Your Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics anticipation thread!

no giant stars, too damn hot...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/04/lasha-talakhadze-dominates-but-could-this-be-weighliftings-last-heave

Impressive to lift a piano even if you are doping.

men's skateboarding looks like more of a race than anything, doing laps of the bowl.

rune glifberg's a name i recognise from when channel 5 would show the x games at 2am back in 200x (maybe even 199x)

he was in the original tony hawk game!

That climbing final was intense and the multiplication system makes for big changes in the order right up to the last move.

Some really cool dives here by this 14yo

'She's 14 and doing stuff like that - amazing'
Women's 10m platform

Fourteen-year-old Quan Hongchan racked up the perfect 10s as the Chinese diver claimed gold in the women's 10m platform earlier

The combined climbing format promised some surprises and boy, did it deliver. My wrap: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/climbing-spains-gines-lopez-claims-first-climbing-gold-thrilling-olympic-debut-2021-08-05/

That 14-yr-old Chinese diver is incredible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXg30_BgOEQ

If YouTube didn’t spoil everything with their clickbaity video titles, they’d have the best coverage.

These are the videos of the dives (YT link doesn't work here)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/olympics/58098855

What racism

Former Polish sprinter Marcin Urbas has requested Olympics organizers to run a test on Namibian teenager Christine Mboma (18) to find out if she is a woman after she ran a semi-final time of 21.97 seconds in the women's 200m race.#Olympics #Tokyo2020 #AST #olympics2020 pic.twitter.com/9Qqirusmax

— African Sports Today (@africasportoday) August 3, 2021

xp Coach holding her up is a bit 🤨 to say the least.

imagine a lot of this is down to time zones, but i doubt nbc's programming choices helped

I think the ratings are down in the UK too? I haven't watched anything, even highlights, and I usually love the Olympics. It's a combination of the time of events, the BBC not being able to show everything, the fact that the majority of the Japanese people didn't want it to go ahead in the middle of an COVID outbreak but they went ahead anyway, no crowds and general pandemic stuff.

it has been a good thing to have on in the summer holidays while both me and my wife are working, I've had it on every day and sometimes even looked up when something interesting was happening

my younger son loves all sport, older son dngaf about any sport

Paris will get the same reduced coverage.

I've just been following via the odd clip for athletics, swimming, cycling or gymnastics but I haven't been able to see any badminton or table tennis, or the team stuff I get to see once every four years that I like to watch (handball, volleyball, water polo).

Feeling a bit sad about it though oddly I've been off the Olympics as a thing for a good decade. Think it's the pandemic but also how it could be the end of the Olympics as a thing. Despite its problems, such as the sheer wastage of it I do like to see lots of the world getting together and winning medals. But it's unsustainable, as in it will be just too hot for some events, which is an existential problem for all summer sport.

Yes, it's sort of a monster now. As I said the opposition to it in the host country left a sour taste in my mouth.

not a peep of the women's climbing so far, 3 hours into it. (which means, under the current rules, that there'll be no highlights to show later)

They could have it in Greece every four years, imo. Maybe not in July/August though.

I could listen to Denise Lewis and Michael Johnson all day. Paula Radcliffe, not.

Women’s climbing has a late breaking stewards enquiry but we don’t know what into.

Imagine: You come 4th in Rio, you go again, train so hard, ‘Tokyo will be my Games’. The big day comes and it’s going brilliantly, you have one of the biggest leads in #Olympics history. And then a random horse ruins your dream. Crushing for Annika Schleu pic.twitter.com/sbXI3C8Ox1

— Jason Keen (@Jason_Keen) August 6, 2021

this horse should get a medal for services to making posh English brats cry.

pro-horse anti-rider

that's hilarious. good for horse.

Wow, Italy in the 4x100! Holy smokes.

"And then a random horse ruins your dream"

lol, yes, a random horse in the horse sport.

labbe vs lindahl

apparently horse are drawn at random from a local pool. what's japanese for 'woah neddy'?

this is too nerve racking

OH MY GOD GO CANADA

:)

my daft cat woke me at 5.45am and im not working today so i managed to watch the majority of that. back to bed for me.

ha, that was quite a game

"that was just athleticism at its highest!"

(hyperbole at the table tennis)

re pentathlon the same horse is randomly drawn to be ridden by 2 diff riders, cos not enough horses, refused to move for either rider which kinda makes whole event unfair imo. clearly a duff horse.

also the leader until then was german not british and the british woman went onto win so really the horse made a posh brit happy you'll be pleased to know calz.

ffs!

british woman was 15s behind going into non-horse event* so it wasn't just the horse.

*laser-tag, or something. i wasn't watching that closely.

those penalties were insane. so so happy for christine sinclair

laser tag/800m run combo was the last event. british woman was 8th going into the horse event(which was penultimate event)
xp

wait the one with the bad horse ended up winning? why did she have to hit the horse so hard then ffs

i want to buy that bad horse, i love him

the one with the "bad horse" was the german rider Annika Schleu, the gold medal winner was the British competitor, whose name, just to make this more confusing, is Kate French

I see the confusion; the crying horsebeater is from Germany, not the UK

Weird that I didn’t get an xpost notification there

That horse got the revenge it deserved pic.twitter.com/rM75NmVEfQ

— Hoet Laureate (@Sean_nanigans) August 6, 2021

lol def a meme in the making.

Is there a non-paid way to see this pentathlon event, I'm grimly fascinated now

you can piece it together with tweets

Imagine: You come 4th in Rio, you go again, train so hard, ‘Tokyo will be my Games’. The big day comes and it’s going brilliantly, you have one of the biggest leads in #Olympics history. And then a random horse ruins your dream. Crushing for Annika Schleu pic.twitter.com/sbXI3C8Ox1

— Jason Keen (@Jason_Keen) August 6, 2021

I love any sport that involves a horse but some of these modern pentathlon showjumping rounds are not comfortable to watch… pic.twitter.com/xvBT4viq3z

— Molly Hunter (@mollhun) August 6, 2021

Modern pentathlon riding seems to be very large jumps for the ability of the horses and some of the riders. Considering they only have a short time to ride a strange horse how safe is this? I’d be wearing a BP and air jacket! And they get back on! 😱🤷🏼‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/mOCitZJVIQ

— Clare E Gabriel (@ClareEGabriel3) August 6, 2021

🐴🐴🐴

lol def a meme in the making.

― pomenitul, Friday, 6 August 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Nothing but support for withholding your labor at the most critical point of production. pic.twitter.com/VsvBjqwYtY

— Brett "Unions 2021" Banditelli (@banditelli) August 6, 2021