Sochi Olympic thread

iroced

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Here in France, I've been finding French tv coverage pretty good. They try to give a wide range of all the sports, but also making sure to cover the events French athletes are participating in. Then if they can't show a particular event because of a clash, you can see it on the net apparently.

Yeah you can choose which live event you want to follow on www.francetvsport.fr (you can all give it a try but I think you can only access it from French territories). You can even see replays of events (there just seems to be a problem with the women ice hockey final which is raging :mad:). Same as London Olympics and I think Vancouver 2010 was the same too.
Good to have some expert consultants from pretty much each sport too.
That being said we are a winter sport country so it is expected that we get a proper high standard coverage.

omega man

cloudatlas wrote: »

God, the BBC coverage! It's completely silly! They have a camera on a shopping trolley, one of the guests the other day did a dance, their 'studio' is the outside cordoned off part of a cafe. Hardly any of the commentators are experts in the sport they are commenting on. They laughed when a competitor fell on a down hill ski course. They make up silly pet names for groups and people.

They think that just because they are **** at winter sports compared with countries with mountain ranges and ski resorts they can act the maggot and treat the thing like a free holiday and a farce. Claire Balding is the lead anchor on the highlight show... if there was a horse attached to skiis she'd be perfect but there isn't and she doesn't have a clue. :mad:

Far too much curling for my liking! Real pity Eurosport didn't get in on the action as they would have given far more coverage of the Nordic events etc. in fairness to the bbc at least the games are getting a lot of air time.

robinph

omega man wrote: »

Far too much curling for my liking! Real pity Eurosport didn't get in on the action as they would have given far more coverage of the Nordic events etc. in fairness to the bbc at least the games are getting a lot of air time.

Every event is being covered live on the red button, just they have to show the actual UK interest stuff on the real TV channels whenever it's on, and with curling resulting in two medals that is the right choice. If there was an Irish competitor in the ice fishing competition you'd rightly be expecting RTE to be devoting a large chunk of their coverage to that if they were in with a medal chance regardless of how boring it might be to watch for the non-ice fishing aficionados.

hawkwind23

i think Claire Balding has been great, she has been given a lot of space to let her character shine through.

and i welcome some humour and fun being brought back into sport!!

Absoluvely

Florence Bell (IRL) will be doing her first run in the Slalom in a minute.

PM me for a link!



Currently 50th position (3rd last) after her first run.

quarryman

Watching the curling final through my fingers here. Team GB completely falling apart. Feel sorry for em.

robinph

The guys doing the first 4 stones for UK in each end are making loads of mistakes by the look of it.

Mal-Adjusted

hawkwind23 wrote: »

i think Claire Balding has been great

In fairness, she sounds like she's about to cry at the moment

robinph

I guess that Italy are lucky that the failed test was done before there were any qualifying rounds in the 4 man bob, the team still gets to take part though as they can bring in another athlete:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/winter-olympics/26289156

A German biathlete has also failed a test.

Stheno

Elise Christie must be the most unfortunate athlete at these games

hawkwind23

devastated

quarryman

Surely once, maybe twice is unfortunate but 3 times...

TherapyBoy

Have they said what she was penalised for? I thought she was sure to be put through.

Stheno

TherapyBoy wrote: »

Have they said what she was penalised for? I thought she was sure to be put through.

No the commentators can't figure it out

Stheno

apparently she was penalised for impeding another racer
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/winter-olympics/26070442

TherapyBoy

A harsh decision I think. Hopefully she'll be back in 4 years, she's obviously fast enough for medals.

fryup

is that why she's getting abuse online? some people think she's a cheat? or are there other reasons?

robinph

fryup wrote: »

is that why she's getting abuse online? some people think she's a cheat? or are there other reasons?

She can hardly be cheating if she's getting penalised in each race. People are just abusing her online because they are idiots.

hawkwind23

she was getting the abuse from Korea.
the girl she bumped with in the 1st race was a big medal hope as well and i suppose the idiots there took to twitter to blame elise.

maybe a few numpties from over here were sending abusive messages but my understanding was that it was only from Korea for the above reason.

She certainly isnt a cheat from what i seen of her she was miles ahead of everyone and with a better rub of the green would of taken 3 medals and at least one gold.

all our family were glued to the screen today and we were all devastated for her cruel really but she will be back and if she focuses her obvious talent we have a Winter Olympics legend in the making.

quarryman

Give it a rest with the British sentimentalities guys.

She "walked the line" in at least 2 of them. I watched her interviews and it was clear she knew she cheated. She bent the rules and got caught. She knew it, she knew we knew it.

Lenmeister

Fattes wrote: »

Bode has all ready said he had no problem with the interview or the questions so no big deal.

That may be but I still don't agree with it. I watched that interview afterwards aswell, I know I wouldn't be entertaining her questions.

"she asked the questions that every interviewer would have, pushing is part of it, she wasnt trying to cause pain." he said. Whether it's to cause pain or not, I thought it was a bit rediculous some of the questions she asked, basically probing for an emotional response. Reporters like that know what they're doing and know what's coming. No need for it, or to keep the camera rolling while he breaks down in tears.

Nearly the same with the BBC interviewing Elise Christie after the 1000m. Rules are rules in sport and if you're not inside the line or whatever the rule is then you have to respect the judges decision. I've watched all her races but the 1000m though I thought was extremely harsh. I was positive she'd get advanced. What can you do though judges decision is final. There were a few dodgey calls in a few disciplines though I thought. @ Anyone who thinks she was cheating - She's clearly capable of getting medals in every event she entered, she is European Champion, has no need to cheat.

Was happy to see 3 french in the final snowboard cross, good racing there. Still not as exciting as the womens though! Svendsen vs Fourcade was great, they're always battling it out.

Womens hockey final was great. Thought they were totally dead and buried, what a lifeline that deflection was! I'd say USA were stunned. I knew Suomi would beat Russia too, that's why I backed them along with Canada beatin USA! Lost my bet on them to beat Sverige though. I was annoyed with that I knew they had the ability, Swedes defense too good.

Mens Curling I thought the Brits made wayyy too many mistakes, threw away easy chances, likewise in their semis. Lucky to make it into the final in the 1st place.

prunudo

Is it possible that the judges were being harsh on Elise Christy because of her comments after her first disqualification.

hawkwind23

jvan wrote: »

Is it possible that the judges were being harsh on Elise Christy because of her comments after her first disqualification.

not at all , few of the commentators said that its the use of different judges and different interpretations of the rule book that caused it.
looks like there could be a defining of the rules because of all this according to the British media

Fattes

Conor Lyne managed to finish two runs of Slalom today to finish 40th despite a nightmare set from Ante Kostelich, his courses are actually now getting bad for the sport.

Moment of thee games for
Me attached a tribute to a wonderful athlete who made the pipe possible and the IOC refused to let all the female athletes wear a tribute to her so the pipe crew paid their own to Sarah

Fattes

Turns out Sarah Burke skied the pipe in Sochi!

http://www.sportsnet.ca/olympics/late-skier-burkes-ashes-spread-at-halfpipe/

hawkwind23

views and highlights on the last day?

for me that was the best ever Winter Olympics staged , Russia did a mammoth job and barring the negative press at the start from the American Journos it has been portrayed as a success. Fitting they topped the medal table

barring the excessive curling i really enjoyed the BBC coverage and was refreshing to have humour and fun in sport via Claire Balding and Aimee Fuller alongside Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood , some great stuff.

Highlights for me:

Ukraines team gold in the biathlon and subsequent nod to their fellow country folk.

Lizzy Yarnold getting gold

Jenny Jones and all the snowboard and ski team including Northern Ireland's Amiee Fuller and the excitable commentary

the Japanese guy who skated to Gary Moore

Ted Ligity saying it how it is

and of course SKI CROSS!

probably forgot half of it , been glued solid for 2 weeks!!

and the quote of the olympics goes to Ed Leigh for explaining to me what riding switch means

Riding switch is like writing left-handed while wearing a chip hat and being attacked by seagulls

fryup

little ol'Norway second in the medal table, :eek:

ya i know its a country with a tradition of winter sports but its got a small population similar to ireland ..so well done to them

Dublin Red Devil

CAN 2 - 0 SWE. 3 min to go in the 2nd

Men's Ice Hockey final

Fattes

As part of Dominique Gisin home coming someone put this up.

Absoluvely

fryup wrote: »

little ol'Norway second in the medal table, :eek:

ya i know its a country with a tradition of winter sports but its got a small population similar to ireland ..so well done to them

Norway is one of the most wealthy, mountainous, snowy and talented countries in the world. They had the biggest Winter Olympics budget and were favourites to win the medals table from day 1. They're Winter Olympics giants, and it's a disaster for them not to top the table. So much for li'l ol'Norway!

It all went wrong in the cross-country skiing where Norway were favourites in pretty much every event. Most of the blame has gone to the head of the ski wax team. Norway has a huge R&D budget for determining the perfect wax to put on the skis for cross-country skiing in different types of snow, but it seems they didn't have the right wax for the melty snow in the unusually warm weather. The head guy blamed the other countries teaming up to develop their own ski waxes and not giving the Norwegian team access to them, but the other teams denied that.