Your Rio 2016 Summer Olympics anticipation thread!

her dad looks like alan cumming

wondering how they're going to get through the rowing program. what i saw on day 1 looked like a surf boat competition and that was apparently the day not worth cancelling due to high winds

yeah god i thought one of the single scull competitors was going to capsize at one point

one of the pairs did iirc

I'm so happy that Raisman made the 2016 squad just so I can watch her parents again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/australias-mack-horton-chinas-sun-yang-plain-dont-like-each-other/2016/08/07/6c3ba25a-5c53-11e6-9767-f6c947fd0cb8_story.html

Mack Horton, the Australian who kicked off a promising meet for his country by winning the 400-meter freestyle, was addressing the topic of Sun Yang, the Chinese swimmer whom he beat for the gold — and who has generally perturbed him, first for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2014, then by splashing water in his lane during a training session before the Olympics began.

“I just have a problem with athletes who have tested positive and are still competing,” Horton told the assembled press.

this one too
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2016/08/07/finger-pointing-sets-up-us-russian-womens-swim-showdown/88381764/

The thing with Yulia Efimova is a complete farce. Implicated in the WADA-report, busted for using Meldonium (her second offence) and still allowed in at last notice. Nobody can possibly believe that she's clean.

Idk why they let Russian althetes with prior bans compete in swimming but banning people for using meldonium when you have little to no idea how long it stays in the body doesn't seem particularly fair.

What's not particularly fair is Russia having a state organized doping scheme which apparently even included using the FSB to keep doping agencies away from athletes.

The Russian athletes trying - and freaking succeeding - to use loopholes to stay in competition, when next to nobody collaborated with the investigation is shameful.

That has nothing to do with meldonium. I agree the double standard where some athletes with prior bans can compete but others can't doesn't make sense.

The meldonium question is completely pointless, is what I'm saying.

The point is that everybody knows Efimova is a cheat. She cheated before, and her country conspired to protect cheaters. And yet there she is.

Vaguely watching some men's gymnastics here. Who is the UK man bun dude?

Lewis Smith. Relatively few people expected him to compete again - he has been on the Celebrity Come Dancing circuit for the last four years.

love too watch table tennis.

i signed up for a 7 day trial thing to watch nbc but agh the commentators. anyone care to share how they set up their vpn?

― bagging area (map), Monday, August 8, 2016 2:17 AM (20 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just started watching the olympics this weekend

i'm stateside right now so i had the displeasure of watching nbc -- good lord they're atrocious (as is their coverage as has already been stated)

anyway can i just say CBC, hats off

the best coverage i've ever seen basically

1 sign up for https://unlocator.com
2 setup dns stuff and change region to canada
3 go to http://olympics.cbc.ca/online-listing

so organized, simple to understand, easy to watch, etc

sometimes the live stream causes slight issues when rewinding because it switches to prerecorded video

but other than that it's a breeze

yeah 100% happy with CBC's coverage

so impressed with the young canadians in swimming, another medal tonight.

Going to be difficult to watch Steele Johnson compete with a straight face.

thanking u xposts

Steel Johnson: We're Already Inside Of You http://m.imdb.com/title/tt4595784/

Efimova won silver. Was booed on entering the area, sporadic booing as she received her medal. Danish news says she broke down crying at one point, which sounds good.

not sure of all the ins and outs but the IOC's handling of the RUS team seems to have been a total mess. I don't support the entire RUS Olympic squad being banned (because there are several sports, like tennis, where the athletes are much less connected to domestic programs and where the sport already has its own drug-testing procedures) but the loopholes Efimova found were ridiculous.

Ah Frederik what a shithead you are.

x-post: I don't know, afaict the problem was that the russian state put barriers in place to make the sports anti-doping procedures not work. I was thinking more that some sports, such as synchronized diving for instance, probably doesn't benefit from doping as much, and it might be unfair to ban them.

afaict, athletes who could show a clean doping record in international competition independent of Russian domestic testing were mostly cleared to compete by the individual federations. The main national punishment for state involvement is that Russian athletes with prior bans were mostly not allowed to participate, unlike athletes with prior bans from other countries.

The swimming case is mysterious, though, as they banned several athletes with prior convictions and then reversed that ban without any clear public explanation.

Unfortunately it doesn't really prove anything to not have been caught at international competitions, since doping is used mainly during training, and with the goal of the drugs being undetectable at the events. The only reliable method is to have unannounced doping controls during the training period, and those were also obstructed by the Russians, involving help from the FSB.

yes - some sports (like tennis) have independent out-of-competition testing as well. So I don't get why it ever made sense to suspend the entire RUS squad as opposed to on a sport-by-sport basis. (The RUS tennis player who has been caught taking meldonium, Sharapova, has already been suspended by the ITF.)

Yes, it varies sport by sport so some of the ones with long training periods and limited international competition have had blanket bans applied - the entire track and field team is out.

I would guess that swimming has a more rigorous international competition schedule but idk.

Well, problem is that testing really wasn't that independent. The samples were taken to the WADA lab in Moscow, where they were tampered with. FSB would distract WADA testers so they couldn't supervise the testing properly. And some athletes trained in military cities, where civilian testers would have no oversight, iirc. When British testers were put in charge of testing this spring, they reported massive obstruction. When WADA decided to retest B-samples from the Moscow lab, the samples were destroyed or tampered with. So unless the tennis athletes trained abroad - which is definitely possible - the out-of-competition testing proves nothing.

Track-and-field were banned because the original WADA reports from November and January went into details on the organized doping in exactly that sport, not because of anything with training periods and limited competition.

Most of the tennis players do train abroad, as does Efimova - she's based in the US and has an American coach iirc.

In a way, that ban is even more unfair, as the report said that athletic athletes had no choice over whether to dope or not, but were forced to do it if they wanted to be part of the national team.

Efimova has an American coach, yeah. She seems to have kept Russian doctors, though, as meldonium is not approved by the FDA...

Some swimming nerd background info: Morozov and Lobintsev (both sprinters, both on the 4x100 free team that got 4th after loud booing) were named in the McLaren report, but there was no transparency on what they were named *for*. Both train at Trojan/USC and are regularly tested by USADA, so if they had test results 'hidden' by the Moscow lab it's not exactly clear how or when. All the Kazan 2015 Worlds samples have been retested in Barcelona, all clean (or at least that's what we've been told). So that leaves the 2013 Universiade, also in Kazan (Russia dominated - Morozov 2G 1S 1B, Lobintsev 2S, Russia won all 3 men's relays). But we still have no idea what's in the report. Complete mess. Meanwhile Efimova's meldonium use is no worse than any other Russian's (though how did she get it in the US where it's not FDA approved? She's also at USC), but even if she stopped taking it on Dec 31st, she still has the 'advantage' of it in her system, training on a fitness base built on its benefits. What really riled up the swimming community though was her pitifully short ban from 2013 (for a supplement containing DHEA) that was reduced by FINA for literally no reason other than to allow her to compete in a home World Champs, and her utter lack of remorse at the time ("it's just like I've got my driving license back after speeding"). FINA will do nothing about it - they are totally in hock to the Russians (and NBC, for that matter, hence finals finishing at 1am Rio time) and will do anything for their cash. Efimova was Miss July on FINA's 2014 sodding promotional calendar during her ban, ffs! Such a shame, her technique is beautiful to watch.

With the track-and-field band there was an exception made for athletes who could prove they trained outside Russia and submitted to doping agencies in other countries, btw. Darya Klishina was allowed to compete under neutral flag for this reason. Presumably the same exemption should have been made with every other organization.

I think Klishina was exempt because she'd only ever been tested in the US?

I've concluded table tennis is my 'fallback thing to watch if nothing else immediately stands out to me' event. Some NYT piece on noisy Brazilian crowds said that apparently said noise at the venue is throwing a few of the players off because they rely on being able to hear the ball!

I think Klishina was exempt because she'd only ever been tested in the US?

Also va-va-voom.

so i know wente is not liked here but hadn't heard of semenya and the whole transgender thing

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/an-olympic-challenge-testosterone/article31317723/

intersex not trans

the article talks about both

no olympic event is more terrifying than the beam

I just have absolutely no sympathy for Efimova. Saw an interview with her, she's crying and discussing how hard it is, but not a single word about the Russian scandal. Just 'don't judge' and 'everything on the internet is shit'.

no olympic event is more terrifying than the beam

― lex pretend, Tuesday, August 9, 2016 12:39 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree

omg the fencing! 41-yr-old Hungarian guy was cruising to the gold at 14-9 - wanted to end on a flourish by attacking - and let the 20-yr-old Korean kid take six consecutive points to win.

that was wild ^

Serena down a set and now down a break in the 2nd

Damn, after getting even she just missed six serves in a row to go down a break again