Olympics Day 3

First topic message reminder :

Day 3 of the Games and the first main weekday. Men's gymnastics today, we also have individual archery and the cross country in the three day event. Much more as well, including Rowing and Swimming. We kick off at 0830 with South Korea and New Zealand in the men's hockey.

Is it unfair that participants in team sports such as Basketball, Hockey and Football get to listen to their own countries national anthem prior to the start of every match, whilst participants in individual sports such as athletics, swimming, badminton, judo, gymnastics etc (i.e. the sports normally associated with a Summer Olympics prior to 1988) won't get a cats in hells chance of listening to their own national anthem until he or she wins the event they entered into?

practical rather than unfair

gboycottnut wrote:Is it unfair that participants in team sports such as Basketball, Hockey and Football get to listen to their own countries national anthem prior to the start of every match, whilst participants in individual sports such as athletics, swimming, badminton, judo, gymnastics etc (i.e. the sports normally associated with a Summer Olympics prior to 1988) won't get a cats in hells chance of listening to their own national anthem until he or she wins the event they entered into?

Not really. The only way around it would be to scrap the anthems (in the football etc) altogether then. You can't play each anthem before a swimming/athletics heat and so on otherwise the games would go on forever.

mystiroakey wrote:practical rather than unfair

I was thinking more along the lines of no national anthems being played at the start of matches for all the team sport events until the time of the medal ceremony for the winning team.

Was at the Table Tennis tonight for the men's last 16. We saw some fantastic matches - the world number 1 was taken to 7 games by a Belarussian and eventually came through, the world number 6 was knocked out by a lower-ranked Romanian and a match between someone from Hong Kong and North Korea got very heated deep into the 7th game. Does anyone know what the yellow card in Table Tennis is for? The guy from Hong Kong was shown it twice!

Really enjoyed it, and left us wanting more. A quick check online reveals that tickets are very hard to come by though.

gboycottnut wrote:

mystiroakey wrote:practical rather than unfair

I was thinking more along the lines of no national anthems being played at the start of matches for all the team sport events until the time of the medal ceremony for the winning team.

right yeah i get your point. dunno dude- i dont really like national anthems anyway- I suppose its just the done thing across the board in all sports wether its the olympics or not.

Apparently a yellow card in TT is for misbehaviour.

GB Women won their first ever olympic volleyball match over Algeria 3 sets to 2. A fine achievement given how Algeria were strong favourites.