Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Are these games just a bit shit or was London simply awesome?

A friend of mine once persuasively argued that the Olympics should not be hosted at a cost that would cripple most countries financially.

His argument was that the Olympics is a television spectacle. The stadium audiences are minuscule compared to the worldwide television audiences.

So, why should one country have to carry the cost of everything from ceremonies to synchronized swimming and from gun-shooting to athletics, when all the sports could be hosted by different countries and broadcast via a single broadcast/editing unit?

Made sense to me. More small countries can get involved in the more specialist sports......
 
Pickman's model said:
Tbh the best bit about London 2012 was the smoothness with which transport ran and the absence of roadworks.
Click to expand...
That was only the case because half the city's population was persuaded to evacuate for the proceedings. I cycled from Waterloo to Hackney the morning after the opening cermony and the roads were so quiet it could have been Christmas day.
 
Sirena said:
A friend of mine once persuasively argued that the Olympics should not be hosted at a cost that would cripple most countries financially.

His argument was that the Olympics is a television spectacle. The stadium audiences are minuscule compared to the worldwide television audiences.

So, why should one country have to carry the cost of everything from ceremonies to synchronized swimming and from gun-shooting to athletics, when all the sports could be hosted by different countries and broadcast via a single broadcast/editing unit?

Made sense to me. More small countries can get involved in the more specialist sports......
Click to expand...
That's an interesting idea
 
eoin_k said:
That was only the case because half the city's population was persuaded to evacuate for the proceedings. I cycled from Waterloo to Hackney the morning after the opening cermony and the roads were so quiet it could have been Christmas day.
Click to expand...
I had to stop cycling that summer because most of the routes I used and places I parked my bike were closed off. Also TfL made us all work as stewards to help the public find their way to events. It felt like overkill - but then the whole of TfL maintenance except emergency cover also shut down so there was nothing else for me to do. Plus they paid me extra for the unusal work. It was a fun year - coincidentally the year I came out as trans so I remember it all very fondly.
 
I think there good so far seems very chilled not to many stuck up ponces
a few silly fuck ups add to the enjoyment :cool:
 
I love the olympics. Love it. I love the human endeavour, the cracks about Chinese swimmers pissing purple, the random sports you become an instant expert in over 2 days, the good news stories, Butt and Fuchs, the Korean selfie gymnasts, the US uber driver bought a ticket to see his son compete by a passenger, team refugees, the accidental porn-ing of the male divers.... I love it all*. I know it's expensive and ridiculous and we are mostly good at posh people sitting down, and it is an economic disaster for half the host cities and so on and so on.... But it's also just all amazing!

*Except possibly the French gymnast's broken leg <<vom>>
 
The bbc coverage of the women's events has been awful. Yesterday during the swimming they kept calling them girls and then started talking about how easy it is to get long hair into a swimming hat. I learnt nothing about the athletes but I did hear lots about long hair. If I want to learn about hair I'll google a tutorial. And they're grown women, not girls.
 
the only good bit of the London lymdicks was Daniel Craig kicking her maj out of a helicopter and that was ruined anyway cos her chute opened
 
remember how we had to have surface to air missiles parked on london roofs over the protests of locals because the americans are really really paranoid about terrorism? That was fucked up.
 
Saw Tim Vickery (longstanding BBC Brazilian/S.American footie correspondent) explaining the comparative absence of any meaningful interest in the Games the other night on the BBC coverage.

He mentioned a Brazilian colleague who said that Brazilians just aren't really that in to sport in general and only get really enthused when it involves a Brazilian who is winning.

Hence little interest in the Olympics.

If you think back, since the Millenium we've had the Syndney and London games that were both in two host countries that are sport mad and the Beijing games which were a massive patriotic moment for the Chinese and then Athens.
 
It comes to something when Usain Bolt is trying to encourage people on Twitter to buy tickets days before the main events.
 
What most forget, is the complete shitheap everyone thought the London one was going to be. (I was expecting the Rio to eventually spark, though it doesn't seem like it just yet).

Tube armageddon, a ticket system that meant anything other than the hyper-organised or wealthy couldn't be in a stadium, half of London gridlocked off for athletes and Imperialist Olympic organisers (and their favourite sponsors), the foreboding tradition of breaking new ground in disappointing sport choking, Boris, and 'holy shit what will they do for the opening ceremony that isn't an unmitigated disaster..."

...And then the opening ceremony came, and it felt like all the convinced disillusionment just disappeared in a few hours of Danny Boyle. Everything, frankly, was right in the end. Bloody amazing in fact. One of the best summers in memory that wasn't centered around jumper-for-goalposts or mephedrone :cool::D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom