The Olympics: Search and Destroy

Search: all the sports you don't normally see (eg the above)

Destroy: the 100m. Yes it is the supreme and most pure measure of athletic ability. It also lasts under ten seconds = boresville for the viewer, all build-up for no good action. You can't get any idea of the flow of an event or individual strategy in that time, which are the good things about sports. The distance track events are loads better.

Olympics = roolz. I am a track/field buff myself, along with cycling and soccer, yay. For winter stuff, Ally and I both have figure skating on the BRANE. We have long since concluded that Candeloro should have been the gold medalist throughout the nineties.

Search: short-haired men with tight butts and thick legs wearing singlets or shorts. Underdog wins from folks in the Third World. Cool additions to city infrastructure. Marathons. Those symbols for each sport Lance Wyman designed back in '68.

Destroy: the continuing exploitation of a near-catatonic Muhammad Ali. Terrorism (Munich, Atlanta). The mindless jingo triumphalism of the '84 LA Summer Olympics. Collector pins. Official Sponsordom. Several decades worth of steroid abuse (sometimes inflicted on unwitting atheletes).

- 1968 Olympics. Black Panther salute, one of the great iconic moments of the 20th century.

- 1962, for inventing Adidas Italia and Roma :)

The only sport I really like is ice-hockey. Especially when the Czech team play some decent games.

Destroy: Olympic footie. Somehow it really sucks.

Winter Olympics: Figure skating was much more entertaining with the looney French folk (Candeloro, Bonaly), but there are still a couple out there who are fun to watch. All the skiing events are godlike, as are bobsled and luge.

Search: Alexei Nemov and CURLING, THE BEST WINTER SPORT EVAH! If you haven't got the broom out and curled with a saucepan on the kitchen floor, you haven't lived.

Destroy: Non-measurable events. Synchronised swimming? Ice dancing? Not thank you. If you can't count points or use a tape measure or a stopwatch, it ain't a sport. But keep the gymnastics so I can look at Sexy Alexei.

Seven months to go! The most exciting thing may be whether they can finish everything on time.

http://i46.tinypic.com/b6f3t2.png

anyone excited about this total bollocks?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18624174

No Beckham in the GB team.

I was today years old when I learned that the Summer Olympics used to have painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music as full medal-award categories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_competitions_at_the_Summer_Olympics
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-the-olympics-gave-out-medals-for-art-6878965/

Lol, same.

For me the Olympics will always and forever be about the track and field events. The extreme simplicity of the events ensures that they are a very direct measure of the individual athlete's ability set against their competitors. The continuity of events and records over the past 120 years allows relatively accurate comparisons across time. Plus there's something timeless about proving who can run fastest, jump highest, or throw furthest.

(smdh over the sharp turn toward lusting over various athletes during this thread's initial run in 2001)

What's the point?

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/apr/26/dirtiest-race-in-olympic-history-womens-1500m-london-2012