Olympics All Format Spoiler Thread
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BBC kept saying WvA's real target is the ITT gold. He was working bl**dy hard today for an event he wasn't targeting!0
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Solid race. Took some time to get going as could be expected with the temperature, distance and parcours. Decent final.
WVA with an exceptional ride, he just had to work too much like any (budding) all time great.
Carapaz picked a perfect time to attack and won like so many secondary riders when the very few better ones look at the other blue chippers to chase. Very deserved win. With strength, tactics and panache! 😉
Shame MvdP wasn't in it. I think he would have won. 😝PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 20230 -
Still waiting for iplayer to make the 9-1.40 section of the coverage available so I can see the last 20 km
Know who won though by inadvertently flicking to BBC as they were doing a round up.
Aargh!“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
Depends on the parcours I think.mididoctors said:The Olympic road race is not a chipper
It's like the world's but with more crossover appeal isn't it.0 -
didn't realise Gee Crashed
"Geraint Thomas retires from the men's road cycling race" https://twitter.com/i/events/1418838770200113152?s=09
(I mean, not surprised, just didn't know...)We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
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ddraver said:
didn't realise Gee Crashed
"Geraint Thomas retires from the men's road cycling race" https://twitter.com/i/events/1418838770200113152?s=09
(I mean, not surprised, just didn't know...)
Tao fell off in front of him and took G down.0 -
The Ineos treble is on
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
Hayter and Ganna on the track too. What event(s) is Ganna doing indoors?tailwindhome said:The Ineos treble is on
Twitter: @RichN950 -
Given MVDP wasn't riding, that was my second worst imaginable result.0
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Team pursuit apparentlyRichN95. said:
Hayter and Ganna on the track too. What event(s) is Ganna doing indoors?tailwindhome said:The Ineos treble is on
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
Has Geraint Thomas ever fallen off in the Vuelta? Trying to work out what the highest profile race he hasn't crashed in is...0
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I think he stayed on that time he rode round Cardiff in the yellow jersey with all the kids.Lanterne_Rogue said:Has Geraint Thomas ever fallen off in the Vuelta? Trying to work out what the highest profile race he hasn't crashed in is...
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Despite having done some coxing at fairly ok amateur level, I am always surprised people talk tactics in the Olympic rowing.
It’s 2km in a straight line. There isn’t that much to it.
I have a suspicion it’s part of the psychological games you play with yourself to get that extra effort out of you.0 -
Just how tiny are you? Tom Pidcock lite? 😉rick_chasey said:Despite having done some coxing at fairly ok amateur level, I am always surprised people talk tactics in the Olympic rowing.
It’s 2km in a straight line. There isn’t that much to it.
I have a suspicion it’s part of the psychological games you play with yourself to get that extra effort out of you.0 -
Also, I am ok with partisan commentary - you need something to hook onto in novel sports - but the rowing commentators take the p!ss a bit.0
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I was when I coxed, yeah. Even was given weights as I was underweight. Bit heavier now.orraloon said:
Just how tiny are you? Tom Pidcock lite? 😉rick_chasey said:Despite having done some coxing at fairly ok amateur level, I am always surprised people talk tactics in the Olympic rowing.
It’s 2km in a straight line. There isn’t that much to it.
I have a suspicion it’s part of the psychological games you play with yourself to get that extra effort out of you.0 -
On the road race, shout out to Pog.
Lad is the GT rider par excellence and he still goes out and smashes the one dayers.0 -
I had the dubious pleasure of racing against a GB cox at university when we were doing seat racing to sort crews out. We were told to sit there and shut up - in the first race he went straight into ultra-aggressive mode, and I can remember his laughter as he realised I was more than happy to play. We spent the rest of the day grinding crews into dust whilst feuding happily - it was honestly one of the best days I had in any sport.rick_chasey said:Despite having done some coxing at fairly ok amateur level, I am always surprised people talk tactics in the Olympic rowing.
It’s 2km in a straight line. There isn’t that much to it.
I have a suspicion it’s part of the psychological games you play with yourself to get that extra effort out of you.
Having chatted to him about it though, yeah, tactics aren't really a thing in lane racing. You already know the fastest way from A to B, and you don't really mess with it even if you're ahead (at an amateur level you muck about all the time, because half the time you're on a river with bends and that changes the ways you can mess with your opponents).
What a cox can really add to a boat in lane racing is the psychological and technical side of things when it's not going to plan. You're not making tactical calls as such, but you can spot what's not working and maybe change it. The lumps in front of you are there for their muscle, whereas you're there for your brains (and the sad truth is that you're making the boat slower just by sitting in it, and virtually anything else you might do - especially steering - will only make things worse).
You could see some of that today with the GB men's eight - they shortened up to try and accelerate the boat, then it didn't go anywhere, then they started to panic a little bit and shortened up some more... It's a classic trap to fall into, and a good cox might - might - be able to break that cycle if they spot it and recognise what's going on. It's very hard to do in the middle of a race though, and there's no guarantee a crew will listen. That's when you might change the tactics, just to try and break the behaviour by giving them something else to think about.0 -
(on weight, I was never underweight. Most crews were happy to believe - or at least play along with the notion - that I thought 10kg faster... On any river with a decent flow it was almost true, too - in training for the women's head of the river my second crew was always faster than the first eight, and it was entirely down to knowing where the stream was. Sadly multilane racing in a dead straight line is no place for a fat lad...)0
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Haha yes. I have subbed in for coxes for a couple of national level boats on a few outings - one forumer on here even let me cox his boat with a view to me joining the crew and they had a fair few Olympic medals between them (vet boat, mind).
I know what value a cox is supposed to add. But the commentators ham up the tactics.
The cliche of all the cliches is the “very important third 500”
Did you do the bumps by any chance lantern? That’s where I cut my teeth coxing 😈
The cox before me broke her ribs after the other boat mounted the back of their boat. That’s real racing haha
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Never went to Oxbridge, but the bumps is something I'd have enjoyed. I was at Durham, which is allegedly the most congested bit of water in the world, so terrorising other crews was more or less obligatory. In the Midlands I nearly made Zac Purchase fall out of his scull laughing after picking a fight with one crew that turned in an unwise place.
Never mind other rowing boats though - the scariest thing I nearly collided with was a Belgian corvette.0 -
Finally finished watching the RR. GCN really need to sort their audio out. 15 minutes of total silence, followed by 20 odd minutes of tennis commentary (!?). Then to finish off it goes to the Aussie audio stream for the last few km! Very odd.
Aside from all that I rather enjoyed that. Delighted for Carapaz, gutted for Mr Thomas. If he didn't have bad luck, he'd have no luck at all.1 -
Yikes.Lanterne_Rogue said:Never went to Oxbridge, but the bumps is something I'd have enjoyed. I was at Durham, which is allegedly the most congested bit of water in the world, so terrorising other crews was more or less obligatory. In the Midlands I nearly made Zac Purchase fall out of his scull laughing after picking a fight with one crew that turned in an unwise place.
Never mind other rowing boats though - the scariest thing I nearly collided with was a Belgian corvette.
Had some people from my club who went to Durham and row there - decent lot out there.
I cox(ed) for city clubs here in Cambridge.
City boats row on Sundays, Uni boats on Saturdays.
One Sunday a college boat had jackknifed the river.
In order to assert the hierarchy (city boats boss these temp uni boys), I was on the cox box to shout “do you think you own this f@cking river?”
A few murmurs on their boat later, their cox pipes up with “erm, I think six says his father might actually own part of this river”
Honestly.
There are bends of the river which are so tight you have to take out a rower or two to get around the bend (depending on how your boat is sitting in the water)1 -
A good comeback though tbf.rick_chasey said:...
A few murmurs on their boat later, their cox pipes up with “erm, I think six says his father might actually own part of this river”
Honestly.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.2 -
I went to Durham. Rowing was a massive clique that I had nothing to do with.0
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I didn't go to Durham Uni but elsewhere, and my only river-racing experiences were 15-16 years ago on the river Main near Frankfurt, in canoe C6 races, distances between 500 m and 1000 m (sprint events), whereby the number is the number of paddlers in the canoe. As training we did up to 10 km in one go in C6 or C8 canoes. The Olympics don't do C6 or C8, only sprint C1 and C2; I don't understand why not.bobmcstuff said:I went to Durham. Rowing was a massive clique that I had nothing to do with.
However I do know the Dun Cow pub in Durham; I lived in the area for over 3 years. The pub has some connection to rowing in Durham; I think the landlord used to sponsor the local amateur rowing club (which may be different from the university rowing club).
The pub is also where once several of us one lunch-time competed to see who could drink the most within one hour. I think the winner (not me, I was never a beer drinker) managed 6 pints!
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The really weird thing is that very few of them are things you can say are his fault. This was another example, Tao hit some sort of raised metal strip and went down. Geraint was on his wheel with nowhere to go (I'm not sure why teams cluster like that in these situations though, you can end up with your whole team down).Lanterne_Rogue said:Has Geraint Thomas ever fallen off in the Vuelta? Trying to work out what the highest profile race he hasn't crashed in is...
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Everyone I knew who did rowing spent most of the day asleep because they got up at the crack of a ducks arse to do their rowing.ddraver said:All I know about rowing is that Cardiff Uni Rowing used to regularly challenge the rugby teams to "boat races" and get spanked...
Why they couldn't do it later in the day I never understood.0 -
Probably the same reason swimmers train early - availability of the water.bobmcstuff said:
Everyone I knew who did rowing spent most of the day asleep because they got up at the crack of a ducks censored to do their rowing.ddraver said:All I know about rowing is that Cardiff Uni Rowing used to regularly challenge the rugby teams to "boat races" and get spanked...
Why they couldn't do it later in the day I never understood.0
