DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum The Olympics

Sure, they look like "Olympic athletes".

Obviously the guy on the right was an olympic curling competition in a previous life.

I got into it on a local radio call in show where the guest was a pro and I was arguing that bowlers shouldn't be called athletes. They got pizzed off when I told them I saw Mark Roth win a tournament while chain smoking and slamming bourbon and cokes.

Went to school with a guy, he was/is a year older than me. His son is a 2 time Ohio diving champ. He got invited to Indy for the Olympic diving tryouts. He didn't make the team, but still, it's pretty cool.

Mark Roth vs. Pete Weber.

When spandex was cool.

I'll bet you can't do the triple lindy:

spandex was never cool..

You know.. because Zika virus and that sewer water they will swim in isn't bad enough.. you might just get shot.

Rio violence leaves little confidence in public security
Taylor Barnes, Special for USA TODAY Sports 7:50 p.m. EDT June 27, 2016


RIO DE JANEIRO — Should Olympic visitors be in a hurry to get to sporting events when they arrive in Rio’s international airport, they’ll hop on the accordion-pleated double buses of the new Bus Rapid Transit line. It takes riders on a smooth ride from the northern edge of the city on through Rio’s west zone, where 21 Olympic arenas and venues are located.

The key link between Rio’s north and west is a neighborhood called Praça Seca, where you’ll likely see locals buying handicrafts on its dirt-floored plaza and kids in blue-and-white uniforms streaming out of an elementary school.

On a bright Sunday in June, however, residents going about their weekend errands stumbled across another sight: the bodies of three young men wrapped in sheets and left in front of the school.

A resident who has lived in Praça Seca for 30 years said people in the neighborhood saw a dark car drop the bodies and drive off. He asked not to be named out of fear of the organized crime active in the area, so close to his window he often hears gunshots.

He had taken his dog for a walk when he came across the scene, which he said attracted a crowd of five or six curious onlookers. He characterized the incident as normal.

The resident’s attitude points to the plummeting confidence residents have about their public security even as the seven years since the city’s successful Olympic bid were meant to be ones of reform to change what might be the city’s most internationally renowned legacy: its urban violence. Local news media did not report on the body dump even as residents shared news about it on Facebook sites that deliver citizen reports across Rio’s most crime-alert regions. A police spokesman confirmed that homicide detectives had visited the scene.

Thirty-eight days before sporting events begin in the Olympic Park located just 30 minutes from Praça Seca, the state of public security is hardly what Rio imagined when it embarked on what were once well-regarded reform projects.

Dramatic scenes are playing out across the city, ones that are neither new to cariocas, as locals are called, nor what they had hoped they would be seeing by now.


USA TODAY
Rio governor warns Olympics could be 'big failure'

Last week multiple communities faced police raids and armed road “blitzes” set up by organized crime groups to check locals’ cars for adversaries, according to local news reports. Five people were killed in one such police operation; the intense manhunt followed an imprisoned drug trafficker, handcuffed as he underwent medical treatment, being sprung from a downtown hospital by armed colleagues who fled in nine vehicles. Elsewhere, an emblematic low-income favela near Rio’s airport — where the government opened a 2011 cable-car line meant to turn the favela into a new touristic attraction — has seen one person shot every five days, according to a count from citizen media.

Rio’s Olympic candidature followed a period that would earn international outcry for its bloody violence: Police in Rio killed a record 1,330 people in 2007, an average of 3 1/2 people a day. Many of those killings were not from legitimate use of force for self defense but rather were extrajudicial killings with little meaningful oversight from authorities, according to Human Rights Watch. The city’s annual homicide rate then stood at 54 murders per 100,000 residents; in Western Europe, that number is routinely about one.

Police corruption

The 2009 Olympic bid came along with a growing mood for reform.

Rio began the first base of its flagship community policing program, called the Units of Pacifying Police, in late 2008. That number would expand to 38 units across dozens of favelas which employed nearly 10,000 cops, about one-fifth of the state’s whole police force.

While the UPPs did not come with significant reform to drug legislation, they did come with what sociologist Julita Lemgruber said was an understanding that police were not prioritizing hunting drug traffickers but instead diminishing the presence of weapons on the streets.

“And this in the beginning even worked, during a short period,” said Lemgruber, who previously was an ombudswoman for the state police force and the head of Rio’s penitentiary system. “Then the strong scheme of corruption came back.”

In the early years of the units, shootouts were so rare they generated major headlines. For nearly three years not a single cop was killed on the job.


USA TODAY
Rio mayor: It's not true that Rio is broken

By 2011, confidence began to deteriorate. Three police were attacked with a grenade during a nighttime patrol in a UPP, causing one to lose his legs. An extortion scheme unveiled in a favela near the popular tourist neighborhood Santa Teresa involved payouts of up to $35,000 a month in order for police to look the other way from the drug trade.

In what many observers deem the watershed case for a turn in public opinion, 12 police officers were found guilty of torture, murder and hiding a cadaver after detaining a construction worker in 2013 in a favela along Rio’s beachside. This month, the slain resident’s widow was granted $150,000 in damages from the state.

Lemgruber objects to the official terminology “pacification,” calling it propaganda for describing a project that has been little peaceful. “If it was a mistake to call it that in the past, it is all the more so today,” she said.

‘Not as bad as they say’

Despite the widening cracks and rumors of the UPPs being phased out after the Olympics, Rio has come far in its crime levels: The homicide rate and the number of annual killings by police are about half of what each was when the city won the Olympic bid.

“Before it wasn’t as a good as the media said,” according to Robson Rodrigues, a consultant for the public security think tank Igarapé and formerly the commander of the UPPs, referring to the units' success, “and now it’s not as bad as they say.”

The future of investments in public security were further complicated after the state government last week declared a state of “public calamity” over its ballooning deficit. Rio will put 85,000 security agents on its streets for the Games, including 38,000 members of the armed forces responsible for securing roadways.

Some 500 police investigators protested their unpaid salaries in front of their headquarters on Monday under the banner "Police prioritize people. The government prioritizes the Olympics." A second group protested in the international airport's arrivals terminal with a banner reading, in English, "Welcome to hell."

Lemgruber predicted that “catastrophes,” such as armed carjackings, were likely to be suppressed with such a massive vigilance. Rodrigues pointed out that Rio is used to policing crowds since it has long managed even larger numbers of tourists during the annual Carnival and New Year’s celebrations.

In a down economy, murders and robberies are on the rise, and students have spent months without classes during a teachers’ strike. Employees at public hospitals are watching trash accumulate, and patients are bringing their own needles and diapers as services have been cut.

In Praça Seca, public safety has another twist. The area has been a breeding ground for militias, mafioso groups common in Rio’s west that extort residents and businesses in exchange for forced “protection fees” to carry out vigilante justice.

“The terror of the militia is worse” than that of drug traffickers, said Rodrigues, the former UPP commander. “It’s a silent one.”

Research in 2013 from a State University of Rio de Janeiro team showed that militias in recent years took control of a larger number of favelas than even drug traffickers.

Alexandre Fiani, the head of the residents’ association in Praça Seca, emphasizes basic investments that could have improved quality of life in the area and public security in the process. He takes issue with the new Bus Rapid Transit corridor that cuts through the community, which he says is difficult for disabled residents to use and involved reducing a series of bus lines that were preferred by locals.

The only investment he says the community got in the lead-up to the Games — for which he knows no one holding tickets — was a promise to open two new clinics. A community request to replant trees that were cut down for the new bus line was ignored.

Fiani would like to see better schools and leisure options in the area increasingly dominated by fear. “I believe public security comes from cultural projects and education,” he said.

USA Today

Didnt they just have the fifa soccer tournament? And that was fine? I am sure this will be fine also. Cant be any any worse than the united states olympics in atlanta with the bombing.

Regarding Tulsa’s clip above from the 1987 Firestone Tournament of Champions,

Pete Weber, Mark Roth, and Mike Alby were all in that tournament (all among the top ten bowlers of all-time).

Does this bring back memories.

By the way, for you uninitiated, there is no bowling in the Olympics. But there is curling?

Well I gotta give you that one. lol

There’s 34 swimming events (17 each men and women). Too many to go over right now.

Let me just ponder that this is Michael Phelps 5th Olympics. He’s already the most decorated Olympian of all-time in any sport with 22 medals.

Wait a minute. How can that be? He’s only 31 years-old.

(oopppssss…. Make that 32, today’s his birthday)

Still, 5 olympics? What was he 12 years-old?




Maybe.

Congratulations and Happy Birthday.

Also congrats on staying sober. A real testament that life can be a thrill without booze and drugs.

Note, Phelps has gotten in trouble for alcohol (DUI) and pot (the "water-pipe picture"). But NEVER for performance enhancement drugs (and he's been tested every which way but loose for PEDs).

32, 28, 24, 20, 16.

Easily the greatest dive ever.

Similar to the legendary North Korean Figure Skating Trick, the Iron Lotus

by clevesteve (from Pflugerville) above:

"32, 28, 24, 20, 16."

Right, I need an arithmetic refresher.

Hey, I just did a google maps on Pflugerville. Not only does it really exist, but it looks like it's a decent-sized, growing, stand-alone town.

Both of my kids swim for the our town's swim team. I tried to get them both to understand what this guy has done in the world of swimming. I remember making sure that I watched every single race since he was 16.

My daughter is a natural swimmer. Long legs, long arms, big hands and is just a natural in the water. She won her age groups freestyle by 5 seconds and her backstroke by 7 seconds. Needless to say, I'm trying to encourage her to swim year round. She really is fun to watch. Two meets so far and she has 8 first place finishes.

My son struggles a little with technique, but he is also three years younger than his sissy. I think he will be a good swimmer, but never great. He's just not as athletic as my daughter. But he has two first place, two second place and one fourth place to his name.

I've never missed a single one of Phelps' olympics race, either.

Swam varsity in HS (200 free, 400 free, back in the medley relay), so I'm a huge fan. What he's been able to accomplish is off-the-charts. Loved his battles with Ian Thorpe ("The Thorpedo") in the Sidney olympics. Epic.

Can't wait to see what he can do this summer in Rio. If he medals at all, I will lose my freakking mind.

Hey WV, not bad. A proud swim dad.

Yea, year-round for beyond town competition.

Though it's so hard to get that good in locations where you have to swim indoors for much of the year.

Long training indoors is tough. The water has to be so much more chlorinated. The lock-rooms are always dank. The air is "stuffier".

Practicing outdoors is so much more enjoyable (probably healthier too).

I was on the swim team up north in 10th grade. Moved to Tampa for 11th grade and couldn't even make the team.

from cleve above:

http://time.com/money/3312329/pflugerville-tx-best-places-to-live/

Pfor goodness sake. I would have nepfer guessed.

They did recently host the world cup, which was spread all over the country and there were significant protests all over the country, which the television stations completely ignored so as to not show the unrest OUTSIDE the stadiums...

That whole country is a train wreck...

You just took 5 times and multiplied it by 4 years.. by that counts the 4 years before his first olympics... when he was potty training and learning to ride a bike.

Bowling?

Hey DC:

Let me know if you need help with your tax return next year.

(four exemptions * $3,500/exemption = $83,000)
(or 5-to-10 free room and board at State expense)

Phelps is just going down there for ganja.

My psychotic b@$&@ of a sister in law lives there.... I prefer to stay several hours away from there... Other than her it seems like a nice town

Yes, it does bring back memories (and mine go much further back than '87). Curling is a fantastic participant sport and very difficult to play at a world class level...

Oh my, that's a little different from the last time you mentioned them, lol

quote by jay:

"Other than her it seems like a nice town..."

only if i really did: lol

Olympic Judo

There’s 14 weight classes (7 men, 7 women)

……………………..…….……..…..Approximate in lbs.
………………......………..Men’s weight…..…….Women’s weight
Heavy Weight…….…..……>.220……….……..…….>172
Half Heavy Weight……..198...220…….………..154...172
Middleweight………..…...178...198………………139...154
Half Middleweight……...161...178……………….125...139
Lightweight…………...…..145...161……………….114...125
Half Lightweight…….…..132..145………………..106...114
Extra Lightweight .……….<132……………..………..<106


America’s best woman judoka (one who practices judo) is Kayla Harrison. Kayla won gold at 78 Kg (172 lbs) at the 2016 Pan Americans in Havana this past April.



Travis Stevens is probably the best chance for a US medal in men’s judo. (179 lbs)



The best all-time performing Judo athlete at the Olympic Games is Japanese Judoka Tadahiro Nomura, who won three gold medals between 1996-2004

Fencing is one of only five sports have been contested at every summer Olympic Games since 1896.

The others are: Athletics (track & field), Cycling, Gymnastics and Swimming.

The competition rules and fencing weapons used have varied a little over the history of the modern Olympics.

I believe fencing is the hardest Olympic sport to watch and understand. The rules can be very complex.

If you’re not verse in fencing parlance, here’s a primer:

Three types of weapon are used in the sport of Olympic fencing today: the Foil, Épée and Sabre.

There are 5 medal events for men, and 5 for women, though the actual events for men and women differ.

Men’s events

individual sabre
individual épée
team épée
individual foil
team foil

Women’s events

individual épée
team épée
individual sabre
team sabre
individual foil

I have no clue why they have "Team Fencing" events. It's still just one-on-one fencing. (four-on-four fencing would be fun to watch)

sabre

epee

foil

sabre

épée

foil



Foil: the lightest of the three, points are scored with only the tip of the foil, the target is from the groin up - excluding the arms and head, and points are scored with rules called right-of-way (basically whoever attacks first gets the point, and to take a persons right-of-way away you have to block their attack).

Sabre: about as heavy as a foil, points are scored also with right-of-way, points are scored with either the point of the side of the sabre, and the target is from the waist up- excluding the hands.

Epee: the heaviest of the three, points are scored with only the point, and there are no right-of-way rules, whoever hits first gets the point- if both people hit at the same time, they each get a point, the target is the entire body.

foil

sabre

epee

Epee is more cat-and-mouse, with a lot of positioning and stalking, followed by a quick action. It's the closest thing in modern fencing to the old duels; because your entire body is valid target and there's no right-of-way, you're very wary of over-committing. Foil can be very defensive or offensive. It also tends to have the most back-and-forth actions, and so appeals especially to people who love the "conversation of the blades."


In the 120 year history of fencing in the Olympics, the USA has only won two gold medals.

Historically, Italy, France and Hungary have been fencing powerhouses. This year look for Italy, South Korea and China to dominate.

http://olympicfenceco.com/

Alabama's metal hopeful.

only if i really did - LOL

You got me all excited Spiral.

I was hoping for any reason at all to watch Olympic fencing competition next month (for more than 60 seconds).

I should have seen it comin':

Alabama's me-t-al hopeful.

Two sports you won’t see at this Summer Olympics:

Baseball and Softball.

They were dropped from the Olympics (The USA was probably too good).

Replaced with Golf and Rugby Sevens

Rugby Sevens? I never played or watched rugby (for more than ~60 seconds).

“Union Rugby” was played at the Olympics in the years 1900, 1908, 1920 and 1924.

Rugby Sevens doesn’t have rules, it has Laws.

“Rugby Referees” are NATO Trained Tactical Field Marshalls and carry Beretta 21A Bobcats with 9x19 mm Parabellum 15 shot clip.

Mostly for self-defense during the match I imagine.

Helmet anyone?



The women will also play. But they’re more civil.

Olympic golf has become a who's who of who's not participating. 7 of the top 20 including the top 3 in the world have dropped out. At this rate they'll be lucky to get golfers from the champions tour to show up.

Any golfer who says they’re dropping out of the Olympics because of the Zika virus is either an incredible whimp or a liar.

Remember golf is brand new at the Olympics so there’s no “long traditions of Olympic golf legends”.

No Nicklaus, no Palmer, No Hogan, No Player. I bet they all would have golfed at the Olympics.

I think it’s most likely these young golfers are a bunch of spoiled brats who have no concept about what the World Olympics is about and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about representing their country.

Whatever world class golfers do participate in the Olympics instantly become my favorite.

to be fair, it is during their actual season (isn't the PGA Championship right around there too?)

plus, golf has a built in "country" tournament: The Ryder Cup

It's all about the money.

Bubba Watson is all in for the Olympics this summer.

This, despite the fact Watson faces one of the busier schedules of all golfers during August, including his plan to try to defend his title at the Travelers Championship the week prior to the Summer Games.

The Travelers Championship is less than 5 miles from my apartment.



..................BUBBA...................

Bubba is a two-time Travelers Championship winner and the current defending champion.

I liked him before. Now I love him.