Olympic Games Paris 2024 - AH Thread [Thread banned posters listed in first post.]

There was a stat earlier on one of the channels (RTE, BBC, ES): It's the first Olympics since 1976 without a Jamaican finalist in the women's 200m.

Kate O'Connor clears 1,77m in the high jump at her final attempt.

Australia has a population of 26.7m and has 18 goldmedals
France has a population of 66.5m and has 13 gold medals

On a per capita basis, Australia's gold medal tally is exceptional. Ireland's performance is even better on that basis.

Gold medals per capita:

http://medalspercapita.com/#golds-per-capita:2024

On a total medals per capita basis, New Zealand is doing even better than Australia:

Got to hand it to those Caribbean nations.

Given that some of our medal winners are from parts of our country despised by Official Ireland (the six counties) I'd wonder if there's any chance of the Irish Times or RTE not producing Ireland maps that exclude them in the future?

Wow, that's a fascinating stat. It occurred to me this week that overall Jamaica are visibly off the pace, which I'm sure has not escaped the attention of athletics in general. Equally so, USA distance running, in particular their finishing speed/strength and tactical running, has been excellent across the board. USA just won the 800m repechage with an impressive front-running 1:44... peaking perfectly

… dragging the next two finishers in as the fastest losers. They absolutely knew what was required, as they were celebrating at the line.

I'd say being able to swim 10K would be more a physical than mental achievement, given my experience of just swimming 1000m.

It's all relative.

When I started swimming 750m in triathlon over 16 years ago as an adult learner I used to be almost dead getting out of the water. I following a training plan for my first race and kept records of my training. For my first training session in the pool I swam a total of 100m and the lifeguard almost had to carry me out. Like a lot of Irish people I thought I could swim (I couldn't, I could splash my way up a down a couple of times).

Last week I swam a 10km in training in open water and the biggest issue was the boredom as I kept the effort low.

A key issue is effort, especially when racing. The hardest race I've probably ever done was a 200m freestyle a few years ago. Going flat out for just over a minute was harder than swimming 10km in training. That's why going flat out for 2hrs like the ladies this morning is so impressive (like an elite marathon runner making close to 2hrs look effortless).

I've spent enough time in pools to know that them pesky kids are fast swimmers.🤣..

As you say "only 1.48" isn't exactly elite, but it's moving all the same. I've never tried to swim for that period of time or distance to know if it's the physical or mental aspect that would get me 1st. There is certainly a difference doing an Ironman distance swim and knowing you're getting out (fresh) and having to do the bike and run legs,. But can definitely see how fatigue would set in for a 10k race…

Amazingly it's something that I never considered doing.. In fact I shudder at the thought of it..

Better from Katie in the high jump, placed 10th after her last place in hurdles. Seasons best jump, 4cm off PB set 5 years ago.

The kayak 4 is like poetry in motion, like 4 robots in the kayak they are all so in sync

I think it's permanently acting up. On mobile, it's often next to nigh impossible to type the first word of a post. Type half a word and boards just repeats it 5 times. Then it won't let you delete the garbage it just auto typed for you. If you do manage to get a full sentence typed, Boards may or may not decide to keep all of it all there after you press 'post comment'. It may just decide you didn't actually mean to type the last couple of words and it'll omit them. I know it's been said a million times but it's been a horror show since the switch and it's only getting worse as far as I can see. Disaster of a site.

All hosts invested heavily prior to each Olympics it hosted and then tailed off a bit. Australia were no exception until Sydney where they have done a great job keeping the momentum going with only a minor dip halfway between Sydney and the upcoming Brisbane.

GB so far seems to be doing a good job post 2012 too.

Table tennis on Eurosport 3 is really great stuff.