Category: Olympics

Russian sportsmanship sadly lacking in loss to 'Georgian' volleyball team

Russia and ‘Georgia’ took to the imitation ‘beach’ in Beijing and played a rather close match which saw the Georgians win and the Russians get knocked out of the tournament. Despite the pleasantries on the sand with hugs and handshakes, when the Russians got to the microphones they let lose a tirade that can only be described as ’sore losers’

“They are not even Georgians,” said Shiryaeva.

“Sore losers,” said the president of the Georgian Volleyball Federation, Levan Akhvlediani. “The Russians should go home.”

“It is very stupid for Georgia to start a war with Russia because we are very big and they are very small, but that is always the way in history with Georgia,” said Uryadova.

“They probably don’t even know the name of the Georgian president,”
snapped Shiryaeva.

“Mikhael Saakashvili,” said Santanna who — for the record — was born in Brazil, lives in Brazil, has a Georgian passport and has been there twice. “I met his wife at the athletes’ village the other day. She was lovely.”

“They are Brazilians,” repeated Shiryaeva.

Wherever they are from, they won.

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Australian Olympic official John Coates tells British swimmers to take a bath before swimming

The Guardian is reporting the the rivalry between the UK and Australia is not exactly a ‘clean’ one.

After Rebecca Adlington’s 400m freestyle gold set the tone for Britain in the pool here, John Coates, the head of the Australian Olympic Committee and an International Olympic Committee member since 2001, was asked for his thoughts. “It’s not bad for a country that has no swimming pools and very little soap,” he said.

Well at least it wasn’t the same old ‘Big Gnarly Teeth’ comment that is leveled at most UK residents.

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Olympic Boxing officials under scrutiny–shades of Seoul '88?

The Olympic boxing rounds are underway, and no one is quite sure what is going on with the scoring. British and Ukrainian judges have launched formal protests in the way the officials ’seem’ to favoring the local fighters.

“I knew they were going to give him everything he wanted,” said Murray, who trailed 4-0 after the first two minutes. “I’ve been watching the scoring here the first four days, and I knew it was bad, so I was expecting it. … I think they were giving him a score for anything, and I had to work to get all of my points.”

British coach Terry Edwards echoed his fighter’s complaints, calling the scores “absolutely stupid.”

“The judges took it away from him,” Edwards said of the early rounds, when the score deficit forced Murray to change his style. “I thought they were very generous to the Chinese. You expect a slight bias, but you come to the Olympic Games and expect a level playing field.

Because Olympic / Amateur boxing utilized points scored in somewhat random and odd ways (many boxing fanatics cannot even understand it at times) the potential for officials to have far too much of a say in the outcome of a match is always a possibility.

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Yang Peiyi, the pretty voice behind pretty-faced Lin Miaoke (who 'sang' at the Olympic Opening Ceremony, so we thought)

UPDATE Aug 23: Pretty-voice Yang Peiyi will perform in closing ceremony!

Watching the Opening ceremony it was pretty obvious that the little girl singing before the parade of ‘ethnic minority’ children wasn’t actually singing live. In the heat and the noise of 90,000 people, no voice would have been that clear or solid, so it was pretty obvious it was a taped.

However, today we learned the Mili-Vanilli truth behind the song. While Lin Miaoke had the ‘look’ of a cute Chinese girl singing, she didn’t really have the voice to be singing in front of an audience of billions. The true voice was with Yang Peiyi, who didn’t have the look and was relegated to singing in front of an audience of a few sound engineers.

Yang Peiyi had a pretty voice. Bloggers should spread the word about this to help her get the credit she is due.

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Cheerleaders at the Beijing Olympics.


Cheerleaders! – Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics

Originally uploaded by kk+

Not all the cheerleaders at the Beijing Olympics are Chinese. Here’s some pics from Flickr user kk+ of some Eastern European Cheerleaders. They might be the ‘Red Foxes’ from Lithuania. I’ll see if I can find some more pictures. You can also find more at this blog post on the Olympic Cheerleader Trials where they had a dance off to see who would get to be at the Olympics.

Plenty more at some of the links above.

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Mark Spitz feels snubbed by lack of Olympic invite

Mark Spitz is sitting around pondering whether Michael Phelps is going to break his record for gold medals in one Olympics and feeling a bit left out of things apparently:

“I never got invited. You don’t go to the Olympics just to say, I am going to go. Especially because of who I am,” Spitz told AFP in Hong Kong.

“I am going to sit there and watch Michael Phelps break my record anonymously? That’s almost demeaning to me. It is not almost—it is.”

Actually I think if he went on his own it would show more about his character and sportsmanship than just sitting around watching it on TV, but maybe I’m wrong.

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First drug cheat in Olympics found, cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno on her way home

coming soon enough.

Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno has become the first athlete to fail a drugs test at the Beijing Olympics.

Moreno, who was entered for the women’s road race and individual time trial, tested positive for the endurance-boosting drug EPO.
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Awesome US win in 4x100m against trash talking Frenchie–Jason Lezak clobbers his opponent!

Wow.

That was just absolutely awesome. The US mens 4×100m free (with Michael Phelps) came back from nearly a full body length in the last leg of the relay to outstretch the French swimmer by mere inches. The last split time by Jason Lezak was 46.06 seconds, a new record split for any relay in swimming.

France takes the medal for Foot in Mouth with their comments earlier in the week

“The Americans? We’re going to smash them. That’s what we came here for.”

They lost by .08 seconds.

See you in 2012.

Just an awesome race to watch. Check out the video on NBCOlympics.com

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Lin Hao almost didn't make Olympic Opening Ceremony parade

The story of Lin Hao has made headlines around the world as his cute face and smile captured the hearts of many around the world. But today we learned the whole event almost didn’t happen as security guards, unaware of his role in the parade, refused to admit him to the stadium. As people grew more and more nervous about him not arriving, finally a senior official had to go out and physically drag him in past security.

Lin is a second-grader at the Yuzixi Primary School in Yingxiu Town, Wenchuan County. Wenchuan was the epicenter of a devastating earthquake on May 12 that killed over 69,000 people. Lin is credited with keeping the spirits up of his trapped classmates by singing songs and after he was freed he went back into the rubble to help rescue two of his fellow students.

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