But other national football and rugby teams manage to get around the club vs country issue, even with more players playing abroad than we do...
It does excite me, but only as an achievement in its own right. Younger people may start to think that GB Olympics performance was ever like this, not recalling the dark days of one gold in Atlanta, and earlier games where we wildly celebrated the odd bronze. So I'm not going to knock those achievements, BUT (and it's a big BUT), the ugly word of "legacy" needs to be addressed. The only beneficiary, apart from subsequent medal winners, of this huge sporting investment I can think of is West Ham. As far as I can see, there seems to be very little knock on effect in motivating the nation to do sport. Basically this focus on elite athletes couldn't be further from the old slogan from the 80s "Sport For All". While our medal tally has increased spectacularly, so has for example, obesity. I don't mind investment in the elite athletes providing there is similar (greater) investment in grass roots. We seem to be able to identify the best people already doing a sport, but surely it's more important to get people doing the sport in the first place. And that involves building facilities that are accessible, and making them free or reasonably priced to use, and training a huge number of new coaches. It certainly doesn't involve selling off green spaces and school playing fields! Perhaps this is not done because it's a lot more expensive than producing gold medal winners and perhaps isn't so easily measurable (and don't get me started on the modern trend of 'if it isn't measurable it has no value'). The government can easily say it's sporting policies are working (not that it's directly to do with the government) as long as we are being so successful. But I would argue that investment in sport brings extra employment for coaches and construction, a healthier population with associated savings on the NHS budget etc and (very) generally that healthier people are happier people, which may have other beneficial effects. But in the long term the success of the elite athletes might in fact work against the physical and health of the general population. In reality these facilities are quite hard to find and sporting activities will always be cut from the school timetable under academic pressure.
please log in to view this image Eric Dier looking very boyband these days, has he being taking tips from 1998 David Beckham?
I know its not the soft of benefit you are talking about but young people will be inspired by success, take up sport, improve their health and possibly become future successes themselves. All that stems from the investment in the GB team, the 2012 Olympics and the commonwealth games we hosted not that long ago. I think i read that prior to winning the bid for 2012 that Britain did not have an Olympic sized pool. Or one that qualified for competition. We'd also never expect a medal in the pool but since such time as we've started to actually have the pools available we've had the Adlingtons and Peatys of the nation come forward, and a bunch of others.
The gold medal for biased commentary has to go to the BBC for their remarkably one-sided coverage of the Brazil/Honduras match. Notable reasons to put your foot through your telly include... a.) Damning the Hondurans for agricultural tackles, but failing to mention the numerous cynical kicks the Brazilians are dishing out b.) Whinging about the number of times Neymar has been fouled, yet failing to mention how he (and various teammates) skip through challenges when they have a chance to attack the goal yet hurl themselves to the pitch if they're running up a blind alley c.) Making excuses for Neymar constantly mouthing off at the ref and/or waving imaginary yellow cards, saying he's "frustrated" - as opposed to acting like a petulant child d.) Brushing off Honduras being denied a legitimate penalty
Luckily, US commentators always set the standard for even-handedness: "In a tremendous upset the [#2 seeded] Brazilians beat the [#3 seeded] Americans!"
GB have won 50 medals so far including 19 gold and the same in silver. India have one bronze. So do Portugal. It's a staggering achievement.
I've been saying for years that this country has stealthily turned into Soviet Russia. We've even borrowed the way their leaders were elected...
There's very little democracy in this country. The first past the post electoral system for example is extremely undemocratic. And whoever gets in the Establishment runs the country anyway!
Let me get this straight: the US women's relay team failed to qualify for the 400m relay final after dropping the baton - but because they cried tot he Jury of Appeals they get to re-run the entire race with no other teams on the track? I'm going to make a bold guess here and say that, if the (for the sake of argument) Fijian team was in the same position, they'd have been told to piss off and stop complaining.
They've claimed that one of them was bumped just before the switch-over and the Brazilians have been disqualified. I assume that the same rule will apply to Jack Burnell then, as he was pulled back and the guy that did it was caught at the time. The result? Burnell was booted out for pushing him off.
Except what the footage shows is the next runner went too early, so the one with the baton responded in the most sporting manner possible: throwing the baton in a huff. All the talk of being "nudged" is pure fiction. That's nearly as bad as The IOC sticking to their stance of not making political statements at the Games...by sending home the Egyptian judoist who refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent.
The Brazilian runner did swing her arm into the other lane, but I'm not sure how relevant it was. Where did the hosts finish, anyway? I suspect that they were disqualified when they were already out. Sending an Olympian home for failing to act in a sportsmanlike fashion isn't a political statement. The Egyptian was actually making one, though.
I'm very uncomfortable about the US relay runners getting a second chance and agree with what has been said here. I'm sure other teams have failed in such appeals (or not even bothered to make them), and it does seem favouritism simply because it was the US who were the (alleged) victims. However I don't have a memory of incidents like this in the past, though surely the BBC can come up with evidence if they were minded to.
I'm just going to test out my clickbait skills on here, in case I fancy becoming a modern sports journalist. Champion British Olympian repeatedly kicks woman in head! http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/37127353
Meh. I can get both the front and back page sheeple demographic of all political leanings with : British Olympian repeatedly kicked Spaniard in the head in post-Brexit fight !!!
