Your Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics anticipation thread!

as usual, the Onion is otm
https://www.theonion.com/dream-crushed-over-trivial-bullshit-represents-nation-b-1847220107

Would toke with her in a second

How is this dumb? Marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug and her levels were above the limit when she won the Olympic trials. It's not banned outside the competition. I'm sure plenty of athletes would like to smoke before the competition to calm the nerves.

is it? https://www.popsci.com/science/marijuana-performance-enhancing-drug-evidence/

good news for your fictional athletes: anti-anxiety meds are allowed

anyway fuck the olympics, what a grotesque institution: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/namibia-teenagers-out-of-olympic-400-over-testosterone-level/2021/07/02/bdb36c80-db2e-11eb-8c87-ad6f27918c78_story.html

Of course these things could be challenged (as all science should!), but this is the current consensus and it's on the prohibited list, so it's kind of a pointless argument, and I'm sure if there's enough evidence to the contrary it will be changed at some point. IIRC they removed alcohol from the banned substances only a few years ago.

Spectator-free Olympics confirmed:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-57760883

Should be quite the atmosphere!

Not anticipating. Over it. And I used to absolutely love the Olympics, it just seems superfluous/corrupt/excessive to me at the mo.

enjoyed seeing sweden giving the usa a pasting earlier. 3-0 and should have been 5 or 6. blackstenius and aslani were great. still expect the usa to win gold tho.

It’s here!

Road race highlight so far, boss performance by Carapaz.

Road race was gripping start to finish.

Felt a bit of a traitor to my Japanese friends watching the opening ceremony, but Hiromi and the pictograms were highlights.

Drone planet a highlight, accompanying version of Imagine a very definite lowlight. My Japanese friends were all watching and laughing at it so don't feel bad!

South Korean broadcaster MBC used images to "represent" each country during the #Tokyo2020 Opening Ceremony.

Italy: pizza
Norway: salmon
Haiti: upheaval
Ukraine: Chernobyl pic.twitter.com/KpUXATuZld

— Raphael Rashid (@koryodynasty) July 23, 2021

Road race was gripping start to finish.

Japanese men’s skateboarders? They’re pretty damn good.

I’ve never watched competitive skateboarding before, but people fall over a lot more than I would have expected.

Risk of the road! Nyjah Huston making it look easy.

But after this cycle of runs, switching to swimming

Damn that Tunisian swimmer in the men’s 400m freestyle! He seemed more surprised than anyone! Loved his coach too!

I want o know who the ojisan they keep cutting to with the Japanese skaters, he doesn’t really fit my impression of what a skating coach might look like.

this is the only time i am regretting cutting off our cable tv because OMG trying to watch this shit through streaming apps fucking sucks balls
i am seriously going to go postal

I’m all Austrian right now.

This is even better than yesterday’s men’s race.

the Dutch TV commenter has been going thru all stages of grief simultaneously for the half hour I’ve been watching this

the best Anna won

turns out the Dutch riders thought they were in control all along, with just the one small breakaway group they would easily catch up with in time - and they did, but they they weren’t aware there was another rider that had broken away from that group. Van Vleuten actually thought she had won when she crossed the line. some serious miscommunication there. unbelievable.

words you only hear once every ~4 years (pt1): strokeside, repechage, gam-jeom

big typhoon headed for Japan, making landfall in the 27th

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/07/c6457801f920-typhoon-heads-for-eastern-japan-may-make-landfall-on-tues.html

To summarise what the Aussie commentators on the cycling said; the Dutch team spent a lot of time going back to the cars early into the race so should have known who was up the road, if you don’t count them in as you catch them, that’s your own lookout.

oh yes, incredible stupidity on their part. they even said they chose not to check with the team car in “the final section” - but I mean, Kiesenhofer had already broken free 41 km ahead of the finish

i haven't been posting here because I'm crazy swamped, but hey I'm actually in Tokyo right now covering the tennis, and climbing after.

my wrap of today's tennis drama: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/tennis-osaka-dominant-form-barty-makes-shock-exit-2021-07-25/

wow awesome !

Oh wow Barty went out? I saw the early part of that match and it did look dicey.

As for the women’s road race, yeah that was bizarre to realize! All credit to Kiesenhofer for that remarkable ride.

Good swims earlier but women’s skateboarding is awesome right now.

Also I like how for all the weird hullabaloo over Peacock coverage here in the US and whatever else they’re doing on the basic channels, the NBC Sports app just has everything from what I can tell, it’s all Australian coverage like I mentioned earlier, the ads are mostly manageable, and that’s all you need? It’s like they’re not publicizing that as much!

nbcsports app still requires a cable provider tho to get full access? or at least thats what i’m led to believe

please someond help me or i’m gonna just run through the streets screaming & waving an antique samurai sword

Impressed by how deep the winner of the men's triathlon went on the run leg, absolutely beasted himself. Looked like he was going to explode any second

xpost Apparently a workaround is to get access via Sling for a month (and take advantage of the promo price).

[muffled screaming]

Nishiya Momiji is amazing.

It does somewhat bring into relief that the most recent music I've heard on the tannoy in the skate park was block rocking beats by the chemical brothers, only one of the finalists was alive when that came out - most of the 'young people's music' would have been even older than the 33 year old on the park (Journey, Talking Heads, The smiths)

13 year old nishiya momiji being the coolest at the olympics i love her 🥺💕pic.twitter.com/QhZOypzSTJ

— gabb 💐 (@tegomass) July 26, 2021

> I’ve never watched competitive skateboarding before, but people fall over a lot more than I would have expected.

this is just Street though, everything they are trying has such a high level of difficulty, even if it all looks the same to me. i think Park will be better, more emphasis on runs than single tricks. and Vert would be better still (skate equiv of snowboard halfpipe) but that's not an event here, strangely.

i taped the uk coverage because it was 1am here. they didn't show nyjah's heat so we only saw him in the final where he spent most of his time failing at the one trick.

Been watching the mountain biking for years, so weird to see a brit win it. That course definitely looked way more technical than previous olympics, lad looked so in control though. Hope MvdP is okay, went over like a statue falling out of a wheelbarrow

whoops totally missed the mountain biking and will have to do catchup

Update on mvdp's crash. Apparently there was a ramp down one of the big drops on the practice laps but they removed it for the actual race. Somehow van der poel missed that info in the rider briefing and just rolled of the drop instead of lifting the front end

OUCH! 😬

A painful crash for Mathieu van der Poel in the opening lap of the men's cross-country mountain biking.

A relief to see him managing to get back on his bike 🙏#bbcolympics #Tokyo2020

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) July 26, 2021

Incredibly horrifying crash by cycling legend Mathieu van der Poel in the #Olympics mountain bike race. Oh, and he got back up and is still riding. pic.twitter.com/yLPxdROweI

— Remko Rinkema (@RemkoRinkema) July 26, 2021

MVDP did get the info, both from his coach and his teammate, but somehow failed to process it correctly or doublecheck. Dutch cycling really on a roll so far.

not sure if i'm being incredibly dense but i had blithely assumed that all events would be available on catch up on iplayer, but having a hard time finding the tennis. thought last time out in rio p much everything was available.

Discovery/eurosport won the broadcast rights for a lot of the events so there are some things that the BBC won't be entitled to show.

thx nick, i had no idea.

bbc can, aiui, choose what they want to show on bbc1 (or 2) and red button but ONLY that will be available on iplayer later.

so we got all 4 of the women's street skate heats because, i guess, there were no english people beating anyone up that they wanted to show instead. i think some of the qualifiers are literally twice the age of the others (ie 13 and >26)

Challenge Annika,lol

Bunch of savages

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/07/german-modern-pentathlon-kim-raisner-coach-thrown-out-of-tokyo-olympics-for-punching-horse-annika-schleu

Spanghero wants to know your location

Hassan wins the 10k, to go along with gold in 5k and bronze in the 1500.

Just looks so fucking shattered

Well done Brit posho for saving 🐴

Maher withdraws from team final
Showjumping team event final

It's all over for Great Britain in the showjumping team final as Ben Maher takes the decision to withdraw.

With Team GB sitting ninth in the standings on 24 penalties, he has decided it's not worth risking Explosion W.

daughter of the boss is gonna get a medal in showjumping.

ooh sweden hit last fence to tie usa with one country to jump

and fence down and refusal for france, from first to out on last rider

so belgium bronze and sweden vs usa in jump off for gold.

maybe punching a house can be an actual event come Paris 2024

No typo detected ^

USA could still top the gold medal table. Women's volleyball, boxing and they will win women's basketball.

Team GB might get another gold or two tomorrow (cycling and boxing). Lottery cash means there is some resource to chase sporting dreams. The dominance in cycling is over but that's generational, and there are prospects. It's rowing where it looks like it's a goner.

I would watch competitive house-bashing.

The 'gold medal table' is a rotten artifact of the 20th century.

Should be medals per capita. (San Marino would be top.) Or maybe per gdp.

Well done, Neeraj Chopra. India’s first ever athletics gold and, unbelievably, only the second individual gold in any event.

shoutout to aditi ashok who played her heart out to finish 4th in golf just 2 shots off first place,

Canadian dude who won the decathlon (the event that really matters) seems cool

Artistic swimming... words fail. Truly insane.

there are some Olympic events that seem insanely difficult like beam for instance and then there are those in which I truly believe some sort of sorcery must be involved in navigating successfully like rhythmic gymnastics and synchronised swimming.

Insanely hard yes but also the whole idea, the expressions, even (or especially) the way they walk up to the pool! (The free routine, haven't seen the technical.)

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

― Sam Weller, Friday, 6 August 2021 13:12 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

no way, Paula is a good commentator

Enjoyed the marathon this morning. It’s nice to see Sapporo even if I’m a bit sad I won’t make it to the food festival this year. (Normally takes place at odori park inside the loop they did at the start). Found an interesting restaurant on the run north from the station.

Great end to the velodrome programme. Excellent silver from the Malaysian in the men’s Keirin. (Tiger strip track tops are a strong contender in the best uniform stakes). Strong showing from Trinidadian and Surinamese riders too, who come out of the non-traditional cycling countries programme.

Now all we have left is to see if the Japanese woman’s can overtake the American in the points race for the Omni I’m, which would be a great finish.

Tiger strip track tops are a strong contender in the best uniform stakes

lol the tiger is our country mascot and I hate it. :D

Azizulhasni is a beast though for a guy who’s 5’5 - feel like I mention this every Olympics but he’s most famous for this incident back in 2011 when he crashed, got a wooden shard pierced through his leg, got back on his bike and still finished third.

US beats China to win volleyball, basketball and a cycling gold to finish top on golds.

Ha Roz, I can’t say I’m a fan of the Team GB strip, it’s not modern and cool like the Kenyan, neither is it a stone cold classic like the Belgian.

I note "Over the moon" has made a major comeback in interviews with athletes.

Oops, Nicola Adams talking about the successes of England's boxing team after Lauren Price had won the gold.

lol I was not expecting so much ska at this closing ceremony

is that a moth on the podium?

Definitely a moth.

needs less sound of music and more kaiju imo.

pretty excited about the us women's volleyball win! i remember them watching them take silver in 1984 with the late flo hyman

They dominated. Got hot at the right time

can't wait for

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Ive just seen the horse punch and my god its as well twitter has never had to work on a farm isnt it

it is insane in the horse mane

if you consider the horse to be an Olympic athlete, then punching it enters a different light

Guess this was never going to happen anyway what with the pandemic and all, still a shame

https://aramajapan.com/news/tokyo-2020-opening-ceremony-original-plan-leaks-in-full/114631/

a friend (and former member of Dweeb) went to cover the archery and wrote this:

http://www.theinfinitecurve.com/archery/tokyo-2020