Rio 2016 Olympics

Silly fishies:

A Brazilian police official has said that American swimmer Ryan Lochte fabricated a story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro. The official, who has direct knowledge of the investigation, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak about an ongoing probe.

He said that around 6 am on Sunday, Lochte, along with fellow swimmers Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen, stopped at a gas station in Barra da Tijuca, a suburb of Rio where many Olympic venues are located. One of the swimmers tried to open the door of an outside bathroom. It was locked. A few of the swimmers then pushed on the door and broke it. A security guard appeared and confronted them, the official said. The official says the guard was armed with a pistol, but he never took it out or pointed it at the swimmers.

According to the official, the gas station manager then arrived. Using a customer to translate, the manager asked the swimmers to pay for the broken door. After a discussion, they did pay him an unknown amount of money and then left. The official says that swimmers Conger and Bentz, who were pulled off a plane going back to the United States late Wednesday, told police that the robbery story had been fabricated.

A spokesman for Rio 2016 meanwhile, defended the swimmers whose accounts of an armed robbery, saying they were just kids who were having fun and made a mistake.

“These kids tried to have fun, they tried to represent their country to the best of their abilities,” Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada told reporters said, without elaborating. “They competed under gigantic pressure. Let’s give these kids a break. Sometime you take actions that you later regret. They had fun, they made a mistake, life goes on.”

just seen the russian guy who got given the win can't fight in the semi final as he's too injured.
^ dont even understand why they fabricated the story.

Thank god for them owning up to it and doing something (as little as it is). I had to stop watching, just couldn't believe what I was seeing.

is the jonny brownlee gonna get caught up and get 3rd again, edit, just seen the time gap, dont think so

Kid = 32 year old Lochte

The Lochte story makes me really annoyed. I wonder how many Americans will choose not to travel to Brasil in the future as the result of a bunch of privileged swimmers trying to cover up for their drunken mistakes.

This kind of sums it up - “ (it) has tapped into one of Brazilians’ biggest pet peeves — gringos who treat their country like a third-rate spring break destination where you can lie to the cops and get away with it.” - Brian Winter, vice president for policy at Americas Society and Council of the Americas.

Kind of reminds me of the Mattheu Bastaraud NZ incident. But he owned up eventually.

If I was called Gunnar Bentz I'd have gone into hip hop not swimming. What a name.

Robert Allenby in golf has done the same thing as well - hey sportsmen, what's wrong with just admitting you lost your phone when you were elephants?

Ha, yes, the Hawaiian 'kidnapping'! I agree; why do they not realise that it's much, much more embarrassing and damaging having to 'fess up after the inevitable media shitstorm than admitting they were a bunch of arses and moving on? Actually, how do the press officer-types for these people / teams not get in there first?

Edit: Slaps self on wrist for use of phrase 'these people' - dreadful

Lochte has been pretty slated in a lot of the American press. Does he have previous for this type of thing?

Slate:
"Maybe he's just a lunk, or a doofus, or a Faulknerian idiot man-child, or the real-world analogue of Moose from Archie. There are all sorts of unflattering descriptors that might apply to Ryan Lochte."
Washington Post:
"There is a special category of obnoxious American 'bro' that Lochte represents, in his T-shirt and jeans and expensive suede footwear, which he showed off on Instagram that night at the party along with the price tag. 'We're 6k deep here,' he captioned it. Is there anything worse, in any country, than a bunch of entitled young drunks who break the furniture and pee on a wall?"
San Francisco Chronicle:
"It doesn't matter what else Lochte has done in his Olympic career. This cemented his legacy: most embarrassing Olympic athlete."
New York Post:
"He cried wolf and was called on it, and that will be his burden to bear for a good long while - but not his alone. The Ugly American is alive and well in 2016 thanks to this dope."

BMX race track is fucking joke. Too big and dangerous to allow anything like racing to happen, the riders are concentrating too much on making it round in one piece to worry about actually racing. Poor job by the track designers, they may as well have had a flaming water jump just to finish it off.

they may as well have had a flaming water jump

would watch

slightly disagree. I know I come from the freestyle end of things, but the jumping is where bmx is good. even in the tt qualifiers too many of the riders couldn't land smoothly at the top of jumps. perhaps a little too much concentration on pedaling and not enough on skill.

having said that, there wasn't one quarter that I saw that didn't have a crash in it, so must be something wrong

so must be something wrong

Didn't account for the strong winds by the looks of it. All piling in to the first corner too hot, nowhere to go, all desperate to carry enough speed through to clear the gap.

It was amazing tv tho :/

Commentators (fwiw), were saying the paint finish was making it difficult to visually guage the lay of the track, which in the old 'dirt' days might not have been as much of an issue.

I too am up for jumping, as are the racers, but some of those doubles were seriously too large even for the top riders' abilities. There seems to be a contest between track designers to go bigger than everyone else, without regards to the effect on the racing, or riders' safety.

IMVHO.

Still, loving watching it.

To my mind its much like the road course.

Yes cycing is risky. Yes riders will take risks. But designing a compulsary risk element into the course just doesnt seem right. Racing should come first.

both road and BMX have been awesome though. So I suspect its a fine line.

I think it was him I read about, possibly another US swimmer, who apparently got so pissed after winning a medal here in 2012 that he fell asleep on a train, got mugged, and couldn't find his way back to the Olympic Village.

At least that's what he says happened...

If they turned their hand to cycling full time, would the Brownlees cut it at world tour level?

http://teamoaxaca1.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/froome-brownlee-and-triathlon-cycling_1177.html

this suggests that they have a similar w/kg values as a good domestique, but less efficiancy. also an olympic triathlon is 40km, not 200km so I'll go with no.

edit: I have no idea of the reliability of the above source.

That source has Alastair at the same wattage as Froome in the 2011 Vuelta - and they both weigh around 70kg! If he improved his efficiency it suggests he would be a bit of a beast. I imagine he would also get gains from dedicated cycling training, instead of wasting his time sploshing about and jogging.

Although the source is making all sorts of bad assumptions - so maybe not.

A good article for @hippy

http://www.news.com.au/sport/olympics/is-australias-disastrous-olympic-campaign-really-340-million-well-spent/news-story/b6d9d7211136bbc8309939e42ec6e471

I've seen about 3mins of the Olympics. 5 minutes if you count the beach volleyball that was on while I restocked food during the TCR. Most of the Games I find to be bullshit - half are on drugs and the other half compete in sports that shouldn't even be in the Games.

As for disastrous, we're still 10th in the tally which is kinda normal for Oz, no?