New Olympics thread London 2012

[ifyoucantfixit]

              The network that carries the Olympics buy the rights.  They paid over a billion dollars for the exclusive rights.  After getting the rights
they then have complete control of the event.  They won't even allow the other channels to post the highlights of the events.  In fact there
was a joke going on on one of the other networks.  I am not sure now which one it was.  But they made up the swim competitions with puppets, made out of popsicle sticksn in a long pan with blue crinkled up foil, with water in it. They then would voice over the thing as they pulled the puppets along telling about the distances and times.. Pretty funny, unfortunately it was a bit true and sad at the same time.

[ifyoucantfixit]

And what a drama around German Heptathlon athlete Lilli Schwarzkopf!
At first they disqualified her for overstepping her lane in the starting phase of the 800m run. They showed her a photo of it and she saw indeed a foot overstepping the line. But it wasn't her foot, it wasn't her at all and it even wasn't her lane. It was Russian athlete Kristina Sawitskaja on lane 6 who had overstepped. Schwarzkopf had been running on lane 5.

After the jury watched the video of the starting phase, they saw their mistake and took back the disqualification. Schwarzkopf won the sivler medal and Tatjana Tschernowa (Russia) won bronze. Here are the three happy women after two hard days:

            I am very disgusted by such a mistake.  Those athletes are photographed from every possible angle, except for inside their clothes.  There is no concievable reason for this kind of a snafu.  It is just plain idiotic.  Poor girl.

[souxi]

Team GB are doing great!!! Makes me proud to be British. 

[delalluvia]

Watched the men's platform diving today...

Yummy.

They had a brief story on Matt Mitchum.  I hadn't been following his career, so I was saddened to learn that he had such an emotional wreck about his sport after he won.  It's also doubly sad that he says he can't even remember anything about winning in Beijing because he was so 'in the zone'.

I find it tragic for someone to work so hard, to come so far and when they finally triumph, it isn't even a memory they can pass on to their kids and families.