Just having a watch of the repeat of the Men's Beach Volleyball Final, Italy v Brazil, and I can't turn off the bloody commentators because I want some crowd noise. Or at least I want the American, with her clichéd comments, to be quiet. It started to annoy me from the first.
Iran's Kimia Alizadeh Zenoorin has won the bronze medal in the -57kg class of taekwondo competitions at the Rio 2016 Olympics, becoming the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal. The 18-year-old Iranian athlete beat Nikita Glasnovic of Sweden 5-1 on Thursday after winning her repechage match with Thailand’s Phannapa Harnsujin 14-10. Every event operates under its own rules in Rio. In boxing, both losing semi-finalists gets bronzes, but obviously taekwondo operates under different rules.
There was a repechage, which is a bit confusing, basically she had to fight another loser from an earlier round in the bronze medal match and lost.
I note there are canoe races sitting down and on one knee....the obvious progression is punting. We'd do well at standing up and describing the passing scenery....though Venetians might give us a run for our money.
Lutalo Muhammad goes through in 80 kg taekwondo. In fact the match was stopped early as he went 14 points ahead. Interestingly he could come up against ex-Brit Aaron Cook now representing Moldova. I had forgotten all about that controversy as Aaron was World Champion when Muhammad was selected ahead of him in 2012. I understand why he has gone to Moldova....very tough to miss a 2nd Olympics because you are in a sport where only one can enter per country. Long way to go, but could be interesting.
Just listened to the inspiring and shocking story of Jesse Owens. His victory was never acknowledged by the President at the time and he only received a government medal 4 years before he died. Had a tickertape parade in New York before a meal at the Astoria, but he was unable to go through the front entrance because of his colour. A thing I didn't know was that a German long jumper helped him with his run up and remained a friend until he was killed in WWII.
He was called Luz Long, he wrote to Owens during the war until he died. His son Karl was Jesse Owens' best man. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2016/08/tell-him-about-his-father.html
Wow. That last letter that Luz Long writes to Jesse Owens is incredibly powerful. It should be much more widely referred to.
Very similar to Muhammad Ali's (then Cassius Clay) experience when he returned from Rome as Olympic Heavyweight champion in 1960, only to be refused service in a whites-only restaurant in Louisville.
May struggle to remain above the Chinese....so close. The rules are that if we finish just above China, it is a very important thing. If we finish just below China, it doesn't matter at all as it was so close.
Aha....repechage in taekwondo explained. I you lose to a finalist, you go into a repechage. So Aaron will get another chance only if the unfancied Taipei player makes the final.
Gracenote Sports, who produced a Virtual Medal Table before the Olympics began, predicted GB to get 56 medals, including 18 Golds, and finish behind China. They then predicted that GB would overtake China but be re-overtaken by China at the end of the Olympics, but now they are saying that China won't do it. The latest prediction is that GB will stay in 2nd place with 25 Golds, the same as China, but with a superior Silver count. In January, UK Sport's performance director Simon Timson said the best medal tally GB could hope for "if all stars align and things go perfectly" was 79. The 'plucky trier' tag for GB Olympic sports is well and truly buried. What has actually impinged upon me once again, throughout these Olympics, is how badly professional footballers stack up against Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Happened to me after London 2012 and it took a long while for the feeling to ebb away.
Never has a truer word been spoken. I mean, look at the two 'most professional' GB athletes (as in they earn more than enough money from their own sports outside of the Olympics) that went to Rio, Justin Rose and Andy Murray, and how much they really wanted to win the gold medal. If a GB football team full of professional players had gone they wouldn't have given a s**t whether they came first, third or last.....!!
You're not wrong, but I think part of that is the priorities of football, at least here in the UK. In most sports being selected to represent your country is a great honour, you give it your all, and it's a step up since you've played so well for your club. In football, clubs and fans seem to find anything international to be an endless chore. "Oh, our best player got selected? Nah, we need him here and if he goes he'll just get injured!" It's this mentality that club is more important than country in football that is unusual in most other sports that I see. On another note: As I've said on here before, I like the blind football in the Paralympics. The best bit is that somehow the players spend less time on the floor than Premier League players, despite running blindly at a ball and thus into other players/sideboards etc. They just get on with it, they don't drop to the floor whenever there's contact in the hope of a penalty.
Absolutely. As I said the other day, the cumulative progress made by GB in the last 3 Olympics across the whole range of sports shows how effective the Lottery funding has been. When athletes can concentrate full time on their sports and get the benefit of top-class coaching and facilities the sky is the limit. And none of them get in a year anything like what a PL footballer gets in a week!
