Les jeux Olympiques

[tetsabb]

Three days in, and nothing of interest? Other than les jambons not enjoying the opening ceremony

First British athlete to win gold was Aaron Grandidier, playing rugby 7s for the land of his grand-mère.  Raised Orpiington way, it seems


metro.co.uk/2024/07/28/british-athlete-wins-first-olympic-gold-paris-competing-france-21311907/amp/

[eeyoresmum]

Andy Murray is a bloody legend. Saving all those match points! Couldn't believe it.
And Adam Peaty - another amazing champ. So well done, after beating those demons.

[celebaelin]

Who are

...les jambons...

tets?

I infer that it's slang for the English but if so it's not one I've heard; unlike say 'les rosbif'.

Urban Dictionary has jambon as:

Limp, cowardly or particularly lame individual. A non-homophobic substitute for “gay.”

Is it that?  Because of the rain?

[jenny]

I mentally translated that as “the gammons” if that helps, Cele.

[celebaelin]

I had thought of that but found no corresponding reference when I went looking although I've heard and understand the English expression.  Looking it up the French for gammon is jambon fumé so maybe it is that.

The usual translation of jambon is simply ham - I found one reference to a type of ham and cheese pastries called les jambons but no mention of gammon in the absence of the fumé (smoked) part.

btw At the end of day 2 the UK are in 13th position with 0 golds, 2 silvers and 2 bronzes.  1st to 4th are Japan, Australia, USA and France in that order currently.

[amanda]

We may have blitzed the current lot of swimming medals, but as the Games progress, the USA will probably overtake us.

[franticllama]

Simone Biles is unbelievably good. We watched her qualification round yesterday. The gymnasts in general are incredible, but Simone Biles is on another level.
On the hockey front, the GB women lost to Spain 2-1. I only saw the last quarter, but GB were very frustrating - they just didn't have any composure once they were in the circle.
The GB men were more successful in their first game, winning 4-0 against an oponent that currently escapes me. They then drew 2-2 against SA, which is a score line I definitely would have taken at the start of the game. But SA were ahead until near the end of the game

[tetsabb]

Jul 28, 2024 20:19:51 GMT celebaelin said:

Who are

...les jambons...

tets?

I infer that it's slang for the English but if so it's not one I've heard; unlike say 'les rosbif'.

Urban Dictionary has jambon as:

Limp, cowardly or particularly lame individual. A non-homophobic substitute for “gay.”

Is it that?  Because of the rain?

I was just attempting a feeble multilingual joke on 'gammon'

[tetsabb]

I just saw a table of how various nations are doing in the shooting events so far. China top with 2 golds. No medals yet for USA, which strikes me as kinda ironic, given the obsession with guns among so many Murcans.

[RLDavies]

The Olympics tend to pass me by. I only learned a few days ago that it was happening this year.

The only real interest I have in the games is the design aspect of logos and pictograms. This time around, France has come up with some really weird and not very good pictograms. Here's designer Linus Boman to discuss them.

[crissdee]

tetsabb. Different attitude to shooting over there from what I have gathered. A lot of hunting, and combat-oriented competition, but not so much on Olympic style target shooting.

[celebaelin]

Two golds, two silvers and a bronze today (so far) puts the UK in 7th place.

The medals table is currently headed by South Korea.

[suze]

Jul 29, 2024 14:10:18 GMT crissdee said:

Different attitude to shooting over there from what I have gathered. A lot of hunting, and combat-oriented competition, but not so much on Olympic style target shooting.

Olympic shooting tends to be dominated by soldiers rather than hunters.  The US does still have twice as many gold medals in it over history as any other nation, but China and Italy have been the leading nations in recent Olympicses.

The "obvious" event for hunters would be the running target event, where the athletes shoot at plywood cutouts in the form of large animals which are moved across the field on train tracks.  That one has been dropped from the Olympics, but they still have it at the World Shooting Championships.  The Americans aren't much good at it though; it is heavily dominated by Russians and Scandinavians.

I've only seen bits and pieces of the Olympic action so far, but I did see Canada dump France out of the women's rugby sevens this evening.  That might be worth my first "Fuck, yea" of these Games!

[pdr]

Jul 29, 2024 11:05:49 GMT tetsabb said:

I just saw a table of how various nations are doing in the shooting events so far. China top with 2 golds. No medals yet for USA, which strikes me as kinda ironic, given the obsession with guns among so many Murcans.

I saw this issue raised on one of the Colonial forums - they felt that American gun enthusiasts were disadvantaged because the Olympic even didn't take place in a school with children as targets.

PDR

[suze]

In a similar vein, I discover that there have been quite a few journalistic pieces written about why it is that South Korea utterly dominates archery competition at the Olympics.

One explanation which is sometimes attempted is that firearms came relatively late to Korea, and hence the bow and arrow was thus a serious military weapon later than in most other countries.  It's true as far as it goes, but they've still had guns for around five hundred years and so this explanation won't really do.

Another part of the explanation is that schoolchildren in South Korea are required to take a sport among their GCSE-equivalent subjects.  While the "sporty" boys usually take baseball or football as you'd expect, and the "sporty" girls are often steered towards badminton, archery is pretty much the default choice for the less sport-inclined.

The South Koreans are well on course to their declared target of five golds in the five archery events at the Olympics.

[tetsabb]

I have just seen video of Simone Biles doing a vault.
Her relationship with gravity is clearly quite different to that of most of us.

[jenny]

I watched the American gymnast (whose surname I can't spell but I think his first name is Steven) do a stunning routine on the pommel horse. The gymnastics and the ice skating are among the few Olympic events I can be bothered to watch if they crop up on something else I'm looking at.

[suze]

Nedoroscik.

He is of Slovakian heritage.

[jenny]

And now a female boxer had her nose broken by a transwoman (or possibly a male person with DSD) within 46 seconds of getting in the ring. What was the IOC thinking about to allow this? Apparently they go by "what it says on their passport" regardless of the fact that such documents are easily changed these days. The World Boxing Council has, for reasons of safety, forbidden biologically male people to box against biologically female people, because even with roughly uniform levels of fitness, the males’ average power during a punching motion was 162% greater than females’, with the least-powerful man still stronger than the most powerful woman.

The women boxers should simply refuse to take part in rounds where they are not matched with other biological women. It's not safe and it's not fair.

[barbados]

This particular incident isn’t as straightforward as it first looks.
The Algerian boxer competed in Tokyo, and it only became an issue when disqualified from the world championships last year for having a chromosome imbalance.

I don’t think the Italian stopped because of the gender issue, it was because of the broken nose she suffered

[jenny]

The fact remains the boxer didn't have a chromosome 'imbalance'; the boxer had male chromosomes.

You really think it's safe and fair for women to have to fight men who on average punch 162% harder? Since when is it a sport to watch men beat up women?

[barbados]

That isn’t what I am saying. This isn’t a choice it’s an affliction. Khelif is female, and has always been female, it isn’t someone wanting to compete against a weaker gender to win medals.

[jenny]

Well you and I will have to disagree there barb - it may well be that Khelif, like Castor Semenya, has been brought up as a female and identifies as female because she has a DSD which gives her a female phenotype. But the fact is that biologically she is male, as is Castor Semenya (who has fathered children) and has the extra punching power given to her by that. This is not safe or fair to biologically female competitors.

Oddly, given that Australia is generally speaking in favour of trans rights, there was a sensible article in the Courier and Mail about it.

[barbados]

Whatever else happens, I think we should all agree that Yusuf Dikeç is indeed the coolest olympian of all time.

If you aren’t aware of him, he’s This fella

[crissdee]

Makes me laugh slightly the way they are talking about his lack of ear protection, it's just an air pistol, and a relatively low-powered one at that. It's possible the pellets aren't even breaking the sound barrier. Unless there were several dozen competitors all shooting at once, the noise level is going to be no more than the audience is making anyway. As long as he can focus on the front sight of his pistol, he doesn't need specialized glasses

[suze]

Maybe you don't actually need ear defenders or special eyewear for that event, but most of the competitors did use them.

This guy was unknown to the general public until yesterday, but it turns out that he's been involved in sports shooting - mostly at not quite the top level - for twenty years.  He's been a World Police champion with a "center fire pistol" (I'm sure crissdee knows ..) and a European champion with a "standard pistol" (likewise), but hadn't been to the Olympics before.

But within Turkey at least, he was already known for his laid back style - he just wears his everyday glasses, with no ear defenders and with his free hand in his pocket.  Here he can be seen doing much the same at some competition in Turkey in 2021.  (The commentary is in Turkish, so I don't know precisely what it is.)

He is retired from the Jandarma Genel Komutanlığı. which is Turkey's rural police force.  In a model similar to Canada's, the cities of Turkey each have their own police departments, while the countryside is policed by a national organisation.  It is noted that the organisation has on occasion been used as cover for the true function of spies and such like ...

[eeyoresmum]

Aug 1, 2024 15:58:38 GMT jenny said:

Well you and I will have to disagree there barb - it may well be that Khelif, like Castor Semenya, has been brought up as a female and identifies as female because she has a DSD which gives her a female phenotype. But the fact is that biologically she is male, as is Castor Semenya (who has fathered children) and has the extra punching power given to her by that. This is not safe or fair to biologically female competitors.

Oddly, given that Australia is generally speaking in favour of trans rights, there was a sensible article in the Courier and Mail about it.

I read that Khelif has been beaten several times by women. 

[pdr]

Aug 1, 2024 21:59:08 GMT eeyoresmum said:

I read that Khelif has been beaten several times by women. 

Perhaps that's why he changed gender and took up boxing...

PDR

[pdr]

Aug 1, 2024 21:58:22 GMT suze said:

He's been a World Police champion with a "center fire pistol" (I'm sure crissdee knows ..) and a European champion with a "standard pistol" (likewise), but hadn't been to the Olympics before.

Essentially they are two categories of pistol - in competition terms "Centrefire" is more powerful and "standard" is less powerful. The technical difference is the arrangement of the primer (the stuff that starts the bang) in the cartridge.

In a centrefire cartridge the primer is in a single lump at the centre of the base and starts an evenly distributed flame through the propellant. The pistol's firing pin is in the central axis of the barrel.

The "standard class" uses "rimfire" ammunition in which the primer is a flat layer or even just an annular ring at the base of the cartridge (giving a less even, less consistent flame front) so the firing pin can essentially hit anywhere on the base. This allows the ammunition and also the pistol design to be simpler/cheaper to make and physically smaller due to the mechanical arrangement of the trigger/sear mechanism. But it also requires a cartridge whose base is thinner/weaker to allow the firing pin to crush it and make it go bang (stop me if I'm getting too technical here). This limits the total pressure the cartridge can safely take (also limiting the maximum pressure before they risk expanding and jamming in the breech), and that problem gets worse as the calibre increases so rimfire pistols are only made in smaller sizes and the cartridges are always "low power" compared to centre-fire ones. But this pressure limitation then means that the breech and barrel pressures and temperatures are lower, reducing the rigidity & strength requirements allowing rimfire pistols to be very much smaller and lighter in construction.

 

Rimfire pistols are popular in "security" rather than "military" uses because the small size of the pistol and ammunition makes them more convenient, and they are much safer to use in public spaces. The bullet they fire is small and low-velocity which means they are generally only lethal at very close range, and they won't go through one person and go on to those behind them. So for "bodyguard" roles such pistols can be used close-in against an attacker with very little risk to innocent bystanders. They also tend to wound rather than kill; disabling an attacker is more legally and socially acceptable than killing them in most 1st world jurisdictions.

[celebaelin]

Gosh, where to start.

Olympic boxing in particular isn't really so much about strength as it is technical skill - speed and accuracy.  In professional boxing it depends on the fighter in question such that winning fights isn't necessarily the same thing as being a good boxer.  This is why I wasn't a fan of 'Iron' Mike Tyson whose principle and defining attribute was his resilience - his ability to take a punch - which was just as well for him because his ability to dodge blows wasn't great.

Even so I guess you could argue the whole basis of the sport in any form or manner of execution is watching one person beat up another person - either that's something you can appreciate or it isn't.  From a moral point of view the gender of the participants is irrelevant - the whole notion of weight categories fairly narrowly delineates who can fight whom and it be deemed a fair competition.  The question of whether this results in a fair comparison in the event of participants being of different sexes gets a bit technical:

Gender similarities and differences in skeletal muscle and body composition between sexes: an MRI study of recreational cyclists

BMJ Volume 9 Issue 3 Alberto Belzunce, Johann Henckel, Anna Di Laura, Maria Horga, Alister James Hart

bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/9/3/e001672

...no differences were found when muscle volume was normalised by body weight (GMAX, p=0.54; GMED, p=0.14; GMIN, p=0.19).

On that basis the notion that weight categorised competition between males and females is unfair is a matter of perception based on traditional belief rather than more recently established scientific fact.  The available evidence put forward in the article suggests that it would be sexist to assert that weight for weight males are superior.

While gender differences in muscular cytology and biochemistry have been more generally observed this like for like comparison does not support the broad perception of a difference.  Being physically quite big myself my view of this is skewed so I'm finding it difficult to believe but the study appears to suggest that this 'no difference' finding is the correct appraisal gival a commonality of activity and adjusting for overall size.

This leaves us with the interesting notion that what really makes the difference might well be drive, dedication and commitment.