Anyone see the bit this morning in the gymnastics where they introduced the Japanese guy about to do the high bar as probably the greatest gymnast ever and he was doing an amazing routine looking set to qualify for the final then suddenly fell and that is it - immediately out to the contention completely in a split second. Such a shocking moment even to me who had never seen him before. The Olympics really is like nothing else!!

Day One, and despite many pre games doubts, I already feel I am going to be very much drawn in to much of the action.

It is of course such a huge pity for Japan that such great facilities have no general public spectators, and so much work will have gone into these now very different games. I have not heard such a thing mentioned, but with Brisbane now having been awarded the 2032 Oympics, and I presume no real process yet up and runnung re 2036 candidates, I think that Tokyo should initially be told that the 2036 Games are theirs if they want them, as a thank you and a chabce to put on a 'normal' games. 

The women's cycling road race had me in tears !

To be a complete outsider, no contract, to break away from the off, for the Dutch to be there in numbers and such hot favourites, so hot and humid - and yet for the Austrian woman to take it - just brilliant.

brendan wrote:

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Miriambee wrote:

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Bradley Sinden guaranteed medal in teakwood.

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 Well if you can't get gold, silver or bronze then why not make your own. Can he do chairs too?

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It's still early days, but I'm not enjoying these as much as the past couple of editions.

It's obviously a worldwide event and needs to be in countries like Japan, China, Australia etc. but the last 2 editions have been perfect for our time zone, 2012 obviously, and then 2016 was arguably better with it being 4 hours behind, so while sports are wrapped up around 9pm UK in 2012, in Rio they were still going strong around 11pm UK - it's been 13 years since Beijing, so you kind of forget about the time zone. Our prime time viewing of say 5pm to midnight is 1am to 8am in Japan, so very unfortunate from that perspective, and you hear reports like xxx guaranteed GBs first medal in taekwondo when you wake it, so when BBC show repeats of the swimming final from around 4am, you know the British athletes didn't (get a) medal.

I didn't realise / completely forgot that BBC's coverage was massively reduced this year. They had over 3000 live hours in Rio, whereas now they are restricted to 350 hours over just 2 channels, and the bulk of it is now behind a paywall - which isn't great generally, especially for the next generation. I have Sky Q, so signed up to Discovery+ yesterday, so technically get all the events for 'free', but it seems much more of a 'one size fits all' world feed approach - there'll be no 'Watch GBs xxx in the xxx' like the BBC would have had, and while not that important, there seems to be more American commentators on ES/Discovery, when they actually have one that is, whereas there would be more British ones when the BBC were the main broadcaster, just little things like that, and the commentating was a disaster yesterday - they had boxing and swimming commentary on the ES 3-9 channels when it should have been football, and the handball had a strange mixture of British and foreign commentary, which wasn't intentional, ha.

Then there's the unfortunate crowd issue as well.

As for the competition side, I was gutted for Jade Jones. I was expecting to be tuning in around 1pm for the final to see if she could win a historic 3rd gold medal in a row, but she was out at the first hurdle. GB didn't get a medal until something like the Wednesday in 2012, and then it obviously exploded, and they finished 2nd overall in 2016, but it seems they will do well to get into the top 6 this year. I think Bet365 had GB the 6th favourite to win the most medals yesterday, and that may have reduced a bit since.

-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Sunday 25th of July 2021 11:31:01 AM

Yeah, a nice story from a lesser known participant can be good, and a lot of the more known world stars are overseas anyways, but like the tennis, I do still like to see a lot of GB success, even in events I have limited interest in, so while there may have been a sense of punching above weight achieving 27 and 29 golds and finishing 3rd and 2nd respectively in the last two editions, when you factor in far more convenient time zones, almost perfect BBC coverage, backed by passionate fans in the venues, this year does feel a bit different.

Mind, who knows, GB could still do pretty well, I remember on another forum someone was saying they should cancel the funding in 2012 after a slow first few days, and that quickly came back to bite them , and I am very pleased they are going ahead, despite the challenging circumstances.