Winter Olympics - Sochi 2014

oooh shes from bristol and shes coming up from retirment and shes a cute blonde hope RLC are thinking of signing her up

the commentary this morning was Excellent

(09-02-2014 13:49 )snookered147 Wrote:  Awwww .
Watched it this morning and Jenny had to endure an agonising wait as one by one a group of rival competitors did their utmost to get in the medals. She seemed to holding her board tighter and tighter as time went on but the wait was worth it. With all the youngsters that seem to be the dominant presence in such sports its nice to see a 33 year old get in amongst it and win a medal .
Well done to her .

Agree Snookered. Only thing that spoilt it was the inane babbling of the young commentators with there stupid remarks. What is it these days with the over used remark "it's insane" just listen to Jamela Jamill on Radio 1 chartshow. But i switched on just has Jenny finished and they were getting over excited as she was in a Gold medal position, then the anti-climax has there was another 10 to go. She did well to hold on for a medal position. Although 1 of the young commentators said another 13 to go when only 8 left and there'd only been 12 in the first place. BBC at least give them a trial in commentating before giving them the job. IMO the commentators spoilt what was a great achievement

Disagree. This is snowboarding, not football - the commentary was fine. The commentators were excited and emotional at the result, which shows just how big a deal this was.

I generally hate commentators - sport would be much better if they just played some good music and didn't have idiots babbling over it. As it was, those guys did a good job.

And great result for Jenny. So cool to see some interesting sport on TV rather than the usual ball sport crap.

Some pics from Jenny's historic Bronze this morning !!

What an achievement so close to the end of her career !!

Great line in yesterday's Times article suggesting that everyone calm down with the doom-and-gloom scaremongering about what a shambles the Sochi Olympics would be...

"The media cycle for every Winter Olympics always begins with 'OMG, they're not ready' and ends with 'OMG, they've run out of condoms in the athletes village'."

The curling teams start their pursuit of medals tomorrow.
The men skipped by David Murdoch begin their campaign against Russia at 5am UK time while Eve Muirhead and her World Champion team have a tough start against reigning Olympic abd European Champions Sweden at 10am UK time. I am a huge fan of curling so will be keeping a close eye on how the GB teams do.

(09-02-2014 17:06 )Goodfella3041 Wrote:  Great line in yesterday's Times article suggesting that everyone calm down with the doom-and-gloom scaremongering about what a shambles the Sochi Olympics would be...

"The media cycle for every Winter Olympics always begins with 'OMG, they're not ready' and ends with 'OMG, they've run out of condoms in the athletes village'."

To be fair, the accommodation IS a shambles. The Russians have obviously put a huge effort into the actual venues (which are superb) but the behind the scenes stuff is nowhere near finished.

Wonder if the BBC realised the music they played out in celebration of Jenny Jones may have been a tad inappropiate .The song used was "Janie Jones" by The Clash .Janie Jones was a convicted call girl from the 1970's whose clientele included quite a few establishment figures .The song was Joe Strummer imagining a bored office worker fantasising about her .The lyrics go ;
He's in love with rock 'n' roll -woahh!
He's in love with getting stoned -woahh!
He's in love with Janie Jones - woahh !
He don't like his boring job -Noooo !
Following Janie Jones' release from prison The Clash wrote ,produced and backed her on an unsuccessful single "House of the Ju Ju Queen" by Janie Jones & The Lash .

(09-02-2014 22:32 )Tumble_Drier Wrote:  

(09-02-2014 17:06 )Goodfella3041 Wrote:  Great line in yesterday's Times article suggesting that everyone calm down with the doom-and-gloom scaremongering about what a shambles the Sochi Olympics would be...

"The media cycle for every Winter Olympics always begins with 'OMG, they're not ready' and ends with 'OMG, they've run out of condoms in the athletes village'."

To be fair, the accommodation IS a shambles. The Russians have obviously put a huge effort into the actual venues (which are superb) but the behind the scenes stuff is nowhere near finished.

I agree and some of the pictures being tweeted and blogged do look quite damning.

But still, there is a degree of schadenfreude about the way that the British media in particular reports on foreign Olympics. I was in Vancouver for the first week of those Olympics and -- except for the tragedy of the luger who died in the week before the Games began -- it was, generally speaking, a 24hr carnival atmosphere. But I would go online and read the papers from home and they were reporting scandal and catastrophe at every turn. It took them about 10 days into a two week event to -- almost reluctantly -- admit that the Games were a great success. Which they were.

If the media reported the 2012 Games the same way they reported foreign Games, the headlines would have been:

- Security a shambles and army has to be drafted it at the last minute
- Scandal of empty seats in all the venues
- Hoteliers suffer as Olympic committee block-books 90% of rooms and then dumps half of them weeks before the Games begin
- Central London suffers as tourists stay away
- Ultra patriotic Opening Ceremony full of references and in-jokes that only the British could understand
- Over-the-top triumphalism in support of British athletes
- Etc...

All of which is technically accurate too, but still a million miles from a true representation of what the atmosphere was really like. It was a great Olympics and it was reported as such. The rest of it -- in the grand scheme of things -- was trivial.

But then these reporters go overseas and all they want to do is focus on the negative. Clare Balding actually introduced the BBC recap of the opening ceremony by telling the audience that she called her 7-year-old daughter at home, who watched it on television and said, "mommy, that looked EXPENSIVE". Which, frankly, says less about the opening ceremony than it does about how miserable it must be growing up in Clare Balding's house.

I think they have a certain number of column inches to fill and TV minutes to broadcast. If British athletes are winning, then that's the story. If they aren't winning, then they won't go with a "Happy People, Having Fun" headline. It has to be some sort of scandal or crisis.

So I really hope that Team Britain wins a lot of medals -- partly because I like it when our athletes win stuff. But mostly so I don't have to hear our journalists constantly whinging about other stuff.