2016 Rio Olympics Thread

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Crime may be a lasting impact of Rio. The Australian team was robbed when their building had a fake fire alarm forcing them to evacuate, and now Ryan Lochte and 3 other swimmers were robbed at gunpoint by people posing as police.

Well, that and the green water in the diving pool. Eww...

Did they ever get to the bottom of why it was green? I've heard various theories mentioned but nothing official.

Justin Rose just nabbed a gold in the worlds most boring sport as well. I'm genuinely amazed how well GB are doing now.

So say we all- I find some of the longer events in which team GB are involved too nerve-shredding to watch in their entirety

The last two days have been pretty awesome, no-one could have predicted this

[Borgholio]

Did they ever get to the bottom of why it was green? I've heard various theories mentioned but nothing official.

The leading theory is that they put hydrogen peroxide in the water to try and clean it, which nullified the chlorine and made the problem worse. They added more chlorine but that hurt the eyes of the athletes, so they drained it and filled it from the training pool. It's nice and blue now.

[Darth Nostril]

Makes me wonder if they used any copper piping in the system, perhaps as part of the cooling/heating loop, a zinc coated copper heat exchanger would look like a nice cost effective solution to someone trying to cut corners or get something finished in a hurry.
Except chlorine makes short work of any protective coating and then goes to work on the copper. The result is lovely bright green cupric chloride solution. It smells a bit as well.
So a nice big pool full of wood preservative, great if you want to treat an entire household of furniture in one go, not really all that great to swim in.
And a complete bitch to get out of the water, personal experience involved a crapload of binding agent, multiple cleanings of the filter core (sand, yes sand, even really big municipal pools use sand for filtering) and about a fortnight to get it all out, with a final complete replacement of the filter core.

Algae on the other hand is a piece of piss to get rid of, any halfway decent filtration system would have cleared it out, chlorine or no chlorine. Water may have been a bit cloudy, eyes would have stung like crazy (contrary to popular belief it's not too much chlorine that makes your eyes sting, it's all the crap washed off other peoples bodies reacting with the chlorine that does that) but it wouldn't have been green.

[Balrog]

Rugby sevens was fun to watch, but god damn Britain, you really shit the bed against the Fijians (and you didn't have the excuse of being intimidated by an awesome haka). That silver medal is going to taste bitter for awhile.

Not really - Fiji are world champions at the sport and were red hot favourites. Had GB won, it would have been an enormous upset. They'll be very happy with the silver; it wasn't expected.

Perhaps but it never looks good when you get blown out, no matter how good you are or what competition you were up against, especially when for many people this will be the first time they've watched the sport.

[SpottedKitty]

I was just watching a bit of the cycling, the Womens' Omnium points race, and as the commentators were trying (with debatable success) to explain the points system, one of the Twitter posts showing in the corner of the screen happened to be from JK Rowling: "Don't you DARE tell me Quidditch is hard to understand #pointsrace #cycling #Olympics".

Heh.

<snrk>

[Col. Crackpot]

Did they ever get to the bottom of why it was green? I've heard various theories mentioned but nothing official.

The leading theory is that they put hydrogen peroxide in the water to try and clean it, which nullified the chlorine and made the problem worse. They added more chlorine but that hurt the eyes of the athletes, so they drained it and filled it from the training pool. It's nice and blue now.

My all time favorite Olympic Moment was when a Rio 2016 PR spokesperson Mario Andrada tried to explain away the green pools and actually said that "Chemistry is not an exact science".

No, it is. You are just a fucking moron.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I was just watching a bit of the cycling, the Womens' Omnium points race, and as the commentators were trying (with debatable success) to explain the points system, one of the Twitter posts showing in the corner of the screen happened to be from JK Rowling: "Don't you DARE tell me Quidditch is hard to understand #pointsrace #cycling #Olympics".

Heh.

<snrk>

The BBC commentators did notice and comment on that. The men's Keirin was a complete and utter farce, with not one but two false starts for passing the Derny too soon. Why that bike has to be there for the lion's share of the race distance is beyond me. At least when it did get underway, our man wasn't to be denied

[EnterpriseSovereign]

After watching the BMX racing so far, the phrase "Riders ready, watch the gate" has become stuck in my head. There seems to be a lot of crashes on the heats.

More drama with the Women's 4x100M relay semi-final- because the Brazilian team's arm blocked the US team's handover it caused them to drop their baton and finish last. After appealing, the Brazilian team was DQ'ed and the US team gets a Mulligan at 20:00 on their own where they have to beat the time set by the slowest qualifiers in order to proceed to the final. Strange times indeed.

[Borgholio]

I've not heard about that relay thing ever happening before but it makes sense. If one team physically prevents another from passing the baton, they can get disqualified for that.

[mr friendly guy]

Did they ever get to the bottom of why it was green? I've heard various theories mentioned but nothing official.

The leading theory is that they put hydrogen peroxide in the water to try and clean it, which nullified the chlorine and made the problem worse. They added more chlorine but that hurt the eyes of the athletes, so they drained it and filled it from the training pool. It's nice and blue now.

My all time favorite Olympic Moment was when a Rio 2016 PR spokesperson Mario Andrada tried to explain away the green pools and actually said that "Chemistry is not an exact science".

No, it is. You are just a fucking moron.

Now, now. Creationists who argue that its ridiculous that life formed by chance don't understand chemical reactions aren't random... so the spokesperson would have fooled a few people.

[Guardsman Bass]

Synchronized Swimming is freaking amazing. I'm glad I was able to watch it live, especially the full team competition.

I'm currently watching the stream for BMX Cycling. Good times.

[Borgholio]

I'm watching the Women's Pentathlon, then I'll be going to the Men's 10 meter platform diving. I never got into Synchronized swimming. I appreciate how much effort it takes to be that coordinated, but for some reason I always had hard time cheering for a team of dancers who pretty much look the same as every other team. At least with Gymnastics there were jumps, vaults and tumbles that could be visibly landed or failed.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I'm watching the Women's Pentathlon, then I'll be going to the Men's 10 meter platform diving. I never got into Synchronized swimming. I appreciate how much effort it takes to be that coordinated, but for some reason I always had hard time cheering for a team of dancers who pretty much look the same as every other team. At least with Gymnastics there were jumps, vaults and tumbles that could be visibly landed or failed.

Shocking that Tom Daley finished stone dead last, I don't think anyone could have predicted things going so catastrophically for him.

[SpottedKitty]

More excellent news; Mo Farah just got his double-double; gold in the 10k and 5k races, both in London and Rio.

One of my memories from London is watching him come over the line (might have been the 10k race, but not sure) with a grin that seemed to be wider than his actual face.

Whups, and I nearly missed this — the GB medals total is now more than what we got in London.

[Wild Zontargs]

Well, the results of the Women's 800m are fueling their share of drama. There's speculation that all three medal winners may be intersex women, and the debates over whether to eliminate sex-segregated competitions and/or implement testosterone level limits are flaring up again.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

More excellent news; Mo Farah just got his double-double; gold in the 10k and 5k races, both in London and Rio.

One of my memories from London is watching him come over the line (might have been the 10k race, but not sure) with a grin that seemed to be wider than his actual face.

Whups, and I nearly missed this — the GB medals total is now more than what we got in London.

Awesome- and we cannot discuss the athletics without mentioning Usain Bolt, who got his triple-triple with the 100M, 200M and 4x100M relay. Seeing him power his way to victory for his section of the relay was pretty amazing

I heard the commentators discussing those athletes, who were claimed to possess more than ten times the normal level of testosterone, and how they currently had only three options- surgery, medication or abstaining from competition.

There's been plenty of disqualifications, most significantly the UK men's 400M relay, for the smallest of infractions. Part of what annoys me about that is how the burden-of-proof seems to lie with the teams disqualified instead of the judges. Clearly in the field of athletics the underlying principle is "guilty until proven innocent".

[Simon_Jester]

The 'surgery' and 'medication' options sound like they'd have far-reaching consequences, that's for sure...

[Broomstick]

That's the damned-if-you-damned-if-you-don't aspect of women's athletics: if a woman is "too" good then she must not be a real woman!

While some intersex conditions might be an advantage there are a number that, if anything, are a liability. Women with XY complete androgen insensitivity, for example, are actually at a disadvantage as their bodies don't react to testosterone at all, making it harder for them to develop strength and muscle mass. Not impossible, and I believe there have been one or two that made it to the Olympics, but really that's a case where testosterone levels that are "male normal" do these women absolutely no good at all. They also aren't the "mannish" looking athletes as they tend to be, if anything, more feminine in appearance than average.

Other various syndromes would boost a woman's testosterone over the average, but whether that would be an asset or not isn't a hard science. Also, forcing women to undergo surgery raises all sorts of ethical questions. It's a thorny situation, to be sure.

[Highlord Laan]

I didn't watch much of the Olympics this year, but what I did made me smile. I am inordinately happy that a lightning Bolt struck three times.

That's the damned-if-you-damned-if-you-don't aspect of women's athletics: if a woman is "too" good then she must not be a real woman!

While some intersex conditions might be an advantage there are a number that, if anything, are a liability. Women with XY complete androgen insensitivity, for example, are actually at a disadvantage as their bodies don't react to testosterone at all, making it harder for them to develop strength and muscle mass. Not impossible, and I believe there have been one or two that made it to the Olympics, but really that's a case where testosterone levels that are "male normal" do these women absolutely no good at all. They also aren't the "mannish" looking athletes as they tend to be, if anything, more feminine in appearance than average.

Other various syndromes would boost a woman's testosterone over the average, but whether that would be an asset or not isn't a hard science. Also, forcing women to undergo surgery raises all sorts of ethical questions. It's a thorny situation, to be sure.

It gets several magnitudes worse when you consider the pack of preening, throwback assholes that make such decisions for the olympics. I'm kind of surprised the corrupt shitheels in the ioc (lower case deliberate) haven't tried to strike the entirety of women's competition from their little gentlemens club.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I didn't watch much of the Olympics this year, but what I did made me smile. I am inordinately happy that a lightning Bolt struck three times.

That's the damned-if-you-damned-if-you-don't aspect of women's athletics: if a woman is "too" good then she must not be a real woman!

While some intersex conditions might be an advantage there are a number that, if anything, are a liability. Women with XY complete androgen insensitivity, for example, are actually at a disadvantage as their bodies don't react to testosterone at all, making it harder for them to develop strength and muscle mass. Not impossible, and I believe there have been one or two that made it to the Olympics, but really that's a case where testosterone levels that are "male normal" do these women absolutely no good at all. They also aren't the "mannish" looking athletes as they tend to be, if anything, more feminine in appearance than average.

Other various syndromes would boost a woman's testosterone over the average, but whether that would be an asset or not isn't a hard science. Also, forcing women to undergo surgery raises all sorts of ethical questions. It's a thorny situation, to be sure.

It gets several magnitudes worse when you consider the pack of preening, throwback assholes that make such decisions for the olympics. I'm kind of surprised the corrupt shitheels in the ioc (lower case deliberate) haven't tried to strike the entirety of women's competition from their little gentlemens club.

Just the Russians from the paralympics

[Highlord Laan]

I didn't watch much of the Olympics this year, but what I did made me smile. I am inordinately happy that a lightning Bolt struck three times.

That's the damned-if-you-damned-if-you-don't aspect of women's athletics: if a woman is "too" good then she must not be a real woman!

While some intersex conditions might be an advantage there are a number that, if anything, are a liability. Women with XY complete androgen insensitivity, for example, are actually at a disadvantage as their bodies don't react to testosterone at all, making it harder for them to develop strength and muscle mass. Not impossible, and I believe there have been one or two that made it to the Olympics, but really that's a case where testosterone levels that are "male normal" do these women absolutely no good at all. They also aren't the "mannish" looking athletes as they tend to be, if anything, more feminine in appearance than average.

Other various syndromes would boost a woman's testosterone over the average, but whether that would be an asset or not isn't a hard science. Also, forcing women to undergo surgery raises all sorts of ethical questions. It's a thorny situation, to be sure.

It gets several magnitudes worse when you consider the pack of preening, throwback assholes that make such decisions for the olympics. I'm kind of surprised the corrupt shitheels in the ioc (lower case deliberate) haven't tried to strike the entirety of women's competition from their little gentlemens club.

Just the Russians from the paralympics

I'm sure they can take something for the pain.