unknown
Erik Edman
If Asylum seekers are world class athletes then bring them all in I say!!
This.
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The Official Olympic Thread
- Thread starter markysimmo
- Start date
This.
Leeds Spur
Banned
unknown
Erik Edman
But likely true
Leeds Spur
Banned
Baker was a decent junior gymnast I believe - he has been commentating on Gymnastics for years, his knowledge and passion shine through
unknown
Erik Edman
Gave up his law degree to go full time for the Olympics, and also I believe part of London Irish rugby team.
Jurgen the German
Erik Thorstvedt
I remember Chris Johnson said he could beat Bolt in a race. Bolt responded by saying he's never heard of Chris Johnson.
But yeah there are some really fast guys in the NFL that's for sure.
unknown
Erik Edman
Yeah, should make him the Daily Mail editor.
Medals aside - the presentation in general has been superb, imv - we got a few dedicated HD channels down here and all the venues have looked immaculate
Leeds Spur
Banned
Prop forward if ever I saw one!
I'm guessing he's from Nigerian descent? This is teh thing for me, if these people are proud to wear the shirt, understand the UK's values and want to work hard and contribute that I would have them all day long over the 3rd generation scum who've never worked a day in their lives but due to fate were born here.
But according to an alarming number of cretins on twitter and facebook, they aren't British? Do me a favour!!
Okoye is a face of moderm Britian......but many still think white = British.
gonads
Last edited:
Leeds Spur
Banned
And moving the people around has been brilliantly organised! 4.4 million people used the tube on Friday.
It has been a triumph and barring a horrific terrorist attack we should all be immensely proud of these games, aside from the medals. The legacy and sustainability are unparalelled in the Olympic movements history.
jts1882
Dean Richards
You ruin a good point with the third generation part. Surely it doesn't matter whether they are third generation, 47th generation, or descended from the early British cavemen.
Leeds Spur
Banned
I see the praise is starting for Van Commenee.....after they were trying to slag him over his handling of Idowu!
Great Britain’s success on the track is symptomatic of a new, ruthless outlook enforced by the head coach of UK Athletics
By producing three champions in the Olympic Stadium within 45 minutes on “Super Saturday”, British athletics chiefs can claim to have finally found a winning formula to begin to match the success seen in cycling and rowing.
The success of Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford is symptomatic of a new, ruthless approach by Charles van Commenee, the UK Athletics (UKA) head coach, and an emphasis on the best back-up staff money can buy.
After Beijing, where Britain won only one athletics gold medal, the sport’s chiefs returned home in introspective mood. Christine Ohuruogu’s victory in the 400 metres, to add to two silver and one bronze, had saved UK Athletics from a major disaster, but it was still an underperformance that merited serious analysis after a public investment of £26.5 million in the four-year cycle.
The first move by Niels de Vos, the UKA chief executive, was to poach Van Commenee from the Dutch Olympic team to spearhead an “evolution” in a sport that had a rich history of producing Olympic champions but struggled to maintain any kind of consistency in the professional era.
The man who coached Denise Lewis to her heptathlon gold medal at the Sydney Games in 2000 had a no-nonsense reputation. He didn’t mind rocking a few boats and embarked on a shake-up to centralise, control and cajole.
An Olympic task force, steered by Van Commenee and De Vos, streamlined a regionalised structure of seven high-performance centres to just two, at Loughborough and Lee Valley. They recruited the best available coaches, nutritionists, physiotherapists, psychologists and medics.
They had to be more focused after UK Sport, which distributes lottery and Exchequer money, cut their funding by about £1 million a year. So they threw the weight of their resources behind a nucleus of about 20 athletes who were identified as Olympic finalists.
“The problem with a sport as broad as athletics has always been spreading the jam too thinly,” De Vos said. “We concentrated on much fewer high quality support staff for the top athletes. That was key.”
In the case of Rutherford, his gold can be attributed to eradicating his injuries to ensure that he could realise his talent when it mattered. The difference for Rutherford — after 17 hamstring tears in his career — came in the form of Dan Pfaff, his coach, and Gerry Ramogida, a performance therapist with the Seattle Seahawks American football team.
For Farah, what was important was the freedom to base himself in Portland, Oregon, to work with Alberto Salazar, the three-time New York marathon winner. The move was sanctioned by Ian Stewart, UKA’s endurance coach and one of the world’s leading distance runners in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In the same way, Ennis and Toni Minichello, her coach, were trusted to get on with what they did best from a satellite operation in Sheffield.
“It’s still early days, but they have learnt lessons from other sports,” Liz Nicholl, UK Sport chief executive, said. “Before Beijing there were a lot of athletes and coaches working in isolation. They have found a formula that works, which is built on a system but takes a flexible approach.”
The prospect of Farah’s victory in the 10,000 metres being just the first taste of a resurgence in distance running is tantalising. Salazar even talked of an “Anglo-American alliance” that could lead to more endurance athletes going to Portland to train. “We’ve got the model, we just need the support to duplicate it to get more young Brits, more young Americans in good programmes like we’re running together,” he said. “I think we can have more of this.”
Overseas training camps are already well established within the system. Two altitude training camps, in Iten, in Kenya, and Font Romeu, in the Pyrenees, cost about £300,000 a year to run. Funded by London Marathon and UK Athletics, they are available to all endurance runners.
“The philosophy is not new — 30 or 40 years ago, athletes were doing it but off their own back. The young runners now take it as the norm,” De Vos said. “But you have to know how to do it. Coming down at the right time is crucial. You could argue that Mo got it wrong before Beijing. You have to get it right.”
Before the weekend, Van Commenee said he believed he had 15 athletes capable of winning a medal. Indeed, he said he would quit if his team failed to win eight — at least one of them gold.
While all sports chiefs will say you cannot do anything without raw talent, David Hemery, Britain’s 1968 Olympic 400 metres hurdles champion, singles out Van Commenee as a major factor in British success. “We have a head coach that doesn’t take prisoners,” he said. “That could be a two-edged sword, but if the rest of the Games delivers like that, I should think he will be knighted even though he’s Dutch.”
From The Times today
Great Britain’s success on the track is symptomatic of a new, ruthless outlook enforced by the head coach of UK Athletics
By producing three champions in the Olympic Stadium within 45 minutes on “Super Saturday”, British athletics chiefs can claim to have finally found a winning formula to begin to match the success seen in cycling and rowing.
The success of Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford is symptomatic of a new, ruthless approach by Charles van Commenee, the UK Athletics (UKA) head coach, and an emphasis on the best back-up staff money can buy.
After Beijing, where Britain won only one athletics gold medal, the sport’s chiefs returned home in introspective mood. Christine Ohuruogu’s victory in the 400 metres, to add to two silver and one bronze, had saved UK Athletics from a major disaster, but it was still an underperformance that merited serious analysis after a public investment of £26.5 million in the four-year cycle.
The first move by Niels de Vos, the UKA chief executive, was to poach Van Commenee from the Dutch Olympic team to spearhead an “evolution” in a sport that had a rich history of producing Olympic champions but struggled to maintain any kind of consistency in the professional era.
The man who coached Denise Lewis to her heptathlon gold medal at the Sydney Games in 2000 had a no-nonsense reputation. He didn’t mind rocking a few boats and embarked on a shake-up to centralise, control and cajole.
An Olympic task force, steered by Van Commenee and De Vos, streamlined a regionalised structure of seven high-performance centres to just two, at Loughborough and Lee Valley. They recruited the best available coaches, nutritionists, physiotherapists, psychologists and medics.
They had to be more focused after UK Sport, which distributes lottery and Exchequer money, cut their funding by about £1 million a year. So they threw the weight of their resources behind a nucleus of about 20 athletes who were identified as Olympic finalists.
“The problem with a sport as broad as athletics has always been spreading the jam too thinly,” De Vos said. “We concentrated on much fewer high quality support staff for the top athletes. That was key.”
In the case of Rutherford, his gold can be attributed to eradicating his injuries to ensure that he could realise his talent when it mattered. The difference for Rutherford — after 17 hamstring tears in his career — came in the form of Dan Pfaff, his coach, and Gerry Ramogida, a performance therapist with the Seattle Seahawks American football team.
For Farah, what was important was the freedom to base himself in Portland, Oregon, to work with Alberto Salazar, the three-time New York marathon winner. The move was sanctioned by Ian Stewart, UKA’s endurance coach and one of the world’s leading distance runners in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In the same way, Ennis and Toni Minichello, her coach, were trusted to get on with what they did best from a satellite operation in Sheffield.
“It’s still early days, but they have learnt lessons from other sports,” Liz Nicholl, UK Sport chief executive, said. “Before Beijing there were a lot of athletes and coaches working in isolation. They have found a formula that works, which is built on a system but takes a flexible approach.”
The prospect of Farah’s victory in the 10,000 metres being just the first taste of a resurgence in distance running is tantalising. Salazar even talked of an “Anglo-American alliance” that could lead to more endurance athletes going to Portland to train. “We’ve got the model, we just need the support to duplicate it to get more young Brits, more young Americans in good programmes like we’re running together,” he said. “I think we can have more of this.”
Overseas training camps are already well established within the system. Two altitude training camps, in Iten, in Kenya, and Font Romeu, in the Pyrenees, cost about £300,000 a year to run. Funded by London Marathon and UK Athletics, they are available to all endurance runners.
“The philosophy is not new — 30 or 40 years ago, athletes were doing it but off their own back. The young runners now take it as the norm,” De Vos said. “But you have to know how to do it. Coming down at the right time is crucial. You could argue that Mo got it wrong before Beijing. You have to get it right.”
Before the weekend, Van Commenee said he believed he had 15 athletes capable of winning a medal. Indeed, he said he would quit if his team failed to win eight — at least one of them gold.
While all sports chiefs will say you cannot do anything without raw talent, David Hemery, Britain’s 1968 Olympic 400 metres hurdles champion, singles out Van Commenee as a major factor in British success. “We have a head coach that doesn’t take prisoners,” he said. “That could be a two-edged sword, but if the rest of the Games delivers like that, I should think he will be knighted even though he’s Dutch.”
From The Times today
Leeds Spur
Banned
No it doesn't matter.
So, 1st, 10th whatever.......scum who don't wanna work and don't contribute at all to society, via any means.
Loved the Taylor v Jonas womens boxing - slugfest!
Only downside to BBC's coverage is Reggie fking Yates, seriously, have they activated the brick presenters button? Reggie Yates, Trevor Nelson & that blonde bird off Blue Peter.
Oh, and Jake Humphries hasn't been too bad either!
Only downside to BBC's coverage is Reggie fking Yates, seriously, have they activated the brick presenters button? Reggie Yates, Trevor Nelson & that blonde bird off Blue Peter.
Oh, and Jake Humphries hasn't been too bad either!
Leeds Spur
Banned
I like Michael Johnson and he is a great analyst for the Athletics. But McEnroe commenting on sailing?
WTF?
WTF?
It's been odd like that, sportsmen and women commentating on different sports - Balding on swimming and not equestrian!
Anyways, Bert Le Clos been my highlight!
Leeds Spur
Banned
They are all amazing. Stunning skill and bravery
Leeds Spur
Banned
Posh people in jump off for Gold in the horseys!!