You clearly pushed the Canadian girl going into the last lap and she just got on with it. Then the Korean barely brushes you and you collapse into a heap.
Soft. As. Custard.
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You clearly pushed the Canadian girl going into the last lap and she just got on with it. Then the Korean barely brushes you and you collapse into a heap.
Soft. As. Custard.
It didn't look like she was ever really in a position to push for gold. Looked a bit too off the pace and over cooked it trying to get back into the mix :shrug:
I'll be honest, 7s, I know sod all about the sport as when I lived in Canada it was a Quebecois passion, the rest of the country didn't give a toss.
But yes, she looked well back and there was a clear push to get into third place which she immediately lost before crashing out on the smallest of contact. Never in with a shout.
The Slidey Olympics imo. I watched a bit of ski jumping and tbf there aren't many endeavours that involve a human hurtling through the air for a hundred metres. Gets a bit samey after a while though. And the slalom skiing is crap. They keep hitting the sticky things all the way down. I quite like a bit of the jumping-on-a-cart-rattling-down-an-icy-tube.
It isn't more pointless, it's equally pointless, from a sporting perspective. Like the summer Olympics, anything remotely interesting from a sporting perspective is so blighted by drugs that it also becomes pointless.
However, it is entertaining, much more so imo than the summer Olympics. Lots of people flying through the air, hurtling down hills at insane speeds and sliding about. All good, light entertainment which can pass the time.
Although I'll miss the (ice) hockey being a serious affair. Canada proving its dominance was always one of my highlights of the winter Olympics. Shame they messed about with it. :-(
It's hardly silly little countries like Canada and Sweden's fault that the UK is one of the least athletic countries in the world. :shrug:
If you hadn't noticed, Burney, other than the London Olympics when the British athletes were all doped out of their minds, your country historically hasn't really won any amount of medals at the summer Olympics either. :hehe:
The Dutch girl held her line quite well imo
Felt Christie should’ve been far more attack minded earlier on...left it too late and got a bit too reckless with her skating.
The 2 most attack minded skaters finished 1-2 there and well clear of the 3rd.
Quite like the post race steward inquiries...fast, brutal and no fkin about. None of this waiting around for 20 minutes like with the horses.
...
That’s all I’ll say about your white boy Olympics imo
As was their only other decent sprinter Donovan Bailey (mind you so was our last 100m champion). Just seen a list of the the 15 greatest Canadian sports stars of all time - they have to include Lennox Lewis in there to get to 15. Might as well have put Greg Rusedski in there
Unusually for Anaconda, some of that is actually true. I know sod all about the Olympics historically, it was just a wind up on top of Burney's wind up.
If I wanted to really comment on how un-athletic the English are I would point out their historic futility in football, rugby and cricket with rugby and cricket being particularly amusing given how few countries of any size actually play them.
This would be because (ice) hockey dominates the Canadian sporting scene to such an extent that all other sports suffer. And that would be the sport at which Canada is currently utterly dominant, to the point that the NHL didn't bother releasing their players for the Olympics. There's no point as everyone knows who's going to win. :shrug:
I'm very amused by the idea that - despite apparently being so unathletic - we gave the world most of its biggest sports and indeed the very concept of organised sport in its modern sense.
WES really can be such a spastic when he puts his back into it. :hehe:
Are you really equating athletic prowess with the ability to invent a sport? You think the correlation between the two is obvious and intuitive? I'd argue otherwise.
In fact, that was always the British stereotype, great at inventing them, terrible at playing them. Tennis being a great example. But you could add cricket (0 world championships despite countries with much smaller populations winning the majority of them, and rugby union where Australia and NZ despite having a combined population slightly more than half of England's, have won five WCs to England's one.
Perhaps you chaps should try looking at some data and actually thinking for a change.
Perhaps you should try understanding things you quote rather than just picking up statistics off the internet. It would stop you looking like an idiot. (There is no such thing as a world championship in cricket, by the way). And just saying that a country has a smaller population really does overlook a lot of other factors. But you seem to revel in your ignorance so why should we bother trying to educate you
I'll add this to the 'Anaconda is a close minded etc etc
The cricket world championship I am referring to is the cricket world cup played in the ODI format, but I think you know this and are just being deliberately obtuse/difficult. And while it isn't the only factor in judging a nation's ability at cricket, it's a pretty good one. Or perhaps you would like to regale us with England's long history of dominance in the long form of the game?
And while having a larger population isn't the only factor, it's also a pretty good one. For years Canada and Russia dominated hockey and guess what? When you counted the number of amateur players in each country, guess which two came out on top? And on that note, The Times did an analysis of the number of amateur rugby union players in each country a few years back. Want to guess which two countries were far and away the leaders? That would be England and South Africa (the two most populated countries in the list BTW). At the time South African rubgy wasn't in disarray and they weren't losing many of their best players to foreign clubs and were very strong internationally with a consistent record of success.
What was England's excuse? Well, I think we know what the answer is.
We were no 1 in the world in Test Cricket not that long ago thank you very much :) And we are competing with a country that has a population of 1.2 billion in that regard
Rugby union is a professional game so quite what the number of amateur players around a few years ago has to do with the price of fish, but on that note since you bring up the subject you fail to take into account that rugby union has only been professional for a relatively short period of time - officially since 1995, yet it clearly was so in Australia and New Zealand long before that, which explains their advantage to some degree.
I'd put our lack of "success" in the union sphere (and some of the other sports) down to a number of factors, none of which have anything to do with being unathletic, which seemed to be your original point.
Very few countries spread their resources as thinly as the UK does in team sports - obviously football has become increasingly dominant in recent years and union has to compete with that and rugby league and to a lesser extent cricket and hockey for a limited player base (for example Andrew Strauss had the makings of a top class scrum half but decided to focus on cricket). Compare this to New Zealand where rugby union is a religion, everyone plays it and no self-respecting Kiwi would place a career in another sport above union.
Secondly, the powerful club structure in England is at odds with a successful international team and that has undoubtedly undermined the national side at points down the years. Compare to Ireland, whose success over the last ten/15 years came once the IRFU took complete control of the players, being able to dictate when they can play and more importantly who they can play for. Having an entire squad playing for the four Provinces has undoubtedly made a difference and ensuring they haven't lost valuable players to England and France was vital. There's echoes of this in cricket where from the debris of the 90s Duncan Fletcher and co built a very strong team based around central contracts and I don't really need to explain how detrimental the power of the clubs in the Premier League is to the strength of the national football team, do I?
Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, is the complete shoddy amateurism of the governing bodies (again the FA, anyone?). Clive Woodward's biggest accomplishments as England manager was to take on the old farts of the RFU at every step and ensure that his team (which he didn't really coach) had the best chance of winning. It was not a lack of talent that held England back but terrible organisation. Not surprising not England coach has succeeded to that extent before or since, though Jones is made of the same stuff.
And as you have probably stopped reading this **** by now I will say we are actually just a bit **** at cricket really. It's one of our charms.
Yours
Close-minded dimwit
Ah ha! See, you are capable of being literate and logical and not just leap into gratuitous abuse when someone disagrees with you. It's good to see I've brought out the best in you. :-)
The amateur players analysis is aimed at highlighting the number of youth players, really, as that should be a good standard to understand how many people actually play the game, as opposed to the population of your country which is a less reliable barometer.
Not at all convinced on the UK spreading their resources more thinly than others. Australia loses many of their potentially best rugby union players to Aussie rules etc. And while rugby union may be a religion in NZ, so what? What should really matter is how many people play it. There are many areas of England where football is a religion (or so they say) but it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on the national team.
And yes, I didn't read it all. :-)
If I remember correctly though amateur players covered all ages - the first team hooker at my club was still playing in his late 50s (he used to be on the bench for England and was an unbelievable player). I won't argue that we have by far the most players and would agree we have underachieved but just needs framing in the context of the things I mentioned.
Fair point about Australia - I did think about that. I do believe they are a freak nation in terms of how many quality sportsmen they turn out though (something to do with the weather and absolutely everything in the country wanting to kill you, I suppose). Also less pressure to specialise early - there's a massive crossover between the three "footy" sports, particularly league and union. The best Aussie back at the moment Israel Folau has played all three professionally.
Contrast this to football clubs in England with players "tied up" from the age of 7 or so then discarded in their early teens. Lot of athletic talent going to waste there, i would say