I always look forward to the Olympics every 4 years, especially for those events you never really pay much attention to in the 3 years in between, then find yourself glued to the screen watching them! The opening ceremony isn't until tomorrow, but the Rugby 7's and other sports (soccer, handball) have already started. The 7's has been a fun watch, sold out and a loud crowd at the Stade de France, and is already at the quarter final stage. Already 2 of the 3 medallists from the last Olympics (New Zealand, Argentina) are out, and only the two-time Gold medallists, Fiji, are left. Rugby 7's in the only sport that Fiji have ever won a medal at, and they're in trouble just now against Ireland in their quarter final. USA play Australia in the last quarter final after Fiji-Ireland. Any specific events that everyone else is looking forward to or, like me, just going to enjoy as much as possible? Edit - and Fiji show why they've won the last 2 Gold medals, coming from behind to sneak past Ireland 19-15. 7's is a game where the score can change very quickly, and so it did with 2 quick tries by Fiji.
I don't pay much attention to the Olympics any more. I last really did as a teenager in the 90s. I've been a little surprised as to how much attention they've been getting here in Chicago while I'm on vacation though. They had women's soccer on the jumbotron at Wrigley yesterday, and restaurants have been showing rugby on a lot of tvs.
The Opening Ceremony is taking place at the moment and I thought it might be interesting seeing as it wasn't taking place in the stadium for the first time, and instead is on boats on the River Seine. But so far...it's a bit ****, lol. Probably doesn't help that it's raining heavily in Paris at the moment.
I'm a little Team GB biased of course, but there was a terrific Men's mountain bike race this morning with British rider, Tom Pidcock, successfully defending his Tokyo gold medal but, boy, did he have to fight for it. He was leading the race, but had a puncture on the 3rd lap and lost 40 seconds to drop to 8th. Normally that means you've lost the gold medal chance, but he fought back to then catch the French leader on the penultimate lap, before they then went back and forth swapping the lead on the last lap until Tom took it just before the end.
USA just won the women's team pursuit in the Track Cycling. There were clearly the fastest cyclists in the field, but weren't the best technically. Team pursuit involves 4 cyclists going flat out for 4000m against another team on the other side of track, ideally wheel to wheel and in a line (so they create a wind tunnel effect for cyclists in 2nd/3rd/4th in line) without too much waver around the track, with cyclists taking turns at the front before peeling off and re-joining again right on the back wheel. Either fastest time over the 4000m wins, or one team can catch the other team and win that way. They average about 40mph on the ride. USA kept on drifting apart a little (and it's so hard to close up again when everyone is going flat out), and their peeling off to the back was messy sometimes, but they still had too much power for New Zealand in the final even though their cyclists were drifting way apart on the last couple of laps. USA will break the World Record sometime soon if they can get themselves sorted out technically.
