australian') crawl technique "freestyle" because it's universally regarded as the fastest stroke, and hence the only one seen in that event. Every other event features constraints on technique to protect a stroke eclipsed by it.
 
Still Eric Moussambani for my money.
 
On the Olympic events, I have issue with the number of medals awarded in boxing, weightlifting, judo etc for weight classes. They don't offer a shotput for skinny guys, or a high jump for people under 5'9. Why have classes just because your body disadvantages you?
 
Baum read my mind.. or my post?

Michael Phelps is not three times better than Usain Bolt

It's not just that Michael Phelps by himself would sit in the top 15 in the medals table at these Olympics. It's that he would be inside the top 40 countries on the all-time table, higher than Argentina, India, Ireland, Mexico and Jamaica, despite all those runners. Until a day or two ago, he sat higher than Brazil. If he went on for one more Olympics, he would end up with a seat at Davos.

What does this teach us? Firstly, that swimming hands out too many medals. They've not incorporated the 25 metres sidestroke with pike yet, but it can only be a matter of time. In all, swimming awards 32 gold medals. For comparison, track-and-field make available 40 gold medals, 47 if you include combined events, walks and marathons.

You do not have to be widely travelled to know that athletics is a bigger, deeper and more competitive sport than swimming worldwide. By a significant factor. You do not have to be a student of sport to know that Phelps is not three times the athlete Usain Bolt is. Or better at all.

Ten of Phelps' medals are from relays, an option not available to swimmers from most countries. Already, more countries have won gold medals at athletics in these Games than in the pool, and at the time of writing, the aths program was not even half-done. There is no equivalence; swimming has pulled a swiftie.

Secondly, there are many other distortions in the way medals are distributed. In team sports, they are necessarily sparse. But in gymnastics, for instance, there are gold medals for each apparatus, another for putting them altogether and another for putting them altogether as a team. This is a little like handing out a cup for the winner on grand final day, plus a cup for the winner of each quarter. Gymnastics is one of the most glorious and just about the most popular sport at the Olympics, but this is excessive.

In some knock-out sports, they have bronze medal clashes. In others, they hand out two bronze medals instead. Where is the equivalence there?

In weightlifting, at least, they give a medal only for the combined effort, snatch, and clean-and-jerk. But in world championships, they present gold medals for all three, the two lifts and the combined. In other words, you can win two gold medals with one lift. Don't tell swimming.

Gold have different weights and worth according to sport and circumstances. Some are momentous. Some have meaning only to those who win them. To an extent, this is unavoidable. But unavoidable is one thing, cultivated another.

Thirdly, this warping inflects on the thinking, and funding, of sport in Australia. This country's Olympic mission becomes almost exclusively about manipulation with a view to medals.

Already, a new-old debate is beginning between the Australian Olympic Committee and the Australian sports commission on whether Australia should broaden the search and risk exhausting the funds, or narrow it still further and risk passing over a superstar. The AOC wants a wider net, the ASC a smaller, stronger one. But in both cases, the medal is the metric and the metric is the medal.

It may all be unavailing anyway. In a globalised and largely professionalised sporting world, all the old intangible margins have been stripped out of calculations. Population and GDP are the most accurate guide to medal tallies now, and to a certain extent climate. Several studies conclude this. The medals table reflects it. Great Britain's gradual and now thorough eclipse of Australia illustrates it. With more than two-and-a-half times Australia's population, it was always probable that if the Brits ever got their sporting act together, they would lord it over their old dominion. That day is here. Get used to it.
 
Picking up on friday!!!!

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Great weather for it too!
 
Bought my outgoing manager a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince as a gift. Not sure there's any way to not interpret that negatively despite that not being the intent. :oops:

I still insist it's the best business book out there. And A Bridge Too Far is the best business film.
 
What rules do you have around consumption of alcohol? Only after a certain time, with certain people??

Is 12.35 too early?
 

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fodzilla said:
Apart from having to surface after 15m, that is freestyle. We only call the front (or 'Australian') crawl technique "freestyle" because it's universally regarded as the fastest stroke, and hence the only one seen in that event. Every other event features constraints on technique to protect a stroke eclipsed by it.
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The phelps rule. (or the too much time at work rule)

time to run my own little ruler over the swim star’s career to judge how good he is..

Firstly, freestyle is the fastest way a human being can move through water. I’m not interested in who can whisper the loudest. In track, you run. That’s it.

No skipping, no hopping, no running backward. So all achievements in any stroke other than freestyle are dismissed.

All achievements in Individual medley and medley relays are dismissed as they contain strokes other than freestyle.

The chart below:

Competitions other than the Olympics have been blacked out.

Medals won from events other than freestyle or medleys have been crossed out in red.

Boiling it down in that way, the dude’s won 1 gold and 3 bronze off his own bat, all the rest in relays!


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Much better by infusion image.jpeg
Jab said:
I'm shocked that Harlequin hasn't replied to this already :tonguewink:

Depends on the situation. Day off? Anytime. Camping? Breakfast. Working hours? Whenever, as long as you're not drinking alone.
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Don't want to hurt eth too much, but tae Kwon do is one of the dumbest things to watch at the Olympics. Hopping around each other and occasionally land a weak kick.

Deserves no medals and zero coverage.
 
Andronicus said:
Don't want to hurt eth too much, but tae Kwon do is one of the dumbest things to watch at the Olympics. Hopping around each other and occasionally land a weak kick.

Deserves no medals and zero coverage.
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If they could somehow combine it with synchronised swimming....
 
We have spoken a lot about how we as fans have dealt with being mediocre but what do you miss most about not being a successful team? It’s easy to say you miss winning games and being good .. but I like to be more concise than that…

There is one particular moment that I miss. I liken it to that moment when you are out on the pull, you have been working the boards all night trying to pick up.. then you finally succeed, you know you have got the girl, but you have not kissed yet…. That rare air between when you have ‘picked up, and are about to kiss.. that IS up there amongst the best moments there are! Walking on air with a s**t eating grin.. It’s like when you are in an aeroplane in turbulence, its rocking and rolling and rough – then you see the ground, and you get that moment of smooth nothingness before you hit the ground with a thud..

Anyhow, I’m off track, the thing I miss most about being good is that week post last round before finals start – that week when half the leagues rubbish is cast aside and the best 8 teams are left, when the football worlds focus is filtered, is concentrated like a bottle of Cottees red cordial undiluted. There is that air of excitement, that air of expectation. The weather is getting better, spring is in the air, You start to dream, you start to work out the permutations’, the finals tree, who we play when we win, our path to a flag..only 3 wins away.

This is the moment I most miss about being good, the week before finals start.

I wonder, what the extra week off will do to this? Will it stop the momentum in its tracks and water down this feeling? Or will it supercharge it into a 2 week frenzy?

I think the AFL may have stuffed up with this week off here.

All I know it I’m getting sick of having to switch off after the last round and have to prioritise which team I want to win less – I want that finals feeling back!
 
Andronicus said:
Don't want to hurt eth too much, but tae Kwon do is one of the dumbest things to watch at the Olympics. Hopping around each other and occasionally land a weak kick.

Deserves no medals and zero coverage.
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telling that one of hwoarang's key moves is simply shifting stance

worthless bastard to man
 
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