The Olympics

[Oswyntail]

....
It's all a bit "southern league" to my way of thinking - not the physical abilities of the competitors but the standard of competition.

It's all a bit tokenistic

I know exactly what you mean. terrific though the efforts of the athletes are, the times, points etc are generally not comparable with those in the able-bodied Olympics (though sometimes they are). So where there is direct comparison, say in the swimming, it can seem to be patronising the competitors at times. ("Didn't she do well!")
Then you look at a competitor like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnAznBJpeYU - and you realise that it is not tokenistic. There is a vast community of people taking part who strive just as hard as their able-bodied brethren. Forget the disability side, just revel in the human endeavour

 

[Butts]

I know exactly what you mean. terrific though the efforts of the athletes are, the times, points etc are generally not comparable with those in the able-bodied Olympics (though sometimes they are). So where there is direct comparison, say in the swimming, it can seem to be patronising the competitors at times. ("Didn't she do well!")
Then you look at a competitor like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnAznBJpeYU - and you realise that it is not tokenistic. There is a vast community of people taking part who strive just as hard as their able-bodied brethren. Forget the disability side, just revel in the human endeavour

They are only in the competition because their disability prevents them from joining the able bodied athletes without being humiliated.

The lack of interest (on here at least) is demonstrated by the lack of many comments or threads prior to my inception of this one.

Should Usain Bolts legs be cut off as this gives him an advantage over other sprinters.

 

[Eagle]

I kind of have to watch because a friend of mine is doing rather well for himself. Plus it's just generally awesome.

I do get the medal counts sent to my 2012 app, and can see we're doing pretty well.

We're actually doing considerably worse gold-medals-wise than in 2008 though. (After 7 days in London we have 25; after 7 days in Beijing we had 37.)

Although if you compare US 2008 with US 2012 you'll see a much bigger drop. Related: do you know how many hours of coverage the Paralympics you get on mainstream US TV? Four. Not per day, in total. Compared to around 160 hours on Channel 4 and as much again on the extra streams.

 

[jon0844]

The coverage has been fantastic here.. and I don't think many other countries have had the same level even for the 'normal' games. Many places only had one or maybe two channels (albeit with Internet streams for other events) and resorted to jumping from one event to another, or using picture-in-picture. Nowhere near as likely to have people glued to the set as here when you could watch exactly what you wanted at any time.

 

[Bungle73]

Jonnie Peacock, Oscar Pistorius, tonight!