Blog Catalog

Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

It's Getting Worse for Brazil and Those Summer Olympics


Rio-2016-Logo

I wrote this at the end of January this year:


And then this, the middle of March:


And now, things are getting just many times worse for Brazil and the possibility of their having these Olympics this year.  These are some of the latest revelations that have come out:


Check that out. This guy is a Brazilian himself and he's telling people to stay away, first. Second, he's an Olympic athlete who would normally want, of course, people to come to the Olympics but he's, again, advising people to not attend. That's pretty incredible alone.

At the same time as all this is going on, Brazil's President is in the middle of a scandal investigation she may well be impeached for and as soon as this evening and there are other people in the government, too, accused of financial wrongs.


The government has had the worst or near worst

How the Rio Olympics Could Cement 

a Brazilian Coup


The nation itself has had to warn pregnant women to stay away from these Olympics due to the Zika virus and because it's considered the epicenter of the problem and outbreak.

Brazil warns pregnant women to 

stay away from Olympics


Taking that one big, no, huge step further, there's this warning and to anyone and everyone who might attend:


Finally, as if all that weren't far and awful enough, there's the pollution of Rio and Brazil.


The athletes even have to train in the pollution, nearly unbelievably.



It's as I said. I think these are likely to be the least attended and certainly most filed Summer Olympics, in fact, Olympics, period, since likely their being begun again, all those decades ago. 

The poor people of Brazil will be made all the poorer with this, all this.

And meantime, for the Olympics overall, perhaps now the IOC will finally, finally give up taking them around the world every 4 years to different cities. It frequently ended up bankrupting cities. Perhaps they could locate it in Greece, permanently.


Saturday, March 19, 2016

On These Coming Summer Olympics?


I wrote earlier about this year's coming Summer Olympics:

Rio-2016-Logo

This Year's Coming Summer Olympics


Between their pollution and the Zika virus, I felt sure these Olympics will quite possibly be the least attended in years.

Now, on top of all those problems and controversies, it seems they aren't done there, they've had to add to it. This news broke this week, internationally:


It seems there's been a great deal of corruption, from the previous Presidente to the current one. And the current one was trying, this week, to give that previous one, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, cover and protection by making him a defacto member of her government so he wouldn't be prosecuted.

I tell you, I have to think the International Olympic Committee is nothing but regretting giving Brazil these Olympics.  I stand by what I said earlier, the closer we get to these Summer Olympics, the more it looks like they will be under attended and possibly greatly so.

Stay tuned.


Sunday, January 31, 2016

This Year's Coming Summer Olympics


Rio-2016-Logo

I would nearly bet this year's 2016 Summer Olympics will be the least attended games in years and there are 2 rather significant reasons in their own right. 

'Rio's filth' spoiling 2016 Summer Olympics


Rio de Janeiro water quality concerns 

continue to rise


and


We shall see.

I certainly wish them well (for what it's worth).



Sunday, February 23, 2014

Final Olympic medal count

1
Russia
13
11
9
33
2
Norway
11
5
10
26
3
Canada
10
10
5
25
4
United States
9
7
12
28
5
Netherlands
8
7
9
24
6
Germany
8
6
5
19
7
Switzerland
6
3
2
11
8
Belarus
5
0
1
6
9
Austria
4
8
5
17
10
France
4
4
7
15
11
Poland
4
1
1
6
12
China
3
4
2
9
13
South Korea
3
3
2
8
14
Sweden
2
7
6
15
15
Czech Republic
2
4
2
8
16
Slovenia
2
2
4
8
17
Japan
1
4
3
8
18
Finland
1
3
1
5
19
Great Britain
1
1
2
4
20
Ukraine
1
0
1
2
21
Slovakia
1
0
0
1
22
Italy
0
2
6
8
23
Latvia
0
2
2
4
24
Australia
0
2
1
3
25
Croatia
0
1
0
1
26
Kazakhstan
0
0
1
1
Repeat after me:

WE'RE NUMBER FOUR!!  WE'RE NUMBER FOUR!!

There is this, anyway:
United States is king of the bronze

Some facts on the final Olympics counts for us:

It didn’t look good for the United States. No medals in individual figure skating for the first time since 1936. No medals in speedskating for the first time since 1984. The four most identifiable Winter Olympians — Shaun White, Bode Miller, Lindsey Vonn, Shani Davis — won a total of one bronze medal. (In Vonn’s defense, she wasn’t competing in Sochi due to injury.) The women’s hockey team blew a late 2-0 lead in the gold-medal game and the men’s team was outscored 6-0 in the medal rounds. Still, it wasn’t all bad. American athletes won 28 medals, good for second on the overall medal count. (That was nine fewer medals than the U.S. won in Vancouver, however.) Team USA’s 12 bronze medals were the most for any nation. It’s the third time in the past four Winter Olympics the Americans have won that tally.

Links:  The 14 most fascinating facts about the final 2014 Winter Olympics medal count

Inside the Final Medal Count at the 2014 Winter Olympics


Monday, August 13, 2012

On humankind




We're great at spectacle, we humans.

Aren't we?

We'll spend thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on big, beautiful, dazzling, even decadent ceremonies and celebrations.

We aren't worth a damn at clothing, feeding, housing or seeing to the health of the poor, though, are we?

Tragic.

Damn shame.

It would be nice if we cared.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Entertainment tonight


One of the big buzzes from the Olympics right now, besides Michael Phelps' swimming or the Phelps-Lochte rivalry for medals, is the US Swim Team's music video which has gone viral. Here it is:

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Vancouver Olympics: So many things going wrong

This Winter Olympics started out on such a bad foot, what with the young luge competitor being killed in trials, the day before it opened.

Horrible.

And from there, it hasn't gotten worse, certainly, but it's definitely gone badly.

In the opening ceremonies, the fourth pillar of the Olympic cauldron failed to lift, screwing up the all-important introduction to it all.

Then, the rest of the world seems covered in snow--including Dallas, Texas, for pity's sake--but Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada didn't have enough snow for the games for a while.

Does that make any sense?

China has too much snow. Washington, DC, the list goes on.

What a bad break.

Let's see, what else has gone wrong?

Yesterday I heard a report about the mountainsides being groomed by people with shoes (wth?), which made the course rough, uneven and slow.

Then, the Alpine race schedule for the Vancouver Olympics had been revised--again--after the postponement of Tuesday’s men’s super combined and the women’s events were rearranged last week (though there were no new revisions to the women’s schedule this week).

Next, check this out--first, not enough snow, then this: "Tuesday’s Olympic men’s super combined has been postponed because of heavy snow on the top of the Whistler Creekside racecourse and soft snow conditions brought on by snowfall at the bottom of the mountain. The cold temperatures that helped bring about a smooth men’s downhill on Monday after two days of weather delays turned what had been a forecast of light rain for Tuesday into a significant snowstorm overnight. Tuesday’s women’s downhill training was also canceled."

I don't think I ever remember an Olympics with such problems.

But wait. There's more. This from last week:

"Vancouver Olympic organizers announced Tuesday that 20,000 tickets would be canceled for events at Cypress Mountain, including high-profile sports like men’s and women’s halfpipe and ski cross. Warm weather and rain have created unstable conditions in some spectator areas at Cypress, organizers said. They previously had canceled 8,000 tickets for snowboard cross events this week."

Finally, yesterday, it seems the Zamboni-type machine on the men's speedskating course broke down . (I say Zamboni-type because it wasn't a Zamboni. Somebody thought they'd save money by getting a cheaper one from another company. Anyone ever hear of "you get what you pay for"?).

How embarassing.

It seems the officials "stood looking sheepish as a small technical crew scratched their heads and tried to solve the problems."

Not good.

If this doesn't change, these may go down as the "bumbling, non-working, Socialist Olympics."

Man, let's hope not.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Thoughts on our world

Seeing the opening of the Olympic Games last evening, from Beijing, made me think how clever mankind can be, both collectively and individually. We all get together and create and see these wonderful spectacles of sight and sound and cooperation. And then we go back to our own homes and countries and all the intelligence and possibility seems to go out the door, so to speak.

We get back on our own home turfs and start thinking that "those people" out there, whoever we fear, are "out to get us" and that we must protect ourselves from them, whether they're Russians and Soviets or Vietnamese or Koreans or Blacks or Chinese or Communists or gays or whoever just isn't like us.

We let our fears and even ignorance of our fellow man and the world take over.

Instead of working together for all of our betterment, we feel and think we have to work to keep "what is ours" and/or to make sure that, "in the future" we have enough.

And it's true for the stereotypical "hillbilly" from Appalachia from a century ago, right down to some people who are supposed to be leading us in and from Washington, today.

I think it's this kind of thinking that Vice President Dick Cheney, his ilk and those of this administration seem so concerned about. It's why we attacked Iraq, it seems. After all, we must have all that oil, mustn't we?

You'd think that, after all the centuries of struggle, we would all, collectively, come together and work together to solve the issues of disease, hunger, pollution, even war--all our problems.

We could do it.

Friday, August 8, 2008

A big Friday

So oil is down to $115.00/barrel today, the Dow is up, the dollar is up against the Euro and the British Pound--since they didn't raise their interest rates--and the Olympics starts today in Japan.

A big news day, to be sure.

The question for the banks--and the American people--is, will we witness and have to finance another bank failure in the next 24 hours? Will the FDIC have to march into yet another bank this evening and close it up because it's "upside down", financially.

Hopefully not, certainly.

If they don't have to, it would be nice to break the 3-week straight we've had on these things.

Hopefully it's a quiet, uneventful evening and weekend.

Enjoy, y'all.