Paul Waugh I understand that the Welsh govt will agree to similar arrangements because of its open border with England, while expressing deep regret at the UK Govt decision.
Judging by the huge number of holidaymakers here in North Wales it will make no difference, and each and every one is welcome to visit our beautiful, North Wales which today has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage for its slate landscapes
I think an additional problem for the BBC with their coverage is that normally they can fill time with beautiful outside VT of the host city and packages of what a certain country is like. Given how different Japan is culturally to Europe, they could have easily filled hours of time with reports about unique aspects of Japanese life.
Instead this time it is just 2-3 people filling dead time in a studio.
"filling dead time in a studio"
@turbotubbs thinks every minute they should be showing live sport. It's what he paid his license fee for.
I'm with turbotubbs here. The BBC - and the highlights programme with Clare Balding in particular - sees sport as a human interest/reality program. Oh, the inanity! They have no faith that people wathcing can be interested in sport for its own sake. Always the interview with the family, always 'look at the emotion', always 'how proud are you?' (one of my particular bugbears - what are they expecting the answer to be, apart from 'very'?) They treat it like the X Factor. Clare Balding used to be quite good when all she had to do was enthuse about horses. It's the Olympics. Just show some sport! It's really easy telly to make. I don't mid a bit of human interest, but the BBC highlights programme is about 70% human interest to 30% actual sport. They've got the balance way off.
Hazel Irvine, on the other hand, remains a class act.
I think the balance, as you put it, is key. Some of the very human stories on top of or along the sporting accomplishments is great, look at the waxing lyrical on here about Daley and his personal story on top of his success, but the balance must be right.
And it seems only fair to the competitors, for many of whom it is the most attention they will ever get in their sport, to err on the side of talking about the events as much as possible, with some side stuff.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
In what way is dressage not a sport? Both horse and rider have to be fit and skilled, and must communicate well together, and must attain objectives defined by strict rules of the sport. How is that different than, say, football.
Personally, I find dressage boring. But just because you, AlistairM, don't understand the sport, does not mean that it is not a sport.
An Olympic sport should not be so heavily reliant on the performance of an animal. The Olympics is meant to be about the best of human sporting performance, not horses.
If dressage is in the Olympics then why shouldn't horse racing be?
I think Modern Pentathlon has a riding element: jumping I think, so timed?
With randomly allocated horses so an element of luck but also rider skill and not subject to quite as much suggestion of buying the win.
But if you get the wrong horse a strong medal candidate might not be able to finish in the top 20 even if they perform their best. Hard to train for 4 years and stay motivated when so much luck of the draw.
I cannot believe the difference in horse's ability is so marked. They must surely be given horses of a similar disposition/ability, etc?
I think it's mainly about the rider. Eg, Lucinda Prior Palmer won Badminton 6 times on 6 different horses. What's the common link there? It's Lucinda Prior Palmer.
Not relevant to the discussion but thanks for the info.
Very relevant. David Broome, Harvey Smith, the aforesaid Lucinda Prior Palmer, these were top top riders who won things because of their horsemanship not because of what horse they were on. Ditto for these Olympics equestrian events. It's not about the horse, it's about who's on the horse.
Paul Waugh I understand that the Welsh govt will agree to similar arrangements because of its open border with England, while expressing deep regret at the UK Govt decision.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I think I disagree with that. Although of the three disciplines, I'd argue swimming requires much more technique to go fast than running and cycling.
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
As far as I'm concerned, horse dancing is THE Olympic sport. The only one worth watching. Charlotte DuJardin is a legend. As is Carl Hester.
So there!
I support any sport conducted in traditional Olympic style, that is, in the nude. Otherwise it doesnt count.
I guess the horses pass on that count? Do we actually need the riders? To be honest, I'd be more impressed if the horses learned their own routines without any human intervention in the final performance.
Question - do the Team GB horses have to be 'British' as such? Or is it like the cycling where, presumably, it's fine for Team GB to use, e.g., a German made bike?
Nope, applies to the horses too.
Er, how does one define a Team GB horse? Birth, or residence, or what? Not as if it can have a passport to wave in its hoof.
Yes. Horses, ponies, donkeys, mules and zebras must have an equine passport, even if they never leave their field.
I stand corrected, thank you.
But that's more of a tracing scheme for future Shergarburgers (or not as the case may be). Doesn't define the horse as being e.g. English except by residence. So what do they do in the OLympics?
The nationality of the Owner of a Horse competing at the Olympic Games must be the same as the nationality of the Athlete riding the Horse. Only Horses owned by Owner(s) having the same nationality of the Athlete (i.e. not leased horses) can participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Owner of the Horse and its nationality must be entered in the FEI Database by 15 January 2021.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
I agree with this. Sports should be measured, not judged. Whilst I enjoy watching the Olympics it has become a bit of a carnival with the plethora of ridiculous "sports".
If you really must have skateboarding in the Olympics then design a course and have who can complete it in the quickest time. Or measure who can jump the furthest off a ramp after a set downhill (like ski jumping).
For swimming let the swimmers keep their World Championships with all the crazy medley combinations. For the Olympics make it freestyle-only.
I also don't want fighting "sports" as we should have evolved beyond that. If you want to keep something like boxing then have a device to measure who can punch the hardest but get rid of the weight categories. They don't have weight categories for running or else I might be in with a chance of an Olympic medal.
Finally, get rid of any sports that involve using an animal.
Olympics would no longer be a carnival but a true measure of human athletic performance.
I mean if hurling is a (winter) Olympic sport then why not skateboarding or horse dancing in the summer Olympiad?
Luckily hurling isn't an Olympic sport at all as there'd only be 1 entrant.
Fecking autocorrect, I meant curling.
Because curling is a proper sport where the outcome can be measured objectively.
It is basically a sport based on Scottish people moving their rubbish bin lids with their brushes.
No, no, you are missing the point completely. Have a closer look at it. And consider whether it is a coincidence that the Scot Clerk Maxwell wrote of the curl operator.
I think an additional problem for the BBC with their coverage is that normally they can fill time with beautiful outside VT of the host city and packages of what a certain country is like. Given how different Japan is culturally to Europe, they could have easily filled hours of time with reports about unique aspects of Japanese life.
Instead this time it is just 2-3 people filling dead time in a studio.
"filling dead time in a studio"
@turbotubbs thinks every minute they should be showing live sport. It's what he paid his license fee for.
I'm with turbotubbs here. The BBC - and the highlights programme with Clare Balding in particular - sees sport as a human interest/reality program. Oh, the inanity! They have no faith that people wathcing can be interested in sport for its own sake. Always the interview with the family, always 'look at the emotion', always 'how proud are you?' (one of my particular bugbears - what are they expecting the answer to be, apart from 'very'?) They treat it like the X Factor. Clare Balding used to be quite good when all she had to do was enthuse about horses. It's the Olympics. Just show some sport! It's really easy telly to make. I don't mid a bit of human interest, but the BBC highlights programme is about 70% human interest to 30% actual sport. They've got the balance way off.
Hazel Irvine, on the other hand, remains a class act.
I think the balance, as you put it, is key. Some of the very human stories on top of or along the sporting accomplishments is great, look at the waxing lyrical on here about Daley and his personal story on top of his success, but the balance must be right.
And it seems only fair to the competitors, for many of whom it is the most attention they will ever get in their sport, to err on the side of talking about the events as much as possible, with some side stuff.
Daley's HI story is fine to have a bit of time on because it ended with him getting a gold medal at his fourth olympics. He's also British. Biles has already won plenty of medals, and it's a USA story really.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
In what way is dressage not a sport? Both horse and rider have to be fit and skilled, and must communicate well together, and must attain objectives defined by strict rules of the sport. How is that different than, say, football.
Personally, I find dressage boring. But just because you, AlistairM, don't understand the sport, does not mean that it is not a sport.
An Olympic sport should not be so heavily reliant on the performance of an animal. The Olympics is meant to be about the best of human sporting performance, not horses.
If dressage is in the Olympics then why shouldn't horse racing be?
I think Modern Pentathlon has a riding element: jumping I think, so timed?
With randomly allocated horses so an element of luck but also rider skill and not subject to quite as much suggestion of buying the win.
But if you get the wrong horse a strong medal candidate might not be able to finish in the top 20 even if they perform their best. Hard to train for 4 years and stay motivated when so much luck of the draw.
I cannot believe the difference in horse's ability is so marked. They must surely be given horses of a similar disposition/ability, etc?
I think it's mainly about the rider. Eg, Lucinda Prior Palmer won Badminton 6 times on 6 different horses. What's the common link there? It's Lucinda Prior Palmer.
She bought all the best horses?
I would like to see the clip of La Prior-Palmer being shrugged by her horse into the same lake twice, if it resurfaces.
As far as I'm concerned, horse dancing is THE Olympic sport. The only one worth watching. Charlotte DuJardin is a legend. As is Carl Hester.
So there!
I support any sport conducted in traditional Olympic style, that is, in the nude. Otherwise it doesnt count.
I guess the horses pass on that count? Do we actually need the riders? To be honest, I'd be more impressed if the horses learned their own routines without any human intervention in the final performance.
Question - do the Team GB horses have to be 'British' as such? Or is it like the cycling where, presumably, it's fine for Team GB to use, e.g., a German made bike?
Nope, applies to the horses too.
Er, how does one define a Team GB horse? Birth, or residence, or what? Not as if it can have a passport to wave in its hoof.
Yes. Horses, ponies, donkeys, mules and zebras must have an equine passport, even if they never leave their field.
I stand corrected, thank you.
But that's more of a tracing scheme for future Shergarburgers (or not as the case may be). Doesn't define the horse as being e.g. English except by residence. So what do they do in the OLympics?
The nationality of the Owner of a Horse competing at the Olympic Games must be the same as the nationality of the Athlete riding the Horse. Only Horses owned by Owner(s) having the same nationality of the Athlete (i.e. not leased horses) can participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Owner of the Horse and its nationality must be entered in the FEI Database by 15 January 2021.
Thank you! So basically if one wanted to use a Japanese horse Ione would get a wealthy compatriot to buy the nag. Simple as that. But clear enough.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
Hmm, I generally agree, but what about things like boxing and taekwondo? Dont multiple judges have to record the scoring hits?
Itd be a shame not to have gymnastics or diving etc, but it can be hard to tell sometimes why one is .x better than another.
I think we'd lose too many.
Boxing and taekwondo rely on 'did x hit y' - unfortunately that is hard to tell in practice sometimes but in principle three perfect judges should judge it the same. If competitors could be wired up a la fencing, you could eliminate the judges (not that I'm saying they should).
Quite happy to lose gymnastics and diving, to be honest. They're the respectable end of a scale which goes down to synchronised swimming and breakdancing.
I find the BBC headline on Biles rather weird...Why 'superhuman' Simone Biles could change attitudes
Isn't the whole issue being that she isn't superhuman, she isn't a robot that can perform perfectly 100 times out of 100 regardless of everything else.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
He can still have a gold medal for being best at something. It just isn't something that I recognise as competitive sport.
Melt down his medal and reshape it into an Oscar, for all I care.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
His Olympic gold, yes. No one is saying to get rid of the non-Olympic diving competitions. It just makes the Olympics about measuring who is the best rather than judging who looks the prettiest.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I think I disagree with that. Although of the three disciplines, I'd argue swimming requires much more technique to go fast than running and cycling.
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
Once.
Some perv came up with a way to watch women cycling and running in swim suits. That's triathlon.
As far as I'm concerned, horse dancing is THE Olympic sport. The only one worth watching. Charlotte DuJardin is a legend. As is Carl Hester.
So there!
I support any sport conducted in traditional Olympic style, that is, in the nude. Otherwise it doesnt count.
I guess the horses pass on that count? Do we actually need the riders? To be honest, I'd be more impressed if the horses learned their own routines without any human intervention in the final performance.
Question - do the Team GB horses have to be 'British' as such? Or is it like the cycling where, presumably, it's fine for Team GB to use, e.g., a German made bike?
Nope, applies to the horses too.
Er, how does one define a Team GB horse? Birth, or residence, or what? Not as if it can have a passport to wave in its hoof.
Yes. Horses, ponies, donkeys, mules and zebras must have an equine passport, even if they never leave their field.
I stand corrected, thank you.
But that's more of a tracing scheme for future Shergarburgers (or not as the case may be). Doesn't define the horse as being e.g. English except by residence. So what do they do in the OLympics?
The nationality of the Owner of a Horse competing at the Olympic Games must be the same as the nationality of the Athlete riding the Horse. Only Horses owned by Owner(s) having the same nationality of the Athlete (i.e. not leased horses) can participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Owner of the Horse and its nationality must be entered in the FEI Database by 15 January 2021.
Thank you! So basically if one wanted to use a Japanese horse Ione would get a wealthy compatriot to buy the nag. Simple as that. But clear enough.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
Paul Waugh I understand that the Welsh govt will agree to similar arrangements because of its open border with England, while expressing deep regret at the UK Govt decision.
This reminds me that the devolution settlement is a hotchpotch.
Although I’m instinctively in favour of more devolution, I do find that the Union seems to have divested itself of various powers (like border control!) that are naturally and rightly held at the national level.
I actually agree with Gove’s thoughts on this - so far as I can divine them - and welcome the undermining of the Sewell Convention.
That article seems to suggest the reason for not accepting the UK application is a pretext, that is, phoney. So it certainly does seem concerning from that piece but there seems nothing that can be done if false reasons are being given for rejection.
Paul Waugh I understand that the Welsh govt will agree to similar arrangements because of its open border with England, while expressing deep regret at the UK Govt decision.
Judging by the huge number of holidaymakers here in North Wales it will make no difference, and each and every one is welcome to visit our beautiful, North Wales which today has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage for its slate landscapes
Congrats. For the UNESCO award. Hope you make a better fist of it than Liverpool managed.
That article seems to suggest the reason for not accepting the UK application is a pretext, that is, phoney. So it certainly does seem concerning from that piece but there seems nothing that can be done if false reasons are being hiven for rejection.
Well we were warned about punishment beatings, weren't we?
Paul Waugh I understand that the Welsh govt will agree to similar arrangements because of its open border with England, while expressing deep regret at the UK Govt decision.
This reminds me that the devolution settlement is a hotchpotch.
Although I’m instinctively in favour of more devolution, I do find that the Union seems to have divested itself of various powers (like border control!) that are naturally and rightly held at the national level.
I actually agree with Gove’s thoughts on this - so far as I can divine them - and welcome the undermining of the Sewell Convention.
Er, border controls are held at the UK level, so UK incompetence or otherwise is not an argument per se for or against devolution. It's travel within each nation that is controlled at the devolved level (and, of course, for England, by the same lot as for the UK).
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
His Olympic gold, yes. No one is saying to get rid of the non-Olympic diving competitions. It just makes the Olympics about measuring who is the best rather than judging who looks the prettiest.
Perhaps we need to train an AI to do the judging...
I think an additional problem for the BBC with their coverage is that normally they can fill time with beautiful outside VT of the host city and packages of what a certain country is like. Given how different Japan is culturally to Europe, they could have easily filled hours of time with reports about unique aspects of Japanese life.
Instead this time it is just 2-3 people filling dead time in a studio.
"filling dead time in a studio"
@turbotubbs thinks every minute they should be showing live sport. It's what he paid his license fee for.
I'm with turbotubbs here. The BBC - and the highlights programme with Clare Balding in particular - sees sport as a human interest/reality program. Oh, the inanity! They have no faith that people wathcing can be interested in sport for its own sake. Always the interview with the family, always 'look at the emotion', always 'how proud are you?' (one of my particular bugbears - what are they expecting the answer to be, apart from 'very'?) They treat it like the X Factor. Clare Balding used to be quite good when all she had to do was enthuse about horses. It's the Olympics. Just show some sport! It's really easy telly to make. I don't mid a bit of human interest, but the BBC highlights programme is about 70% human interest to 30% actual sport. They've got the balance way off.
Hazel Irvine, on the other hand, remains a class act.
You're on the wrong end of this one. Simone Biles is a super high profile athlete and she, for whatever reason, has had mental health problems culminating in her withdrawal from the Olympics.
It is entirely right and proper that the BBC should spend time examining why this should be and to support the decision so as to encourage others who might look at Biles and gain some inspiration for their own challenges, whether they are Olympic athletes or shelf stackers at Aldi (@TSE trigger warning).
To sweep it under the carpet when it is an element of the whole process of Olympic sports is just the same as ignoring the legions of PTSD sufferers after our escapades in Iraq and Afghan.
Or indeed those suffering from the effects of the past 18 months.
We have seen on PB already that plenty of posters have "failed" the "stiff upper lip" test and it is entirely right and proper that people should be understood and supported when they have the courage to discuss such feelings. And also that in the case of high profile "celebrities" or role models, that such examples should be used pour encourager les autres.
That article seems to suggest the reason for not accepting the UK application is a pretext, that is, phoney. So it certainly does seem concerning from that piece but there seems nothing that can be done if false reasons are being hiven for rejection.
Well we were warned about punishment beatings, weren't we?
Crown green bowls is a completely objective sport but I'm not sure it should be in the olympics ahead of the rings in the gymnastics.
Or darts. Instead of watching obsessional types poncing around, pushing the outer limits of what the human body can do, we could be seeing the likes of Peter "snakebite" Wright slamming the 180s and then finishing on double top like a dead eyed assassin.
As far as I'm concerned, horse dancing is THE Olympic sport. The only one worth watching. Charlotte DuJardin is a legend. As is Carl Hester.
So there!
I support any sport conducted in traditional Olympic style, that is, in the nude. Otherwise it doesnt count.
I guess the horses pass on that count? Do we actually need the riders? To be honest, I'd be more impressed if the horses learned their own routines without any human intervention in the final performance.
Question - do the Team GB horses have to be 'British' as such? Or is it like the cycling where, presumably, it's fine for Team GB to use, e.g., a German made bike?
Nope, applies to the horses too.
Er, how does one define a Team GB horse? Birth, or residence, or what? Not as if it can have a passport to wave in its hoof.
Yes. Horses, ponies, donkeys, mules and zebras must have an equine passport, even if they never leave their field.
I stand corrected, thank you.
But that's more of a tracing scheme for future Shergarburgers (or not as the case may be). Doesn't define the horse as being e.g. English except by residence. So what do they do in the OLympics?
The nationality of the Owner of a Horse competing at the Olympic Games must be the same as the nationality of the Athlete riding the Horse. Only Horses owned by Owner(s) having the same nationality of the Athlete (i.e. not leased horses) can participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Owner of the Horse and its nationality must be entered in the FEI Database by 15 January 2021.
Thank you! So basically if one wanted to use a Japanese horse Ione would get a wealthy compatriot to buy the nag. Simple as that. But clear enough.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
In Modern Pentathlon the competitors ride horses they don't know. The horses are drawn at random.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
It doesn't make it a sport just because a British person is good at it either! Otherwise we'd be able to include queueing and self-loathing.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I think I disagree with that. Although of the three disciplines, I'd argue swimming requires much more technique to go fast than running and cycling.
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
Once.
Some perv came up with a way to watch women cycling and running in swim suits. That's triathlon.
Crown green bowls is a completely objective sport but I'm not sure it should be in the olympics ahead of the rings in the gymnastics.
Or darts. Instead of watching obsessional types poncing around and pushing the outer limits of what the human body can do we could be seeing the likes of Peter "snakebite" Wright slamming the 180s and then finishing on double top like a dead eyed assassin.
I've never really taken to snooker or darts as they are pub games.
Have to admire the mathematical abilities of snooker and darts players though.
Never seen them screw up a finish like say South Africa in 2003.
Diving judging is very objective I think (Or should be)
i. Were the divers synchronised. ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed iv. Was the water entered vertically. v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
Paul Waugh I understand that the Welsh govt will agree to similar arrangements because of its open border with England, while expressing deep regret at the UK Govt decision.
This reminds me that the devolution settlement is a hotchpotch.
Although I’m instinctively in favour of more devolution, I do find that the Union seems to have divested itself of various powers (like border control!) that are naturally and rightly held at the national level.
I actually agree with Gove’s thoughts on this - so far as I can divine them - and welcome the undermining of the Sewell Convention.
Er, border controls are held at the UK level, so UK incompetence or otherwise is not an argument per se for or against devolution. It's travel within each nation that is controlled at the devolved level (and, of course, for England, by the same lot as for the UK).
Yes you’re right.
But “travel within” amounts to a kind of border control. And it is daft to have this devolved in my view.
As far as I'm concerned, horse dancing is THE Olympic sport. The only one worth watching. Charlotte DuJardin is a legend. As is Carl Hester.
So there!
I support any sport conducted in traditional Olympic style, that is, in the nude. Otherwise it doesnt count.
I guess the horses pass on that count? Do we actually need the riders? To be honest, I'd be more impressed if the horses learned their own routines without any human intervention in the final performance.
Question - do the Team GB horses have to be 'British' as such? Or is it like the cycling where, presumably, it's fine for Team GB to use, e.g., a German made bike?
Nope, applies to the horses too.
Er, how does one define a Team GB horse? Birth, or residence, or what? Not as if it can have a passport to wave in its hoof.
Yes. Horses, ponies, donkeys, mules and zebras must have an equine passport, even if they never leave their field.
I stand corrected, thank you.
But that's more of a tracing scheme for future Shergarburgers (or not as the case may be). Doesn't define the horse as being e.g. English except by residence. So what do they do in the OLympics?
The nationality of the Owner of a Horse competing at the Olympic Games must be the same as the nationality of the Athlete riding the Horse. Only Horses owned by Owner(s) having the same nationality of the Athlete (i.e. not leased horses) can participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Owner of the Horse and its nationality must be entered in the FEI Database by 15 January 2021.
Thank you! So basically if one wanted to use a Japanese horse Ione would get a wealthy compatriot to buy the nag. Simple as that. But clear enough.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
In Modern Pentathlon the competitors ride horses they don't know. The horses are drawn at random.
I have no clue how someone can spend 4 years training for an Olympic event knowing that an (un)lucky dip selection of a horse will cock it all up for you. It's one thing to lose because you made a mistake, quite another because you get given a horse which refuses to jump.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I think I disagree with that. Although of the three disciplines, I'd argue swimming requires much more technique to go fast than running and cycling.
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
Once.
Some perv came up with a way to watch women cycling and running in swim suits. That's triathlon.
He's an amateur compared to the genius behind beach handball and volleyball, although that guy seems to have finally been rumbled. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57940896
So pleased to see Primož Roglič winning gold in the ITT. That solidifies the European Union lead in the medal tallies.
Sorry? The highest EU team is France, who are 8th.
Huh? The EU has won 63 medals so far, including 16 golds, easily beating China, Japan, England etc.
Wait - are we saying that the EU should be treated as a single entity that's allowed to enter 27 separate teams into every event? Hardly a level playing field. Should the US be allowed to enter 50 teams (one for each state)? Or at least 27 teams to be fair. The UK as well? Should every country be allowed 27 entries?
Wait till you see how many teams 'Oxford' and 'Cambridge' are allowed to enter into University Challenge!
I reckon Oxford or Cambridge would win Uni Challenge every year if they entered single teams.
Ah, so it's to give the thickos a chance! Dashed sporting of them..
Which one rejected you out of interest?
Oxbridge art schools weren’t much cop when I were a lad.
It was possible to mix art and Oxbridge. Anthony Blunt proved that.
Eh? He was a mathematician turned modern linguist.
Diving judging is very objective I think (Or should be)
i. Were the divers synchronised. ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed iv. Was the water entered vertically. v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
My understanding is that each possible dive also have a predefined difficulty multiplier, which is crucial to the overall potential score.
So again, before you attempt a dive, everybody knows what that this, rather than some dodgy judge saying well Tom's dive wasn't as hard as the Chinese divers one so lower points after the fact.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
In what way is dressage not a sport? Both horse and rider have to be fit and skilled, and must communicate well together, and must attain objectives defined by strict rules of the sport. How is that different than, say, football.
Personally, I find dressage boring. But just because you, AlistairM, don't understand the sport, does not mean that it is not a sport.
An Olympic sport should not be so heavily reliant on the performance of an animal. The Olympics is meant to be about the best of human sporting performance, not horses.
If dressage is in the Olympics then why shouldn't horse racing be?
I think Modern Pentathlon has a riding element: jumping I think, so timed?
With randomly allocated horses so an element of luck but also rider skill and not subject to quite as much suggestion of buying the win.
But if you get the wrong horse a strong medal candidate might not be able to finish in the top 20 even if they perform their best. Hard to train for 4 years and stay motivated when so much luck of the draw.
I cannot believe the difference in horse's ability is so marked. They must surely be given horses of a similar disposition/ability, etc?
I think it's mainly about the rider. Eg, Lucinda Prior Palmer won Badminton 6 times on 6 different horses. What's the common link there? It's Lucinda Prior Palmer.
Not relevant to the discussion but thanks for the info.
Very relevant. David Broome, Harvey Smith, the aforesaid Lucinda Prior Palmer, these were top top riders who won things because of their horsemanship not because of what horse they were on. Ditto for these Olympics equestrian events. It's not about the horse, it's about who's on the horse.
Diving judging is very objective I think (Or should be)
i. Were the divers synchronised. ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed iv. Was the water entered vertically. v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
Portugal must be gutted that Manchester United blocked Bruno Fernandes from entering this year's olympic diving competitions.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
Of course you can - therein lies the test of skill.
You might be able to do it in showjumping and even x-country with the right horse (Could be a bit dangerous with the wrong one) but no chance in the dressage I think.
That article seems to suggest the reason for not accepting the UK application is a pretext, that is, phoney. So it certainly does seem concerning from that piece but there seems nothing that can be done if false reasons are being given for rejection.
As far as I can tell from reading Twitter (I know), this is the EU being spiteful in a way that hurts both U.K. and EU citizens.
There is some modest collateral damage to the U.K. legal industry.
I presume this is being done in retribution for the U.K. fucking about with our international treaty making.
Why is the bbc going mad about Simone biles? I couldn’t give a stuff. Concentrate on our athletes please.
Seriously? She is a young person, perhaps a role model, affected by mental health.
These past 18 months have been hugely injurious to the mental wellbeing of in particular young people and children.
If some of them think - well she is talking about it so can I then it will be fantastic; if they see the sympathetic coverage and think I won't be ridiculed if I share my problems then that will be amazing; if they realise that it is widespread and hence they are not suffering on their own, that will be hugely beneficial.
Other than that, no idea.
I have sympathy for her but don’t need the bbc endlessly going on about when actual sport is happening.
Sounds like the BBC has restricted access to the actual sport - surely they are not discussing her when they should be showing live coverage of the dressage.
If not and your question is why not talk to competing athletes instead of about her then now is the time when anyone gives a damn about it so makes sense to discuss it now.
No - I wanted them to be showing live sport. They were wittering about her when a simple ‘she has withdrawn’ would have sufficed. There is little enough coverage on bbc, and I understand their limitations, so why waste air time on this?
Plenty of time for all of it. As for "wittering" about her, as mentioned, it is important for many reasons some of which I articulated earlier that they should spend more time explaining the context.
I find the BBC headline on Biles rather weird...Why 'superhuman' Simone Biles could change attitudes
Isn't the whole issue being that she isn't superhuman, she isn't a robot that can perform perfectly 100 times out of 100 regardless of everything else.
Yes, it's part of the celebration of mental health discussion that seems counterproductive and unhealthy.
In this, she's not special, and that's the positive point about it.
Reminds me of a gag from Rio where an opening speech was saying it was showing we are all equal, when in fact the Olympics is about showing people are not equal and literally making the better athlete stand higher, less equally, than others.
Sheffield Forgemasters nationalised after £2.6m takeover by MoD
Potentially interesting ideological shift at play here? Among the Tories' first acts after taking power in 2010 was to scrap an £80m loan to Forgemasters, which Labour had approved.
Diving judging is very objective I think (Or should be)
i. Were the divers synchronised. ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed iv. Was the water entered vertically. v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
My understanding is that each possible dive also have a predefined difficulty multiplier, which is crucial to the overall potential score.
So again, before you attempt a dive, everybody knows what that this, rather than some dodgy judge saying well Tom's dive wasn't as hard as the Chinese divers one so lower points after the fact.
Yes, it's one of the more simple subjective sports. Taekwondo otoh even though it's supposed to be completely objective looked a bit random as to when points were won...
In fact boxing switched from an objective (Punch count) to a subjective scoring system (10 pt must) and it's much improved for it.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I think I disagree with that. Although of the three disciplines, I'd argue swimming requires much more technique to go fast than running and cycling.
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
Once.
Some perv came up with a way to watch women cycling and running in swim suits. That's triathlon.
If I were attracted to blokes, I would be glued to the Men's "synchro". Bleedin' heck all those abs and whatnot and teeny tiny trunks.
Crown green bowls is a completely objective sport but I'm not sure it should be in the olympics ahead of the rings in the gymnastics.
Or darts. Instead of watching obsessional types poncing around, pushing the outer limits of what the human body can do, we could be seeing the likes of Peter "snakebite" Wright slamming the 180s and then finishing on double top like a dead eyed assassin.
In the list of events and potential events from 'clearly a sport' to 'not a sport', darts, snooker and crown green bowls all rank higher than gymnatsics or diving.
I'd definitely rather have olympic darts than olympic gymnastics or diving. Snooker probably takes too long to be practical though - need some shortened form a la rugby 7s. Crown green bowls can go in, but only as a blow for regional pride over flat green bowls (both of which are effectively summer curling).
Sheffield Forgemasters nationalised after £2.6m takeover by MoD
Potentially interesting ideological shift at play here? Among the Tories' first acts after taking power in 2010 was to scrap an £80m loan to Forgemasters, which Labour had approved.
So pleased to see Primož Roglič winning gold in the ITT. That solidifies the European Union lead in the medal tallies.
Sorry? The highest EU team is France, who are 8th.
Huh? The EU has won 63 medals so far, including 16 golds, easily beating China, Japan, England etc.
Wait - are we saying that the EU should be treated as a single entity that's allowed to enter 27 separate teams into every event? Hardly a level playing field. Should the US be allowed to enter 50 teams (one for each state)? Or at least 27 teams to be fair. The UK as well? Should every country be allowed 27 entries?
Wait till you see how many teams 'Oxford' and 'Cambridge' are allowed to enter into University Challenge!
I reckon Oxford or Cambridge would win Uni Challenge every year if they entered single teams.
Ah, so it's to give the thickos a chance! Dashed sporting of them..
Which one rejected you out of interest?
Oxbridge art schools weren’t much cop when I were a lad.
It was possible to mix art and Oxbridge. Anthony Blunt proved that.
Eh? He was a mathematician turned modern linguist.
Yes. But then into Fine Art, starting there.
But no different from any other sideline. He could have ended up doing drama or tortoise racing or whatever for a living, but the basis of his official studies and presence was not art. There was no art school (and Blunt was a historian of art AFAIK).
Crown green bowls is a completely objective sport but I'm not sure it should be in the olympics ahead of the rings in the gymnastics.
Or darts. Instead of watching obsessional types poncing around and pushing the outer limits of what the human body can do we could be seeing the likes of Peter "snakebite" Wright slamming the 180s and then finishing on double top like a dead eyed assassin.
I've never really taken to snooker or darts as they are pub games.
Have to admire the mathematical abilities of snooker and darts players though.
Never seen them screw up a finish like say South Africa in 2003.
I'm no better than average at snooker and pool, but find them good fun to play. Snooker is more a club game, pool the pub game.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
He can still have a gold medal for being best at something. It just isn't something that I recognise as competitive sport.
Melt down his medal and reshape it into an Oscar, for all I care.
If you're into the diving you can tell who's good and who isn't. Eg Tom and partner's final dive, obvious it was going to get a massive score. Perfectly in synch (the two became one), vertical entry, no splash.
Sheffield Forgemasters nationalised after £2.6m takeover by MoD
Potentially interesting ideological shift at play here? Among the Tories' first acts after taking power in 2010 was to scrap an £80m loan to Forgemasters, which Labour had approved.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
His Olympic gold, yes. No one is saying to get rid of the non-Olympic diving competitions. It just makes the Olympics about measuring who is the best rather than judging who looks the prettiest.
Perhaps we need to train an AI to do the judging...
I'm 100% certain they are. But who tells it what a good attempt looks like for its training?
As far as I'm concerned, horse dancing is THE Olympic sport. The only one worth watching. Charlotte DuJardin is a legend. As is Carl Hester.
So there!
I support any sport conducted in traditional Olympic style, that is, in the nude. Otherwise it doesnt count.
I guess the horses pass on that count? Do we actually need the riders? To be honest, I'd be more impressed if the horses learned their own routines without any human intervention in the final performance.
Question - do the Team GB horses have to be 'British' as such? Or is it like the cycling where, presumably, it's fine for Team GB to use, e.g., a German made bike?
Nope, applies to the horses too.
Er, how does one define a Team GB horse? Birth, or residence, or what? Not as if it can have a passport to wave in its hoof.
Yes. Horses, ponies, donkeys, mules and zebras must have an equine passport, even if they never leave their field.
I stand corrected, thank you.
But that's more of a tracing scheme for future Shergarburgers (or not as the case may be). Doesn't define the horse as being e.g. English except by residence. So what do they do in the OLympics?
The nationality of the Owner of a Horse competing at the Olympic Games must be the same as the nationality of the Athlete riding the Horse. Only Horses owned by Owner(s) having the same nationality of the Athlete (i.e. not leased horses) can participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Owner of the Horse and its nationality must be entered in the FEI Database by 15 January 2021.
Thank you! So basically if one wanted to use a Japanese horse Ione would get a wealthy compatriot to buy the nag. Simple as that. But clear enough.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
In Modern Pentathlon the competitors ride horses they don't know. The horses are drawn at random.
I have no clue how someone can spend 4 years training for an Olympic event knowing that an (un)lucky dip selection of a horse will cock it all up for you. It's one thing to lose because you made a mistake, quite another because you get given a horse which refuses to jump.
Richard III called, and said he hears the world's smallest violin playing.
Diving judging is very objective I think (Or should be)
i. Were the divers synchronised. ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed iv. Was the water entered vertically. v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
My understanding is that each possible dive also have a predefined difficulty multiplier, which is crucial to the overall potential score.
So again, before you attempt a dive, everybody knows what that this, rather than some dodgy judge saying well Tom's dive wasn't as hard as the Chinese divers one so lower points after the fact.
Yes, it's one of the more simple subjective sports. Taekwondo otoh even though it's supposed to be completely objective looked a bit random as to when points were won...
In fact boxing switched from an objective (Punch count) to a subjective scoring system (10 pt must) and it's much improved for it.
The punch aspect of Taekwondo is definitely odd for the uninitiated. There is a clear 2 points for a kick to a certain area of the body, 3 to the head (and KO if you basically take their head off), but the punching, it seems like you have to convince the judges it was super hard, but in reality it is you have to punch them multiple times super hard before you might get a point.
On another note, has anyone been watching the volleyball? There now seems to be a position of a 'libero' - usually the shortest player in the team - who isn't allowed to spike the ball, or play the ball up for another player to spike. He also has to wear a different kit to everyone else. Smacks of a schoolboy rule for the unpopular kid.
Volleyball is definitely a sport, by the way. Though my wife, in an uncharacterisitc fit of unreasonable anger when watching it, announced that she could never respect a volleyball player, and had she discovered, when we were dating, that I had been a volleyball player she would have called it off then and there.
Sheffield Forgemasters nationalised after £2.6m takeover by MoD
Potentially interesting ideological shift at play here? Among the Tories' first acts after taking power in 2010 was to scrap an £80m loan to Forgemasters, which Labour had approved.
Diving judging is very objective I think (Or should be)
i. Were the divers synchronised. ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed iv. Was the water entered vertically. v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
My understanding is that each possible dive also have a predefined difficulty multiplier, which is crucial to the overall potential score.
So again, before you attempt a dive, everybody knows what that this, rather than some dodgy judge saying well Tom's dive wasn't as hard as the Chinese divers one so lower points after the fact.
Yes, it's one of the more simple subjective sports. Taekwondo otoh even though it's supposed to be completely objective looked a bit random as to when points were won...
In fact boxing switched from an objective (Punch count) to a subjective scoring system (10 pt must) and it's much improved for it.
The punch aspect of Taekwondo is definitely odd for the uninitiated. There is a clear 2 points for a kick to a certain area of the body, 3 to the head (and KO if you basically take their head off), but the punching, it seems like you have to convince the judges it was super hard, but in reality it is you have to punch them multiple times super hard before you might get a point.
Lots of the head kicks end up being well you wouldn't really do much damage with them in an actual fight, more trying to tickle your opponent's sensor with your toes as they lean backwards to avoid giving the points away.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
He can still have a gold medal for being best at something. It just isn't something that I recognise as competitive sport.
Melt down his medal and reshape it into an Oscar, for all I care.
If you're into the diving you can tell who's good and who isn't. Eg Tom and partner's final dive, obvious it was going to get a massive score. Perfectly in synch (the two became one), vertical entry, no splash.
If you're ito Strictly Come Dancing you can tell who's good and who isn't. Doesn't make it a sport though.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
He can still have a gold medal for being best at something. It just isn't something that I recognise as competitive sport.
Melt down his medal and reshape it into an Oscar, for all I care.
If you're into the diving you can tell who's good and who isn't. Eg Tom and partner's final dive, obvious it was going to get a massive score. Perfectly in synch (the two became one), vertical entry, no splash.
I can also tell who's a good actor and who isn't. I just have no way of knowing who's the best in the world right now, and by how much.
I grant diving is less subjective than acting, and also than many of the more obviously judgment-based Olympic events. But, one has to draw a line somewhere, and it seems to me simplest to draw it between "no subjectivity" and "some subjectivity".
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
Of course you can - therein lies the test of skill.
You might be able to do it in showjumping and even x-country with the right horse (Could be a bit dangerous with the wrong one) but no chance in the dressage I think.
Hmm I don't know enough about dressage but surely - you tell me - the aids for a flying change are the aids for a flying change, etc? If you had 10 horses which had all been schooled in dressage to the same degree...then it would be an interesting test of the jockey.
And again hence my thinking that the horses for the MP must all be of a similar ability.
Because you couldn't have a horse that was not schooled in dressage competing in the dressage and for the MP all the horses must be able to jump round a showjumping course and then it's up to the jockey to get the best out of them.
I find the BBC headline on Biles rather weird...Why 'superhuman' Simone Biles could change attitudes
Isn't the whole issue being that she isn't superhuman, she isn't a robot that can perform perfectly 100 times out of 100 regardless of everything else.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I think I disagree with that. Although of the three disciplines, I'd argue swimming requires much more technique to go fast than running and cycling.
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
Once.
Some perv came up with a way to watch women cycling and running in swim suits. That's triathlon.
If I were attracted to blokes, I would be glued to the Men's "synchro". Bleedin' heck all those abs and whatnot and teeny tiny trunks.
Ooh-er.
Speaking as one who is I prefer more clothes and more imagination..
Paul Waugh I understand that the Welsh govt will agree to similar arrangements because of its open border with England, while expressing deep regret at the UK Govt decision.
This reminds me that the devolution settlement is a hotchpotch.
Although I’m instinctively in favour of more devolution, I do find that the Union seems to have divested itself of various powers (like border control!) that are naturally and rightly held at the national level.
I actually agree with Gove’s thoughts on this - so far as I can divine them - and welcome the undermining of the Sewell Convention.
Er, border controls are held at the UK level, so UK incompetence or otherwise is not an argument per se for or against devolution. It's travel within each nation that is controlled at the devolved level (and, of course, for England, by the same lot as for the UK).
Yes you’re right.
But “travel within” amounts to a kind of border control. And it is daft to have this devolved in my view.
That's certainly a mathematically novel defintion of border. And control of travel is an integral part of covid restrictions anyway.
Crown green bowls is a completely objective sport but I'm not sure it should be in the olympics ahead of the rings in the gymnastics.
Or darts. Instead of watching obsessional types poncing around, pushing the outer limits of what the human body can do, we could be seeing the likes of Peter "snakebite" Wright slamming the 180s and then finishing on double top like a dead eyed assassin.
In the list of events and potential events from 'clearly a sport' to 'not a sport', darts, snooker and crown green bowls all rank higher than gymnatsics or diving.
I'd definitely rather have olympic darts than olympic gymnastics or diving. Snooker probably takes too long to be practical though - need some shortened form a la rugby 7s. Crown green bowls can go in, but only as a blow for regional pride over flat green bowls (both of which are effectively summer curling).
Snooker doesn't take that long. The WC lasts as long as the Olympics. Plenty of tournaments are played over a few days.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
Of course you can - therein lies the test of skill.
You might be able to do it in showjumping and even x-country with the right horse (Could be a bit dangerous with the wrong one) but no chance in the dressage I think.
Happens all the time. I know you have a few ponies and not sure what you do with them but I assure you people jump onto horses they don't know and sail round the countryside or over some coloured poles all the time.
Crown green bowls is a completely objective sport but I'm not sure it should be in the olympics ahead of the rings in the gymnastics.
Or darts. Instead of watching obsessional types poncing around and pushing the outer limits of what the human body can do we could be seeing the likes of Peter "snakebite" Wright slamming the 180s and then finishing on double top like a dead eyed assassin.
I've never really taken to snooker or darts as they are pub games.
Have to admire the mathematical abilities of snooker and darts players though.
Never seen them screw up a finish like say South Africa in 2003.
Yes, they are played in pubs. I'm happy to call them sports - and indeed I'm a fan of both - but I don't think they're a fit for the Olympic Games because of that. Same reason I'd oppose the inclusion of dominoes or cribbage.
Diving judging is very objective I think (Or should be)
i. Were the divers synchronised. ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed iv. Was the water entered vertically. v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
My understanding is that each possible dive also have a predefined difficulty multiplier, which is crucial to the overall potential score.
So again, before you attempt a dive, everybody knows what that this, rather than some dodgy judge saying well Tom's dive wasn't as hard as the Chinese divers one so lower points after the fact.
Yes, it's one of the more simple subjective sports. Taekwondo otoh even though it's supposed to be completely objective looked a bit random as to when points were won...
In fact boxing switched from an objective (Punch count) to a subjective scoring system (10 pt must) and it's much improved for it.
The punch aspect of Taekwondo is definitely odd for the uninitiated. There is a clear 2 points for a kick to a certain area of the body, 3 to the head (and KO if you basically take their head off), but the punching, it seems like you have to convince the judges it was super hard, but in reality it is you have to punch them multiple times super hard before you might get a point.
Lots of the head kicks end up being well you wouldn't really do much damage with them in an actual fight, more trying to tickle your opponent's sensor with your toes as they lean backwards to avoid giving the points away.
Maybe they should do it under Kyokushin Karate rules instead. Similar range of strikes allowed (no head punches, head kicks allowed, although I don't think TKD allows knees and thigh kicks), but instead of trying to touch the opponent it's full contact with the win coming from knocking them off their feet.
"With Doctor Who, we don't really have enough – everything on Doctor Who falls to pieces, all of the props fall to pieces and the costumes have to be stuck together with duct tape and velcro and stuff.
"With this, everybody looked as good in real life as they look in the movies. They weren't all just held together with safety pins.
That article seems to suggest the reason for not accepting the UK application is a pretext, that is, phoney. So it certainly does seem concerning from that piece but there seems nothing that can be done if false reasons are being given for rejection.
As far as I can tell from reading Twitter (I know), this is the EU being spiteful in a way that hurts both U.K. and EU citizens.
There is some modest collateral damage to the U.K. legal industry.
I presume this is being done in retribution for the U.K. fucking about with our international treaty making.
Stupidity and spite begets stupidity and spite.
Yes, all it really does is make it more difficult for contracting parties in both territories seek recompense from the other jurisdiction. The exclusion of the UK really helps no one, c'est la vie, this is the relationship the EU wants with the UK. The world will keep turning afterwards and this will turn out to be yet another thing that doesn't drag the UK back into the EU or into some kind of unilateral alignment.
Wrt to banking and finance there is currently a pretty wide ranging review of regulations now that equivalence is off the table. One does wonder whether the EU will regret not working harder to bind the UK to a very narrow lane of similarity on financial regulations by granting conditional equivalence for at least 2-4 years. Having a gigantic competitor with the market makers outside the bloc and outside of the regulatory sphere is not ideal. I fear that this is what they're doing in the legal sector right now and will repeat the mistakes in finance.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
His Olympic gold, yes. No one is saying to get rid of the non-Olympic diving competitions. It just makes the Olympics about measuring who is the best rather than judging who looks the prettiest.
Perhaps we need to train an AI to do the judging...
I'm 100% certain they are. But who tells it what a good attempt looks like for its training?
The human judges, I presume. As long as they aren't judging professional boxing...
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
He can still have a gold medal for being best at something. It just isn't something that I recognise as competitive sport.
Melt down his medal and reshape it into an Oscar, for all I care.
If you're into the diving you can tell who's good and who isn't. Eg Tom and partner's final dive, obvious it was going to get a massive score. Perfectly in synch (the two became one), vertical entry, no splash.
I can also tell who's a good actor and who isn't. I just have no way of knowing who's the best in the world right now, and by how much.
I grant diving is less subjective than acting, and also than many of the more obviously judgment-based Olympic events. But, one has to draw a line somewhere, and it seems to me simplest to draw it between "no subjectivity" and "some subjectivity".
I find the BBC headline on Biles rather weird...Why 'superhuman' Simone Biles could change attitudes
Isn't the whole issue being that she isn't superhuman, she isn't a robot that can perform perfectly 100 times out of 100 regardless of everything else.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I think I disagree with that. Although of the three disciplines, I'd argue swimming requires much more technique to go fast than running and cycling.
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
Once.
Some perv came up with a way to watch women cycling and running in swim suits. That's triathlon.
If I were attracted to blokes, I would be glued to the Men's "synchro". Bleedin' heck all those abs and whatnot and teeny tiny trunks.
Ooh-er.
Speaking as one who is I prefer more clothes and more imagination..
I stand corrected.
I am just amazed at it. It is a source of wonder with the technology these days that they manage to transpose Tom Daley's head onto my body and it looks completely natural.
Crown green bowls is a completely objective sport but I'm not sure it should be in the olympics ahead of the rings in the gymnastics.
Or darts. Instead of watching obsessional types poncing around and pushing the outer limits of what the human body can do we could be seeing the likes of Peter "snakebite" Wright slamming the 180s and then finishing on double top like a dead eyed assassin.
I've never really taken to snooker or darts as they are pub games.
Have to admire the mathematical abilities of snooker and darts players though.
Never seen them screw up a finish like say South Africa in 2003.
Yes, they are played in pubs. I'm happy to call them sports - and indeed I'm a fan of both - but I don't think they're a fit for the Olympic Games because of that. Same reason I'd oppose the inclusion of dominoes or cribbage.
We have heard a lot about how Johnson signed up to the protocol in haste expecting to sort out the problems of how it would work in practice later, but something similar is also true of the EU side. The protocol set out the general principles: that Northern Ireland would simultaneously be an integral part of the UK and also, for the purposes of keeping an open border with the Republic of Ireland, part of the EU single market. That would mean checks on goods going from the rest of the UK to Northern Ireland if they were likely to go on to the republic.
Johnson was guilty of assuming that those checks would be so “light touch” no one would notice them; but the EU was guilty of assuming that they would offer absolute protection to the single market without imposing costs on the people of Northern Ireland.
Sheffield Forgemasters nationalised after £2.6m takeover by MoD
Potentially interesting ideological shift at play here? Among the Tories' first acts after taking power in 2010 was to scrap an £80m loan to Forgemasters, which Labour had approved.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
Of course you can - therein lies the test of skill.
You might be able to do it in showjumping and even x-country with the right horse (Could be a bit dangerous with the wrong one) but no chance in the dressage I think.
Happens all the time. I know you have a few ponies and not sure what you do with them but I assure you people jump onto horses they don't know and sail round the countryside or over some coloured poles all the time.
I'd agree generally but the risk of death for the horse is higher in NH but with cross country it's higher for the rider (Rotational falls) Dressage is unlike cross country, national hunt or showjumping though. It's a more subtle art, needs a connection between horse and rider (There's probably far fewer horses that can do it very well too)
Guardian just ahead of mailonline, depending on how you count it.
Interesting.
"The research by Ofcom, based on audience surveys" - Loads of people don't want to admit to anybody they actually love the sidebar of shame.
There is clearly something not quite right about the survey as "In print, the Guardian and Observer were the fifth most-read papers", but we know from sales figures that isn't true.
Those who monitor traffic to websites, Mail is known to have a huge audience, far bigger than everybody else, hence why they get so much advertising and make decent money.
Dressage should really not be at the Olympics. It is not a sport. Even though we seem to be quite good at it.
Genuine question though. *Why are there separate mens and womens events for it? Does being one gender give a significant advantage? What about the horse's gender? Does a male rider have to compete on a male horse and female riders on female horses? If not, why not?
To my eye it looks like the horse does all the hard work and the rider just sits there. It is like figure skating for horses. **Might as well give Olympic medals for choreography. That would at least be honest.
It is even worse than having all the umpteen different swim medals for swimming with different strokes. Should just be freestyle. ***Otherwise why aren't there skipping, hopping and running backwards competitions on the track?
* There aren't ** The choreography is scored in the individual competition. *** Walking is included in the program of events.
* Good ** Should give the performance medals to the horses then *** Walking shouldn't be an event
Pace Stephen fry, walking is like a competition to see who can whisper the loudest... Had the swimming debate yesterday with the wife. I think it could be restricted to who can go the fastest (which would be freestyle). Always thought it a bit unfair how many medals swimmers can amass. Also think that the distances are odd too. 100 m athletics is very different to 200, 400, 800 and 1500. Are the equivalent in swimming so different? I’d argue not.
Makes me smile to see the BBC get so excited about the sprinting ability of Adam Peaty - of course as a breaststroke specialist he's one of the slowest swimmers at the Olympics with even alsorans in the other events quicker.
Adam Peaty I believe has some freak genetic double-jointedness which makes him naturally pre-disposed to being great at breast stroke. He clearly won the genetic lottery when it comes to all the characteristics needed to be good at that specific stroke.
To give you an idea of how good he is as a result, Adrian Moorhouse set a WR for 100m breaststoke in 1990 of 1:01.49. Peaty's WR is now 56.88. That is 5 seconds, or 7.5% faster. If they had been in the same race when setting their WRs, Moorhouse would have been 7.5m behind Peaty.
The 100m freestyle WR is 46.91 (interestingly set way back in 2009) and so breaststroke is nowhere close to that. Peaty's breaststroke would be competitive with the Peter Fick in freestyle. Peter Fick set the freestyle WR in 1934, 1935 and 1936!
I do think there should be different distances in swimming. I just don't think there should be all the different strokes, just freestyle. Don't get me started on the medleys! That would be like getting a track competitor to cover 400m - 100m hopping, 100m skipping, 100m running backwards and 100m normal running. Frankly ridiculous.
Triathlon? Any -athlon?
The "thlons" mostly (modern pentathlon aside) are all genuine sporting endeavours using higher, faster or further. Now if the triathlon started introducing different events where they had to swim butterfly and ride a unicycle then I think I might lose it.
Triathlon isn't a test of cycling ability. The good swimmer/runners can just ride behind a domestique or a rival.
I'm with @AlistairM above here. There are far too many swimming events based on making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Medleys is doubly ridiculous. You don't have a 400m medley in which you have to walk the first 100m, run the second 100m backwards, jump the third 100m and run the fourth 100m normally.
Also anything including points for artistic impression is not a sport e.g ice dancing.
I'm fairly sceptical of the place of gymnastics to be honest.
Andwhy no tug of war? That's a proper sport.
Simple rule: get rid of all "sports" where scores are assigned by judges. If it can't be measured objectively, it's an art form, not a sport.
You've just taken Tom Daley's gold away.
He can still have a gold medal for being best at something. It just isn't something that I recognise as competitive sport.
Melt down his medal and reshape it into an Oscar, for all I care.
If you're into the diving you can tell who's good and who isn't. Eg Tom and partner's final dive, obvious it was going to get a massive score. Perfectly in synch (the two became one), vertical entry, no splash.
I can also tell who's a good actor and who isn't. I just have no way of knowing who's the best in the world right now, and by how much.
I grant diving is less subjective than acting, and also than many of the more obviously judgment-based Olympic events. But, one has to draw a line somewhere, and it seems to me simplest to draw it between "no subjectivity" and "some subjectivity".
Riz Ahmed.
And for some time now.
Yeah? By how much, though?
I believe the accepted SI unit is the mO (micro-Olivier).
The growth rate in England hospital admissions is slowing quite fast now. They’re still going up overall, but Monday’s (830) was 10% up the previous week (752). It was 20% yesterday.
Beds occupied now at 5,182, only slightly up on 5,163 yesterday.
So pleased to see Primož Roglič winning gold in the ITT. That solidifies the European Union lead in the medal tallies.
Sorry? The highest EU team is France, who are 8th.
Huh? The EU has won 63 medals so far, including 16 golds, easily beating China, Japan, England etc.
Wait - are we saying that the EU should be treated as a single entity that's allowed to enter 27 separate teams into every event? Hardly a level playing field. Should the US be allowed to enter 50 teams (one for each state)? Or at least 27 teams to be fair. The UK as well? Should every country be allowed 27 entries?
Wait till you see how many teams 'Oxford' and 'Cambridge' are allowed to enter into University Challenge!
I reckon Oxford or Cambridge would win Uni Challenge every year if they entered single teams.
Ah, so it's to give the thickos a chance! Dashed sporting of them..
Which one rejected you out of interest?
Oxbridge art schools weren’t much cop when I were a lad.
It was possible to mix art and Oxbridge. Anthony Blunt proved that.
Eh? He was a mathematician turned modern linguist.
Yes. But then into Fine Art, starting there.
But no different from any other sideline. He could have ended up doing drama or tortoise racing or whatever for a living, but the basis of his official studies and presence was not art. There was no art school (and Blunt was a historian of art AFAIK).
Well his graduate research was in French art history, then parleyed into a career in that field. No actual art school, no, but he did "mix art and Oxbridge" so I think my comment was technically accurate.
AIUI, the horses and riders practice together for years. You cannot just swap nags easily and compete.
Of course you can - therein lies the test of skill.
You might be able to do it in showjumping and even x-country with the right horse (Could be a bit dangerous with the wrong one) but no chance in the dressage I think.
Happens all the time. I know you have a few ponies and not sure what you do with them but I assure you people jump onto horses they don't know and sail round the countryside or over some coloured poles all the time.
I'd agree generally but the risk of death for the horse is higher in NH but with cross country it's higher for the rider (Rotational falls) Dressage is unlike cross country, national hunt or showjumping though. It's a more subtle art, needs a connection between horse and rider (There's probably far fewer horses that can do it very well too)
Guardian just ahead of mailonline, depending on how you count it.
Interesting.
The Guardian is not fighting Mailonline for market share. It is fighting the New York Times to be publication of choice for the English-speaking liberal world.
Comments
And it seems only fair to the competitors, for many of whom it is the most attention they will ever get in their sport, to err on the side of talking about the events as much as possible, with some side stuff.
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/practice-points/the-lugano-convention-a-matter-of-genuine-concern-for-the-uk/5109312.article
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/28/business/lugano-convention-uk-europe-dispute-intl-cmd/index.html
I love triathlon; could never do one though, unless the swimming section was the three metre sink. Which I'd win.
Once.
https://inside.fei.org/content/tokyo2020-olympic-games-horse-ownershipnationality-reminder
The nationality of the Owner of a Horse competing at the Olympic Games must be the same as the nationality of the Athlete riding the Horse.
Only Horses owned by Owner(s) having the same nationality of the Athlete (i.e. not leased horses) can participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
The Owner of the Horse and its nationality must be entered in the FEI Database by 15 January 2021.
If you really must have skateboarding in the Olympics then design a course and have who can complete it in the quickest time. Or measure who can jump the furthest off a ramp after a set downhill (like ski jumping).
For swimming let the swimmers keep their World Championships with all the crazy medley combinations. For the Olympics make it freestyle-only.
I also don't want fighting "sports" as we should have evolved beyond that. If you want to keep something like boxing then have a device to measure who can punch the hardest but get rid of the weight categories. They don't have weight categories for running or else I might be in with a chance of an Olympic medal.
Finally, get rid of any sports that involve using an animal.
Olympics would no longer be a carnival but a true measure of human athletic performance.
Biles has already won plenty of medals, and it's a USA story really.
Fortunately she did.
Quite happy to lose gymnastics and diving, to be honest. They're the respectable end of a scale which goes down to synchronised swimming and breakdancing.
Isn't the whole issue being that she isn't superhuman, she isn't a robot that can perform perfectly 100 times out of 100 regardless of everything else.
Melt down his medal and reshape it into an Oscar, for all I care.
Although I’m instinctively in favour of more devolution, I do find that the Union seems to have divested itself of various powers (like border control!) that are naturally and rightly held at the national level.
I actually agree with Gove’s thoughts on this - so far as I can divine them - and welcome the undermining of the Sewell Convention.
For the UNESCO award.
Hope you make a better fist of it than Liverpool managed.
It is entirely right and proper that the BBC should spend time examining why this should be and to support the decision so as to encourage others who might look at Biles and gain some inspiration for their own challenges, whether they are Olympic athletes or shelf stackers at Aldi (@TSE trigger warning).
To sweep it under the carpet when it is an element of the whole process of Olympic sports is just the same as ignoring the legions of PTSD sufferers after our escapades in Iraq and Afghan.
Or indeed those suffering from the effects of the past 18 months.
We have seen on PB already that plenty of posters have "failed" the "stiff upper lip" test and it is entirely right and proper that people should be understood and supported when they have the courage to discuss such feelings. And also that in the case of high profile "celebrities" or role models, that such examples should be used pour encourager les autres.
Have to admire the mathematical abilities of snooker and darts players though.
Never seen them screw up a finish like say South Africa in 2003.
British American Tobacco said it wanted to "accelerate" its transformation by reducing the health impact of its products.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57995285
i. Were the divers synchronised.
ii. Was the correct position held throughout the dive
iii. Were the correct number of twists and rolls performed
iv. Was the water entered vertically.
v. Was there excess splash (Related to iv)
The judo is the one that had me scratching my head this morning.
But “travel within” amounts to a kind of border control. And it is daft to have this devolved in my view.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57940896
So again, before you attempt a dive, everybody knows what that this, rather than some dodgy judge saying well Tom's dive wasn't as hard as the Chinese divers one so lower points after the fact.
There is some modest collateral damage to the U.K. legal industry.
I presume this is being done in retribution for the U.K. fucking about with our international treaty making.
Stupidity and spite begets stupidity and spite.
In this, she's not special, and that's the positive point about it.
Reminds me of a gag from Rio where an opening speech was saying it was showing we are all equal, when in fact the Olympics is about showing people are not equal and literally making the better athlete stand higher, less equally, than others.
Potentially interesting ideological shift at play here? Among the Tories' first acts after taking power in 2010 was to scrap an £80m loan to Forgemasters, which Labour had approved.
https://twitter.com/RJPartington/status/1420337153721180167?s=20
Looks like a saving of £77.4 million.....
Faster, Higher, Stronger.
No mention of "most subjective points awarded once outliers are removed, averaged over a number of pre-determined events or attempts."
Either get rid of anything that doesn't fit into the original mission statement, or update it.
In fact boxing switched from an objective (Punch count) to a subjective scoring system (10 pt must) and it's much improved for it.
Ooh-er.
I'd definitely rather have olympic darts than olympic gymnastics or diving. Snooker probably takes too long to be practical though - need some shortened form a la rugby 7s. Crown green bowls can go in, but only as a blow for regional pride over flat green bowls (both of which are effectively summer curling).
Volleyball is definitely a sport, by the way. Though my wife, in an uncharacterisitc fit of unreasonable anger when watching it, announced that she could never respect a volleyball player, and had she discovered, when we were dating, that I had been a volleyball player she would have called it off then and there.
I grant diving is less subjective than acting, and also than many of the more obviously judgment-based Olympic events. But, one has to draw a line somewhere, and it seems to me simplest to draw it between "no subjectivity" and "some subjectivity".
And again hence my thinking that the horses for the MP must all be of a similar ability.
Because you couldn't have a horse that was not schooled in dressage competing in the dressage and for the MP all the horses must be able to jump round a showjumping course and then it's up to the jockey to get the best out of them.
Plenty of tournaments are played over a few days.
But it's not my particular bag, the old dressage.
"With this, everybody looked as good in real life as they look in the movies. They weren't all just held together with safety pins.
https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a37131320/the-suicide-squad-peter-capaldi-doctor-who/
Wrt to banking and finance there is currently a pretty wide ranging review of regulations now that equivalence is off the table. One does wonder whether the EU will regret not working harder to bind the UK to a very narrow lane of similarity on financial regulations by granting conditional equivalence for at least 2-4 years. Having a gigantic competitor with the market makers outside the bloc and outside of the regulatory sphere is not ideal. I fear that this is what they're doing in the legal sector right now and will repeat the mistakes in finance.
And for some time now.
*Than the regular Olympics
I am just amazed at it. It is a source of wonder with the technology these days that they manage to transpose Tom Daley's head onto my body and it looks completely natural.
Johnson was guilty of assuming that those checks would be so “light touch” no one would notice them; but the EU was guilty of assuming that they would offer absolute protection to the single market without imposing costs on the people of Northern Ireland.
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/voices/northern-ireland-brexit-protocol-b1892063.html
Guardian just ahead of mailonline, depending on how you count it.
Interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull
Dressage is unlike cross country, national hunt or showjumping though. It's a more subtle art, needs a connection between horse and rider (There's probably far fewer horses that can do it very well too)
There is clearly something not quite right about the survey as "In print, the Guardian and Observer were the fifth most-read papers", but we know from sales figures that isn't true.
Those who monitor traffic to websites, Mail is known to have a huge audience, far bigger than everybody else, hence why they get so much advertising and make decent money.
I believe the accepted SI unit is the mO (micro-Olivier).
Beds occupied now at 5,182, only slightly up on 5,163 yesterday.
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1420397083958251521?s=20