Aww! They have a webcam and screen set up to allow athletes to Skype their family back home if they weren’t able to make it. That’s really sweet!
An impressive performance on the black & pink bouldering wall with a big overhang from the Aussie. I only caught the end of it, but the commentators gave me the sense that she was the first one, or one of the first, to make the 25 point mark on that wall.
Lopez wins his 5th gold in his 6th Olympics in heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestling. What an absolute titan. 6-0 in the final, barely broke a sweat all tournament. Apparently lost almost 30kg to get back to match weight for this comeback too.
Bows out on the absolute top, leaving his shoes in the ring as he finally retires. What phenomenal images, what a moment again at this incredible Olympics.
Ok I went and watched the replay of that. Absolutely beautiful symbolism.
I find it interesting how much time the boulderers seem to take looking at the wall before their first attempt. Are they not allowed to have seen it before they head out? And if so, how does this get enforced? Is everyone just locked in a room without communication until their turn to start?
Exactly that. They have to go into isolation a few hours before the start of the session. Isolation means no internet/bluetooth/outside contact in an area with warm up equipment. They then have 5 minutes to “read” the boulder and climb it.
In the finals it is different and they get a 2 minute shared observation per boulder before they start. But they are still in iso while the others are climbing.
Coaches get to stay with athletes in iso until the competition starts, but can’t go out and back in again. They are also not allowed to shout any advice while the athletes are climbing.
It’s interesting to see how different sports handle coaches. Some can’t help at all. Others are basically micromanaging their team. It does come across as somewhat arbitrary when you’re watching them all together like this, even though each sport is basically making a logical decision about what its regulatory body thinks is best for their specific sport.
Ok the skateboarding park is a lot more impressive (to the casual audience) than the street was. Street was literally laughable in how bad it was. Park is looking actually fairly impressive. Still subpar though, when compared to, say, the BMX freestyle. I’ve been watching a little while now: probably seen about 7 or 8 runs. Only one of them didn’t end in a crash.
Street really needs good commentators if you’re not into the sport already. The subtleties of what makes a trick hard to execute are really easy to miss to an untrained eye.
Hell, that’s true of BMX Freestyle too to a certain extent. The men’s winning run might have looked less impressive than silver/bronze, but there is a lot of stuff like gaps, lines, use of the arena etc that the judges look at.
Yeah, the need for better commentators is definitely a big piece of it. Especially when it comes to the score differences between two different tricks/runs.
But even the best commentators can’t make the fact that there was a roughly 60% failure rate look good. The idea that the supposed best in the world (because that’s what Olympic athletes should be) are failing to land any points 60% of the time made it absolutely laughable. And I mean that quite literally. The people I was watching with were quite literally laughing at how absurd it was that this is the standard.
I don’t remember being as upset as you about the street final. Was it the men’s or women’s? I didn’t watch the women’s final.