London Olympics 2012

against the odds I find myself HYPED for this. because once you get past the surrounding nonsense the sport is going to be brilliant.

there's already a thread for the negativity but serious side-eye at anyone who can't separate the justified political complaints from appreciation of the amazing athletes; this thread is for the good shit.

i am a dilettante when it comes to non-tennis sports but this changes at every olympics, i get wholly into everything. what particular athletes and narratives are people most excited about following?

personally, i've just read this article on indian boxer mary kom and i can't say how amazing she is ENOUGH.

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/lifestyle/India%27s-shot-gold?page=full

Anticipating the hell out of the athletics and all the cycling events. Not too hyped about the rest of it at the moment, but will no doubt be watching a whole shit ton of that too. Anyone actually going to watch anything? Think we might have blagged some tickets for the women's football semifinal at Wembley.

I saw the OLYMPIC FLAME yesterday evening in Walthamstow. That's probably as much as I'm going to see - couldn't get hold of any tickets and I didn't anticipate just how much interest there would be in the (cycling) road race. I might try and get down to Hampton Court to watch the (cycling) time trial instead.

Had planned on going to Box Hill to see the men's road race but the crowds will likely be chaos. Would ride up there but who wants to be stuck looking after a bike? Maybe the women's race will be better... what's the situation with Armitstead/Cooke in that now anyhow?

You can't get onto Box Hill without a ticket, btw. Re: Cooke & Armitstead - I don't know, there's a lot of bad feeling there.

Ticket schmicket, wtf's up with that?

I have tickets for two pool swimming sessions (Monday heats and Wednesday finals) and the women's marathon swim in Hyde Park. SO. STOKED.

Swimming-wise the spectator-friendly events to look out for are:
- women's 200m freestyle (Missy Franklin, Camille Muffat, Federica Pellegrini, Kylie Palmer, Allison Schmitt)
- women's 100m butterfly (Sarah Sjostrom, Dana Vollmer, Ellen Gandy, Jiao Liuyang, Fran Halsall),
- men's 200m medley (Phelps v Lochte v World Record)
- men's 4x100 free relay (AUS v USA v FRA - shaping up to be the closest race in years).
- women's 10k in the Serpentine OMG 2 hours of head-kicking algae punch-up amazingness etc

British medal hopes are reasonable, if everyone's on top form then 8 medals is possible but 3-4 is more likely.

Also batshit mentalist French lass Laure Manaudou is BACK hurrah. Her potted history:
- first won Olympic gold over 400m free in Athens plus a bunch of world championships, super successful etc
- switched coaches and buggered off to Turin in 2007 to be with her Italian medley swimmer fiancee
- who then broke up with her a few months later
- and then posted naked pics of her on the internet (!)
- and then ran off and got engaged to her main rival (F Pellegrini)
- who then won 200m free in Beijing while Laure came LAST in the 400
- Laure 'quits' swimming for two years, moves to the US, has a kid and gets engaged to a top French sprinter
- who doesn't make the French team for London but Laure DOES in the backstroke
- and her little brother Florent gets on the team too, taking his bro-in-law's 50m free sprint place

<3<3<3

Going to watch the tennis on Saturday (first time to Wimbledon as well as watching any tennis in person!) and Volleyball on Sunday (I've no idea about the rules apart from the obvious).

But also looking forward to watching as much of it as possible on telly (joys of working from home for the fortnight!)

- men's 4x100 free relay (AUS v USA v FRA - shaping up to be the closest race in years).

^^^ This sounds like it could be madly exciting.

stoked for USA hoops
also local (San Antonio, TX, USA) ppl in the games, one of the ladies indoor volleyball team members, twin fencers, some swimmers I think

I managed to fuck up our football application so while all my pals get to see Spain, we're going to see Egypt v Belarus :(

Ha! Just looked at the Belarus squad on wikipedia expecting to see at least one or two familiar names and um...

as much as i'm prepared to be annoyed by the tourist influx, i'm also prepared to be annoyed by the odd feeling of watching dodgy streams of stuff that's happening a matter of minutes away. what events will be good for the ticketless? is there anything that still has cheap tickets available?

Have tickets to the athletics on August 7th, which appears to involve:

Women's 100m Hurdles Semi-final
Men's 800m Semi-finals
Women's Long Jump Qualification
Men's Discus Throw Final Medal event
Men's High Jump Final Medal event
Women's 200m Semi-finals
Men's 1500m Final Medal event
Women's 100m Hurdles Final

Awesome! Sally Pearson is the favourite for 100m Hurdles I guess?

Underworld douing the music for the opening ceremony - could be okay
Chemical Brothers have done the music for the velodrome - have heard it and this is legit great
Oasis & the Spice Grills rumoured to be reuniting for the closing ceremony - die die die die die die die

Oasis & the Spice Grills rumoured to be reuniting for the closing ceremony - die die die die die die die

Calling bullshit on this. It'll be something like Weller + Gallagher + Macca plus Joss Stone or someone doing 'Come Together'. And Adele doing something else.

Not sure Macca would do a John Lennon song

... tho it does mention football in the lyrics

... and, something more closely associated with the London Olympics, Coca Cola

another interesting read about an athlete competing in london under the olympic flag !
http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/trackandfield/story/_/id/8186507/2012-olympics-runner-country-compete-olympics

I'm stoked for all this, I'm always stoked for the Olympics despite how evil some aspects are. Stoked for everything, from Handball to Dressage.

Probably helps that I don't live in London, through.

tickets may or may not be coming my way, depends on an uncle of mine really. not bothered about watching most of it on tv if it comes to that. mdc you have prime tickets though!

whoa @ the south sudan guy.

the open water swim is the most hardcore thing.

i'm looking fwd to seeing the athletes parading into the stadium in the opening ceremony (and a few of my fav tennis players are flag-bearers! Tsvetana Pironkova, Li Na, a few others maybe?), apart from that though i largely file the opening & closing ceremonies under "extraneous nonsense" ESPECIALLY any "let's show britain" off element.

Kinda hope the opening ceremony itself is nothing but rain and shitting sheep.

I have two friends who are in the opening ceremony. I think one of them is a shitting cow though.

^ I really don't know what to make of that.

After watching the Olympic flame make its brief appearance in Walthamstow on Saturday I had The Bangles - Eternal Flame stuck in my head for about 48 hours.

one of my colleagues will be one of the cricket players i think

BBC has a great documentary on Track cycling sprinter Victoria Pendleton on the iPlayer right now. Great little Documentary and if that doesn't get you psyched for a Pendleton vs Anna Maeres Sprint Final I don't know what will.

Sadly can't come home for this due to the vagaries of US immigration (Woah-oh I'm an Alien, I'm a legal Alien but only if I don't try to re-enter the country before September 21st (Sting had it easy))

Seriously looking forward to the cycling events. Sadly though they took out my favourite event, the Madison, to equalise the number of events between Men and Women and the IOC wouldn't allow the total number of events to rise.

Other than that it's a case of tune in and see what's going on.

Say my name
Sun shines through the rain
A whole life so lonely
And then come and ease the pain
I don't want to lose this feeling

my sister got tickets to the boxing. trying hard not to let on i'm mad jealous, but i don't think it's working.

Okay so I shared this on FB more as a laugh:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/mary-poppins-fight-voldemort-olympic-opening-ceremony-170354031--oly.html

Only to have writer David Stubbs confirm:

I saw the rehearsal last night. This does happen. It is very confusing.

All to an Underworld soundtrack.

supercalifragilisticexpialilagerlagerlager

OMG you're right!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/24/olympics-changed-lower-lea-valley
Might be of interest to some

Quite a noticeable party atmosphere in London as I walked along the thronging South Bank this evening.

I was on the South Bank this evening too. Actually made me feel really excited about the next few weeks. Not sure if it's more because it's London in beautiful sunshine or if it's the Olympic effect.

Tickets for the tennis (court #1, though we'll spend the day doing the grounds) Monday 30/7 and then again for the men's bronze medal match on the same court Sun 5/8. Which I'm hoping finishes before the gold medal match which I'd like to watch on the big telly (or just barge into Centre). Pam & the girls are off to see some table tennis at ExCel.

How did I just learn about race-walking?

http://blog.sportticketexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/olympic-test-eevent-road-uka-race-walking-championship-london_710663.jpg

so wrong

I know it has a venerable history in the Olympics and everything but i refuse to accept it as a proper sport

It is, frankly, the stupidest thing since synchronized swimming. I also just learned that tug-of-war used to be an Olympic sport. It should be reinstated.

I also feel that contortionism should be added as an Olympic sport. If a bendy-person could fit the entire surface of their body on the medal, they could just keep it.

there used to be solo synchronized swimming

i read 'contortionism' as 'contrarianism' there. c'mon ilx, let's aim for a clean sweep of the medals.

So this actually kicks off today with GB vs New Zealand in women's football. May catch the USA vs France match later.

The sun is shining in Glasgow today, host of some women's football later. This Olympic fever is catching!

(OK, I'm 10 miles out of Glasgow, but I assume the sun's shining there too)

Oh it was still the fireworks on the Thames. It went on for ages.

seb coe speeches always sound like he's just saying what'll get the loudest cheers.

and now jay z is talking over some music. ffwd.

Far too much Coldplay.

Normally I'm fairly Seb Coe resistant but that speech was rather splendid.

It was a total remix of his last "olymp clos" speech.

Last time, he looked a bit "ahem.. when you're quite finished.." when he mentioned the volunteers, and got an unexpected loud cheer/applause..

This time, timed it better.

Too much Coldplay obviously but at the same time, fair enough, they are by some distance the most successful British band. And actually Coldplay are fairly inoffensive and easy to tune out, and everything else that was happening at the same time was compelling enough for it not to matter much. It was so much better than the wall-to-wall awfulness of the Olympic closing ceremony.

Also those fireworks, yay.

Think that's the overall impression, yeah. Certainly at our place...

Thought that fuckhead Cmaeron wouldn't blatantly try to get political mileage out of the Olympics/Paralympics? Think again...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19544414

can't see the video here, but it would be worse for a PM not to comment on the lympics, I think

I don't see anything political about that speech.

did the volunteers volunteer for that?

there was a little 5 minute documentary about one of the paralympic athletes that they showed a couple of times, the 7/7 victim, women's sitting volleyball team, and the commentary was full of tiny boasts like 'britain's youngest ever prime minister' where 'prime minister' would've done. and something similar about boris, i forget what. what was odd was that it was sean bean doing the voiceover and i can't see him being a fan of current government.

paid gig.

pet shop boys doing west end girls on the Mall with Team GB behind them

and some public enemy, and lots of boos at boris and cameron. lovely.

boris speech a crowd-pleaser

Boos at Boris? I just heard people going wild for LOLBORISLEGERND repeating his "juddering climax" crap, pretending it's an off-the-cuff thing from a loveable goof. Fucking planned out to the finest detail. Horrible horrible, jingoistic bullshit.

think it was more for your mate Dave than Boris, cos Boris is a right laugh!!1!

#bantz

The rotters. http://yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Hull-Artist-Questions-Originality-Of-Olympic-Opening-Ceremony

Pistorius in custody over murdering his gf

Oscar Pistorius 'shoots girlfriend' - local media

It's being reported she was sneaking in as a V day surprise :(((

pistolius

should've aimed for the legs

fucking fuck

pistolius

― pandemic, Thursday, 14 February 2013 09:47 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I heard the story on the radio this morning and I knew I would see that word on ILX.

i wish people could lay off the fucking puns for one fucking second

ilx's savile thread completely grossed me out

It's being reported she was sneaking in as a V day surprise

this is very sad and all, and we should probably wait for the full facts here, but fuck people who are prepared to shoot intruders if it's not their very last resort

Also without even checking that they are intruders.

This is a disabled dude with a high profile and money in South Africa responding to someone apparently sneaking into his house. Not condoning it obviously but you can see why he might have been scared and paranoid.

hmmmmmmm

BBC Sport ‏@BBCSport

South African police say there have been "previous incidents" at the home of Oscar Pistorius of "a domestic nature".

From the Guardian:

There were indications that Pistorius did have fears about his safety. In an interview with the Daily Mail before the London 2012 Games it was revealed he slept with a pistol next to his bed and kept a machine gun by a window. Pistorius had been arrested previously. In September 2009 he was arrested for assault after slamming a door on a woman. Family and friends at the time said it was an accident.

if only she'd been armed too, this never would have happened.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/oscar-pistorius.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Pistorius lives in the house with a friend from high school, an engineer who moonlights as a mixed-martial-arts fighter. Pistorius had recently broken off a relationship with his longtime girlfriend, though another young woman was visiting when we got there. As he put together lunch for all of us — fruit smoothies, breaded chicken fillets he pulled from the refrigerator — he mentioned that a security alarm in the house had gone off the previous night, and he had grabbed his gun and tiptoed downstairs. (It turned out to be nothing.)
I asked what kind of gun he owned, which he seemed to take as an indication of my broader interest in firearms. I had to tell him I didn’t own any. “But you’ve shot one, right?” Actually, I hadn’t. Suddenly, I felt like one of those characters in a movie who must be schooled on how to be more manly.

“We should go to the range,” he said. He fetched his 9-millimeter handgun and two boxes of ammunition. We got back in the car and drove to a nearby firing range, where he instructed me on proper technique. Pistorius was a good coach. A couple of my shots got close to the bull’s-eye, which delighted him. “Maybe you should do this more,” he said. “If you practiced, I think you could be pretty deadly.” I asked him how often he came to the range. “Just sometimes when I can’t sleep,” he said.

jesus

so sad
https://mobile.twitter.com/reevasteenkamp/status/301656335106310144

Shitting hell, some people are such wankers.

charged

kinda grim details emerging - https://twitter.com/barrybateman

this is maybe weird, but i'd be enormously relieved if this wasn't a mistake.

If it was a mistake that'd be sad. If it's an argument got out of hand... that's horrible.

yet going to jail and feeling terrible about it would be deserved. if it were a mistake it would not only be tragic but absurd.

The possibility for sick jokes here is almost limitless

Take it to the limerick thread

hooray

http://deadspin.com/5984225/nike-oscar-pistorius-ad-i-am-the-bullet-in-the-chamber

seems this could be a reminder that the drive to compete -- in anything -- is, at best, a morally neutral quality.

South African police said that there had been "previous incidents" of a domestic nature reported at Pistorius' home.

I doubt the "accident" angle...

Just keeps looking worse and worse.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/9875621/Oscar-Pistorius-murder-charge-bloodied-cricket-bat-found-at-Paralympic-athletes-home.html

seems this could be a reminder that the drive to compete -- in anything -- is, at best, a morally neutral quality.

it's a good ethical philosophical point, but i don't see what it has to do with this situation?

pre-trial press speculation is mostly grim but if his defence is performance-enhancing drugs, eeeek

lolz