Favourite bit of the Olympics

[belboid]

Mo became the European champ after training with the Kenyans, but switched to working with a Cuban in yankeeland to make the step up to the world stage. Not sure how much underwater running they do in Kenya or Ethiopia

 

[SpookyFrank]

It's the Ethopians and Kenyans that have the best training methods and the best coaches. They don't just rock up with nothing but a love for the sport and dominate distance events for championship after championship though natural talent alone.

The success we've had with Radcliffe, Holmes and Farah has come from them training with the Ethiopians and Kenyans and copying their training methods.

You often hear people banging on about how East Africans are just naturally better at distance running than everyone else. When the fact is that nobody, regardless of their background, stands any kind of chance in an olympic distance event without years and years of intensive training. To suggest that the Africans are automatically better at distance running takes away the credit they deserve for their achievements.

If we look at the 10k race at the olympics we see the winner was a British man from an East African background, but you also see that the man in second place was a white guy who, coincidentally, was Mo Farah's training partner. The common ground between these two is clearly their training and not their racial or cultural background. You can probably thank the crowd for the difference between the man who came first and the man who came second.

Nobody would dare suggest that white people have a natural physical advantage in a white-dominated event like, I dunno, dressage. If there's a pattern of Europeans constantly winning these events then it's because Europeans are the ones who have a culture and a history of engaging in such ridiculous games of horse-related silly buggers while Africans and Asians, to their eternal credit, do not.

I fucking hate it when quote unquote liberal types engage in what they clearly think is 'positive racism'. Hitler used the same trick to account for the success of Jesse Owens in 1936, he claimed that the fundamentally savage nature of blacks gave them an unfair advantage in certain highly physical events. It doesn't matter whether the prejudice you hold is of something 'good' or something 'bad', the fact remains that if make generalisations on the basis of race then you're being patronising, insulting and most importantly just plain wrong.

 

[kabbes]

Exactly so. And let's not forget the trainwreck that was the BBC's attempt to explain sprint success in terms of the slave trade and "West African twitch muscles"

 

[SpookyFrank]

Exactly so. And let's not forget the trainwreck that was the BBC's attempt to explain sprint success in terms of the slave trade and "West African twitch muscles"

Thankfully I missed that. Sounds like a bit of a 'throw the telly out the window' moment.

 

[kabbes]

Thankfully I missed that. Sounds like a bit of a 'throw the telly out the window' moment.

More of a 'throw John Inverdale out of the window' moment, tbf.

 

[Teaboy]

You often hear people banging on about how East Africans are just naturally better at distance running than everyone else. When the fact is that nobody, regardless of their background, stands any kind of chance in an olympic distance event without years and years of intensive training. To suggest that the Africans are automatically better at distance running takes away the credit they deserve for their achievements.

If we look at the 10k race at the olympics we see the winner was a British man from an East African background, but you also see that the man in second place was a white guy who, coincidentally, was Mo Farah's training partner. The common ground between these two is clearly their training and not their racial or cultural background. You can probably thank the crowd for the difference between the man who came first and the man who came second.

Nobody would dare suggest that white people have a natural physical advantage in a white-dominated event like, I dunno, dressage. If there's a pattern of Europeans constantly winning these events then it's because Europeans are the ones who have a culture and a history of engaging in such ridiculous games of horse-related silly buggers while Africans and Asians, to their eternal credit, do not.

I fucking hate it when quote unquote liberal types engage in what they clearly think is 'positive racism'. Hitler used the same trick to account for the success of Jesse Owens in 1936, he claimed that the fundamentally savage nature of blacks gave them an unfair advantage in certain highly physical events. It doesn't matter whether the prejudice you hold is of something 'good' or something 'bad', the fact remains that if make generalisations on the basis of race then you're being patronising, insulting and most importantly just plain wrong.

Yeah but black people are shit at swimming though.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Let's just clear something up. We will assume that there are discrete groups within the human species that fit neatly into the traditional racial boundaries of white, black, middle eastern, hispanic, chinese etc; which of course there aren't. Now, there will be discernible biological differences between the average person who falls into the white category and the average person who falls into the black category, though the extent and nature of these differences will vary depending on how you decide which group everybody should go into.

The important thing is that there will be far more variation between individuals in one particular group than there will be between the average specimens of the two groups. In other words, the vast majority of variability amongst the physical characteristics of human beings is unrelated to anything we might call 'race', it's just a natural consequence of the gene-shuffling process all sexually reproducing organisms use precisely because it promotes variation. And talking about the characteristics of some imaginary average African human is completely irrelevant when you're talking about olympic athletes, who are so far away from being average that between-population genetic differences are completely meaningless when it comes to accounting for their abilities.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Yeah but black people are shit at swimming though.

That's because they come from parts of the world that have crocodiles.

Probably.

 

[Orang Utan]

Wouldn't that make them better swimmers?

 

[skyscraper101]

Exactly so. And let's not forget the trainwreck that was the BBC's attempt to explain sprint success in terms of the slave trade and "West African twitch muscles"

What confused me though was that Michael Johnson, who was seemingly quick to put down that theory, was brandishing the same slave trade and survival of the fittest stuff only a few weeks previously.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-descendants-slaves-medals-sprint-finals.html

 

[skyscraper101]

This is pretty cool:

 

[ruffneck23]

friday, sat and sunday were the best, the bits while i was at boomtown

 

[Maggot]

I find it difficult to get too excited about the mo farah moments. He was the overwhelming favourite and hugely funded compared to the runners in the silver and bronze positions.

Not true

At 7.20pm on Saturday night Mo Farah will step out on to the Olympic track for third time in seven days. Surrounding him will be three Ethiopians, Yenew Alamirew, Hagos Gebrhiwet and Dejen Gebremeskel, who are all quicker over 5,000m. There will also be two Kenyans, Thomas Longosiwa and Isaiah Koech. They are quicker than him. too. The blunt truth is that Farah is only the 11th-fastest man over the distance this year, and has the seventh-quickest personal best of the 15 runners in the field. The odds are stacked against him.
If Farah can win a second gold, he will go down not just as the greatest distance runner in British history but as one of the best the world has ever seen. Only six men have ever won the 5,000m and 10,000m double at one Olympic Games, and each of them has a place in the annals of the sport, from Hannes Kolehmainen in 1912, to Emil Zatopek and Vladimir Kuts in the 1950s, on through Lasse Viren and Miruts Yifter in the 1970s and 80s. Since then only Farah's great rival Kenenisa Bekele has done it, in 2008. What really gives an idea of just how hard it is to do, though, is the list of great runners who tried and failed. It was too tough for both the Flying Finn Paavo Nurmi and Haile Gebrselassie.

 

[gosub]

friday, sat and sunday were the best, the bits while i was at boomtown

was camped next to a girl who had radio 5 on all the time and spent ages talking about the olympics

 

[ruffneck23]

i think i would have evicted her radio to the nearest fire....

 

[stavros]

I was totally against the Olympics, avoided it like the plague and still think the whole thing should never have happened ... but I will admit to a smile last night, seeing Luke Campbell's homecoming speech from the balcony of Hull City Hall. The boy done good, and thousands of people had turned out to cheer him home. Great atmosphere.

Hull has a rich history of great boxers;

 

[moon]

The amazing atmostphere in central London, was like being on another planet, everyone was so chilled and nice, even the police and army.
Big shout the to volunteers too... I just wish London was like that all the time...

 

[skyscraper101]

Those volunteer games maker helpers at every major transport hub all cheery and friendly... it would be good to have people like in London all the time.

 

[Roadkill]

Hull has a rich history of great boxers;

He was one of the people who gave a speech!

Tbf to Prescott, he genuinely was a good boxer when he was younger. When he thumped that bloke back in 2001 I saw an interview with an instructor on the local news who said, 'I don't know what he was thinking. It was a terrible punch. I've boxed against Prescott and he's way better than that: should have knocked him out at that range!'

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Having read all the replies, this fella still wins hands down for me. Go Burt!