Olympics 2024
Comments
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Disappointed Abbie Wood isn’t from Filton..
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Thing with Femke is, she looks like she’s barely trying and she’s always ran like that.
Sort of the polar opposite to Johnson.
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Johnson always looked like he was going slower than he actually was. How fast would he be on today's tracks?
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Oof or with modern training.
either way, he’s as good a pundit as he was a sprinter.
Love that he does the Brit coverage because American broadcasters can’t handle his honest punditry.
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Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce not allowed in the stadium to race apparently.... this will be a major row.
“You may think that; I couldn’t possibly comment!”
Wilier Cento Uno SR/Wilier Mortirolo/Specialized Roubaix Comp/Kona Hei Hei/Calibre Bossnut0 -
Yup
SAFP is a victim of French bureaucracy, it seems.
Changed the rules overnight and forgot to mention it to the Jamaican team.
Nob heads.
"Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.0 -
Shoulders like a bloke.
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Nice to see Alfred take the 100m. Neita in 4th, in real-time I thought she was last or second last (excluding the injured athlete)
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He’s great at calming the patriotic hyperbole of the other BBC commentators too (I can certainly imagine similar with US athletes not going down well over there). They need him alongside Hatch and Kirby on cycling!
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I’m down on Brits for lots of things but I think when it comes to sports I think no country is better.
not without its faults (how many times have we been asked if we’re gonna do the Tour) but the general respect for sports people who know their shit is unrivalled.
Johnson gets it and respects the UK for it.
I think the comparison between the London Olympics and all others is demonstrative of this. Not being parochial, every athlete was just amazed at the level of respect and enthusiasm and knowledge. You see it at Wimbledon every year versus all other grand slams (especially Roland Garros!) and across all other sports
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Plus that studio doesn't look a bad place to be TBH
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Sums it up perfectly. Johnson is the best pundit of any sport and doesn’t let the Brits get too carried away with mediocrity at the highest level.
Pinno, מלך אידיוט וחרא מכונאי0 -
I think it’s fair to say the last 25 years have been kinder to Denise Lewis than to me.
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First Olympic medal for St Lucia followed by first for Dominica.
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She looks like she could still be competing
Pinno, מלך אידיוט וחרא מכונאי0 -
It always surprises me how far away from World or Olympic medals you can be in percentage terms in some events whilst still winning gold. The horizontal jumps and throwing events in particular. I understand it more in middle or long distance running where the races are more tactical (and why run a record at an event where you don’t get paid a bonus for doing so) but these are events where you have to give it your best effort.
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The counter argument is that everyone tolerates terrible football pundits.
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I might be making this up, but wasn't Michael Johnson's talent for punditry discovered by pure fluke? I am sure he was a guest spectator at Wimbledon one year and the BBC got him in for a chat in the studio (probably to kill time on a rain break). They were so impressed by his insight they invited him over as a guest for that year's athletics WC. I am sure that's how it all started, he had no real career in punditry prior to that.
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i see the comments underneath are no longer “what, the cox gets a medal for sitting in a boat, not rowing and not having to steer?” which, tbh, I have some sympathy with, having ditched coxing when the only available option was a 2km rowing lake, but “trans” stuff.
This gender stuff has rotted everyone’s brain
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Surprised no-one is getting upset about a bloke aggressively telling a group of women what to do
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In my limited experience aggressively telling a women’s boat what to do results in the boat coming to a halt.
Encouragement is the name of the game
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In a race the cox shouldn't be doing either, to be honest. It is partly metronome, partly coordinating effort (you know, that part that stays constant from start to finish because there aren't tactics). The coxswains who shout bollocks all they way through a race about doing it for coach, leaving it all out there, reminders about all the early starts, telling you that you are catching a crew that are three lengths ahead already, blah, blah - those people should be removed from the boat and replaced with a mannequin of approximately the same weight.
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Honestly, given I’ve coxed at international level, I’d suggest I know what I’m doing.
If you know your crew, you know how to motivate them, individually and collectively.
That is a learning exercise.
Thanks for the advise though.
Fwiw I grew up with the stroke of my favourite boat and the best performance he and the boat ever did was when I slapped him in the face and told him it wasn’t good enough, off mic. We got our bump and it was glorious.
When I was coxing the polish lightweight 8 I did not need to do that, not least as swearing in English at poles doesn’t help.
When I coxed a boat with about 6 Olympic medal between them, a nice reminder midway through the race about the rival boat’s gloating after a Henley defeat saw the required push from the guys. They liked the timing and it worked.
you need to know your crew. It’s ok if you piss them off if they react to being pissed off by pulling harder.
in a bendy rave I had a bow who was very inconsistent. Picking him out as the worst rower at an important moment I found lifted his game considerably.
If I’d done that with #2, I’d expect the oar to stop moving. He was an encouragement guy and he just loved being told how good he was. You could see the confidence grow as the race went on.
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Mmm. There's a lot between the lines in that post. Such as "coxing at international level" not being the same as "coxing a boat with internationals in it". I've rowed with a world champion and olympic gold medalist, if that counts? And trained for a summer with a guy trying out for Canadian nationals. I had to pull out of that pair because of injury. He gave up because I pulled out and he had life to get on with.
But I'm a short crap rower, so it doesn't. It's a small community and if you row for a half decent uni, you will come across people destined for the top level. Similarly, you live in Cambridge.
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Yeah personally I always found abuse motivating - played centre back and my best performances were alongside a guy who would absolutely slaughter anyone that didn't give 100% to any challenge - but the same guy led to our right back walking off mid game and leaving the team . Similar on the bike if I got on the front on the draggy hill on the chain gang there was a first cat who enjoyed shouting "that all you've got" which I think helps while others thought he was a gobshite.
[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]1 -
Everyone is different and you need to really know your crew. Turn up to all the gym sessions, all the ergo sessions, etc.
Be first at the boathouse etc.
tbh you really need to like the crew to go through all of that. Don’t get much praise being the small man in the back
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By the way, slapping people and calling them shit in a boat is what you might charitably call "old school". Or perhaps "Dutch". Most crews would call that out and there'd be a new coxswain soon if it persisted.
In my experience, the cox makes hardly any difference either in terms of coaching calls or motivation during a race. Most rowers just try to block out the irritating noise.
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You need to know your crew. I appreciate you struggle with the idea people are motivated differently, and bluntly, if you had bad experiences with coxes you weren’t good enough to get the good ones 👍🏻
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