Looking forward to this triathlon. Was a good watch last night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone want a gold medal harder than that Norwegian nutter last night.
I was grinding levels on Final Fantasy IV on the DS whilst it was on to kill the dead time.
Think there’s some GB interest here too.
yeah it is
Just chiming in on that utterly daft Andy Burnham comment.
How can someone like that be so myopic? Also, even if genuinely believes it’s not Olympic-worthy (or whatever), surely he must realise making a comment like that is one sure way to alienate younger people by showing how little he fails to understand cultures/things that exist outside his known domain - something any self respecting politician should be cognisant of not doing.
Muppet
Edit, this guy said it better:
He is right though. It shouldn’t be an Olympic sport.
Dressage , making a fucking horse prance for the crowds , did the horse ask to be in the Olympics and trained to prance ? Ask burnham how the fuck that got in the Olympics.
But the essence of his argument is that skating doesn’t require commitment. His failing to appreciate that is my gripe here.
Sports that should fuck right off out of the Olympics.
Dressage.
Golf. Wtf.
Football.
Tennis.
3 on 3 basketball (wtf)
Surfing
Street skateboarding (in this format anyway)
How can they have that toilet in but not squash continues to baffle year after year.
Greater Manchester council hate skateboarding.
He’s just revealed himself to be a total cock.
Urbis is still capped.
Drug zombies everywhere.
Bell
End
I think the problem is we’ve had cycling road races, swimming, the triathlon etc. Fucking hard sports that you can see the effort in people’s faces.
They don’t see the tens of thousands of hours it took to make skating gigantic rails look easy.
In regards to the story of non-binary person, Alana Smith: I didn’t see their qualifying event so I am putting the pieces together here from what I have read above.
Simply being at the Olympics is a hugely significant platform where one has the chance to capitalise on an opportunity/experience most can only dream of, let alone non-binary skateboarders. Alana could have put in a serious performance commanding respect and appreciation to highlight the diversity that exists within the female category. Instead the stunt just sounds (and probably appeared) rather juvenile and probably undermined and detracted from the case of equality and respect being granted to women as a whole, not just in skating but in sports more generally.
Essentially, it seems to me like she threw away her privilege for some contrived self-serving stunt which probably only resonates with a select few in her own community. It probably alienated more people if nothing else.
Bottom line: if you took all the Olympic sports and got a thousand random punters to try and complete each of them, you’ll find a lot more can run a 100m, fire off an arrow, throw a rugby ball around, etc. Skating has to be one of the absolute hardest for a non-competitor to try and pick up. Up there with completing 230km on a bike, pole vault, etc. It’s so obviously a massively technical sport that he looks transparently anti-skating. Maybe it’s the age of the woman’s medal winners. But then you just look patronising to kids. He’s really had a shocker there.
Exactly, if skating was easy we’d all be pro’s.
It’s why kids who rollerbladed in the 90’s and scooter kids from 2000 onwards do what they do because skating just wasn’t easy enough and the gratification wasn’t instant enough.
Andy “Burned ‘em”, am I right?
*copies and pastes into dad jokes thread
Stuck a tenner each on Oski, Pedro and Zion
Man I’d fucking LOVE Oski to win!
hard to say without sounding like a brian, but the Brazilian contest surfers know that hucking 360 airs gets points and they can do that twice, three times on a wave sometimes (especially on the traditional world tour which has it’s priorities of having contests at the best wave locations as opposed to having it in front of city crowds). They never do straight airs as you have a higher chance of landing when throwing a rotation as you can land in almost any phase and ride it out. Straight airs also have infinitely more style.
Girl from my home beach unexpectedly made the surfing final - she’s been a great surfer for a long time and has been pro for ages but never really was in the running for world champ or anything. This is likely to be the first time my home town has had a medal winner. Unlikely to win as she’s going up against the current world champ but she’s beaten some big names on the way.
If you win gold here they paint your letter box.
Come on Nev, do the business again.
