SnideAsides

It's tricksy wording - in addition to Russia winning in 1996, the Soviet Union won the event in 1952, 1956, 1980, and 1988, and the Unified Team won in 1992. Although by that logic every medal Russian athletes win at these Olympics is a first.

Having now watched a bit of it... I'm fine if surfing gets retired after this Olympics. It's been even more of a dud than the skateboarding.

No. The twelve countries who qualified were split into three groups of four for the opening matches. Once the four countries in a group have all played each other, the two best performers advance to the quarter finals, as well as the two best countries who finished third in their groups. Since Iran scored more and lost by less than the US, Iran is currently third and the US is currently fourth in this group. The US mathematically can't finish top two if it loses either upcoming match and would need to rely on the results of the other groups to take one of the third-place places; even if it wins the next two matches, if France beats the Czech Republic and loses to Iran, it's not a guarantee the US will make it to the quarter finals.

Iran on Wednesday afternoon Tokyo time, then the Czech Republic on Saturday night. Should win both fairly easily, but it's crazy to think that the country that's won medals in every basketball tournament since the sport was added to the Olympics (except Moscow obviously) now has to win both of its next two matches to even have a chance to get out of the pool stage.

The Netherlands's artistic gymnastics uniform is EVERYTHING. Dutch flag, cherry blossoms, Japanese text, all with a sunset setting. Amazing.

I agree, but this mostly reminds me of how I bought Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 for the Switch to deal with my withdrawal symptoms last year, and the number of times the story mode's plot amounts to a random character turning up to watch an event, deciding to compete, inviting you to compete when you pass through the stadium looking for a MacGuffin, and then the two of you being the only athletes in the event is absurd. Like, who were they watching otherwise? (Sorry. It's a deeply shitty game.) Also congratulations to Japan for winning the first gold medal!

No it's just Street (ie, the one that's on today, with the rails and ramps) and Park (ie, the halfpipey bowl thing) disciplines. Yes, I had to Google the difference.

Also, he's a perennial figure in the Olympics Hotties thread. I'm loving the Aussie skateboarding commentators, despite their understandable awkwardness. Clearly experts in the field (a nice change from many of Seven's commentators) but not beating us over the head with it.

Is now a good time to mention the hot Tongan flagbearer is older than Michael Phelps? Also re the Water Polo blowouts: It's probably a quirk of the qualification system. After Atlanta's men's tournament had 11/12 teams be European, they changed the way qualifiers are determined so continents are guaranteed a team each (now the Pan-Am Games winners, Asian Games winners, European champions and "Oceanic qualifier" [ie Australia] qualify), with the rest being determined from other Europe-heavy events. This year, Africa was guaranteed a qualifier for the first time.

Brisbane will be fine. It's a huuuge sporting city already, plus it's decentralising events more than usual anyway (a big chunk will be held on the nearby Gold Coast, using facilities from the 2018 Commonwealth Games). All it actually needs to build are three indoor arenas (two of which were already going to be built to replace existing facilities, and one of which is going to be in a burgeoning outer part of the city that'll use it after the games) and the canoe slalom course. They're also rebuilding the city's main cricket/Australian Rules football stadium for the ceremonies and athletics (as Melbourne did in 1956), but aside from that everything already exists, will be getting only minor upgrades, or will be temporary.

Requested by the Australian broadcaster (who have one of the most expensive broadcast rights deals after NBC and Eurosport) because he's judging the local version of The Voice immediately after the games. ...No. I'm not kidding.

I mean, there's a whole world competing and the games aren't just about America. Every Olympics is going to be at a bad time for someone. There's not really any reason the US is more deserving of having the Olympics timed to accommodate their sleep cycle than the nearly two billion people who either live in Japan's time zone or the time zone next to it.

I mean, pretty much all those criticisms against picking Naomi could have been applied to Catherine Freeman in Sydney too, but it was never an issue there.

Australia always does. It's one of the downsides of picking "What if Polo Ralph Lauren, with a K-Mart budget?" to make the uniforms every two years.

Full sports, not demonstration sports. (There haven't been demonstration sports since 1992.)

To recap, they spent probably hundreds of thousands of dollars on the drone segment, and three dudes in zentai suits voguing stole the show anyway. I feel like that's a metaphor for where the world's at right now. Naomi Osaka was an excellent choice to light the cauldron. There was a phase there for a few Olympics when they went with really crap options (the Greek windsurfer, the Chinese gymnast with government ties, the big pile of British nobodies), but Rio and Tokyo have both had really inspired, inspirational choices.

I feel like we're going to all be sleeping on the sport climbers until it actually starts.

Oh boy. From the weird circumstances of Brisbane winning 2032 (even though nobody's been picked for the 2030 Winter Olympics yet), to the IOC vice-president correctly being called a sexist asshole for demanding the leader of Brisbane's state stay in town for the Opening Ceremony, to Guinea pulling out a day ahead of the opening ceremony over Covid fears... I miss when the biggest controversies were algae in the diving pool and Ryan Lochte pissing in public.

One could almost say winter is coming.

Cauldron photo's making the rounds. Looks like it's just an average size (unlike Sochi or Beijing or Salt Lake City) and doesn't feature any moving parts that will risk breaking down (unlike Sydney and Vancouver and London). They'll try and do something quirky with it anyway, but it feels like the quirk might be in the moments leading up to the lighting rather than the lighting itself. (This would also fit Japan's previous history with cauldrons - in 1964 they picked a guy who was born in Hiroshima the day of the bombing, in Sapporo in 1972 it was a random highschool student to represent the future (like every Olympics was boringly doing in that era), and in Nagano in 1998 the lighter dressed as Madame Butterfly and got lifted five feet into the air to reach the cauldron.)

The studio audience adds about 16% of fuckall to the atmosphere of this show (compared to BBUK where the pantomime aspect was a huge part of the show, or the original run of BB Australia where they were filling out a theme park amphitheatre every week), so it's no big loss if it's gone permanently.

Seriously that... thing... looked like Cookie Monster's diarrhoea. I've been trying to work out why this season hasn't worked, and... like, we've had seasons overloaded with boring players before. We've had seasons with uninspired cooking and questionable talent before. We've had seasons with bland challenge design before. But this is the first season that's had all three, and it feels even worse because of how strong last year generally was (despite the back third being understandably weaker). Even the bloody Emma season, for all its many many MANY failures, usually had quirky challenges. This season, the best I can say is... um, they finally learned that team challenges don't have to involve catering for dozens of people? The rest is a write-off (unless Kishwar wins, then it leapfrogs the Emma season to become the second-worst ever).

Australian Survivor has just been confirmed as starting on July 18, so it looks like there's not too much padding left this season.

Yep. It's pretty clear (especially after last year's big trip wound up being to exotic Ringwood East) the logic here was pretty much "well, we can't go internationally, where's a cool place in this country where there's no danger of us getting stuck by a lockdown?", and... honestly, it's worked so far.

They've done the "winner's recipe gets published" thing before and a couple of the early seasons gave away prizes as a way of doing non-eliminations (I think a private masterclass in Jamie Oliver's house was one of them in the season that had the UK trip?), but I don't remember cash being done before.