Olympic Games | Page 7 | Vital Football

Olympic Games

Soooo close to the 4x100 men’s gold, will we ever get a better chance?

Great to see the Modern Pentathlon gold however. I’d forgotten that even existed tbh, I’ve go a vague memory of some bloke called Danny Nightingale competing in it, whilst he appeared on an episode of Superstars?
You didn't see the poor German girl on the horse that refused to move? Awful for her.
My daughter made a good comment that probably has 5 of the least modern sports in it lol.
 
You didn't see the poor German girl on the horse that refused to move? Awful for her.
My daughter made a good comment that probably has 5 of the least modern sports in it lol.
'Modern' to distinguish it from the ancient Greek version, but it was first held in the Olympics of 1912, a few years later and might have involved flying a biplane. Supposed to be a test of a soldier's skills, wonder what that would currently entail?
 
Silver in the men's Madison. I get the feeling that the men wanted to do the same as the women from about 120-100 laps to go but other teams were awake to it. Excellent finish to secure the silver though.
 
61 medals with 2 days to go is a tremendous effort by the GB team. Slightly down on golds from the London and Rio games but they could still surpass the 65 and 67 total medals from those games.

First Olympics I remember watching was the 1976 ones in Montreal. We came away with the grand total of 13 medals overall then.
 
Well I do not like the horse bits but the rest of that Men's Modern Pentathlon was pretty good
 
61 medals with 2 days to go is a tremendous effort by the GB team. Slightly down on golds from the London and Rio games but they could still surpass the 65 and 67 total medals from those games.

First Olympics I remember watching was the 1976 ones in Montreal. We came away with the grand total of 13 medals overall then.
62 now isn't it?
 
When discussing number of medals in various years, you should be aware that the number of events almost doubled between 1960 and 2000... 152 -> 300. This year it's >320.
 
When discussing number of medals in various years, you should be aware that the number of events almost doubled between 1960 and 2000... 152 -> 300. This year it's >320.

Good point.
Think it's 338 medal events this time.
Crazy really. So many daft events.

Still waiting for the mixed relay playground triathlon...swings, slide, and finally spinning the roundabout faster and faster until your opponents fall off.
 
Great last few medals.
Jason Kenny blew all the others away. Sadly his wonderful wife had two unfortunate elements in her omnium event which ended her medal hopes. She still got a gold and a silver anyway to add to her tally.
Unless they decide to go again in Paris, and ask for a delay of such honours until end of that Olympics, you can be certain that it will be a Kenny Double in New Year's Honours with them becoming Sir Jason and Dame Laura (and with our funny system as a wife of a knight she'd also be Lady Laura!).

Fabulous end to the boxing too. Great win for Kellie Harrington of Ireland followed by Welsh Gold for Lauren Price. An amazing sports career for Lauren...been champion at kick boxing in her early teens, followed that up with multiple appearances at football for Wales and then a boxing career taking Lauren now to the ultimate achievement.
 
Best stat I heard was that GB overall won medals in the largest number of different sports of any nation.
Must admit every four years thought crosses my mind in general our Olympic sportsmen and women perform much better (& actually come across better) than a lot of our top level professional sportspeople. I know a lot of Olympians are professional in terms of they do nothing else, but most of them get enough funding to live on, not to make them rich. And the dedication, training and preparation they have to put in is immense in many cases.
 
The only thing that sticks in my claw about the Olympics is how many of the athletes have been given stuff to help them?
Remember watching a documentary Sharron Davies did about the east German women she competed against at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, those poor women! Sharron got silver but the east Germans were amazed by this as their girls were so heavily drugged up she should have had no chance of medalling.
She met the woman who beat who was in a terrible state from what she'd been given and even offered Sharron her gold medal as she said it should be yours, just awful, the very dark side of sport.
 
The only thing that sticks in my claw about the Olympics is how many of the athletes have been given stuff to help them?
Remember watching a documentary Sharron Davies did about the east German women she competed against at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, those poor women! Sharron got silver but the east Germans were amazed by this as their girls were so heavily drugged up she should have had no chance of medalling.
She met the woman who beat who was in a terrible state from what she'd been given and even offered Sharron her gold medal as she said it should be yours, just awful, the very dark side of sport.


And sadly I kept thinking that especially with some events and medallists.

Action was rightly taken against Russia, but second on list of currently banned athletes is Kenya. With a far smaller population than Russia, they have almost as many banned.
So can't help being suspicious of all their athletes who got medals.

Of course though any one from anywhere could have been cheating. GB has had plenty fail tests over the years.
USA has had absolutely loads fail tests...
That Nike centre run by Mo Farah's coach has been investigated multiple times for drugs cheating, including them studying how best for the athletes to take illegal drugs but remain either undetected or just under permitted limits.
Let's hope Mo himself was always clean. Highly disappointed that he did quit that training place once the allegations emerged but instead continued with them.

On the plus side, much more out of competition testing is going on these days and I think only a couple of failed tests occurred during these olympics. So things seem to be getting better.
 
Some of our cyclists, mercifully not the Kennys have been involved.
Sounds like Jason may well retire but after his performance on Sunday why would you? Laura definitely isn't. 15 Olympic medals in one household think only the swimmer Michael Phelps has more?
 
Some of our cyclists, mercifully not the Kennys have been involved.
Sounds like Jason may well retire but after his performance on Sunday why would you? Laura definitely isn't. 15 Olympic medals in one household think only the swimmer Michael Phelps has more?

And was Phelps clean? Who knows.

And on cyclists, David Millar of course failed and fully admitted it. He now talks so well on this subject and all sports should get him to talk to young competitors coming through.
Top top commentator now by the way.
 
And one of GB's silver medallists in the men's relay has been suspended for a failed drugs test, two illegal drugs reported to have been found in his sample.
Hardly ever is someone cleared following 2nd test check (as it's same sample used).
So one less silver medal for GB and one athlete has lost his three teammates their silvers.