Olympics

Perhaps I'm noticing this because we are winning so much but... there seem to be some sour faced/ rude losers out there. I'm looking at you Dutch hockey girls (not to mention the silver and bronze medalists behind Max Whitlock a couple of days back...)

Dutch side huddled together in Jesus Christ Superstar type formation for what seemed like eternity, when to shake hands with the winners might have been more the ticket. The Brazilian silver and bronze guys wanted to pose alone for photographs without the GB winner with them. Seemed like poor form to me.

Just like four years ago this Olympics has been so inspirimg and uplifting.

...and touching wood more to come over the next two days. Come on GB.

I'd like to stay up but I don't think I could do it.

I don't know if the redistribution licence would allow it, but I wish the BBC would follow up the Olympics with time-shifted coverage of all the events that they didn't cover properly at the time or that were at inconvenient hours for most people, or at least every non-qualifier round. I don't care that I already know the result. I just want to enjoy the atmosphere of all the pre-event speculation, the mid-event commentary and the post-event discussion. A website clip showing the highlights just doesn't cut it.

 That poor man. He will be reliving it endlessly and wishing he had just stepped back and kept his distance from his opponent for that last second. 

I am in tears.

That is exactly what Olympic Breakfast is on the BBC The Matthew.  

There's no offside in hockey! 

I think with many of the events ordinary Brazilians were just priced out of attending. A great shame not to have that 'home crowd' feeling for their own athletes and of course for everyone else competing as well. 

Thought I might get one into the fishing net with that

Clare Balding has just been saying that one advantage of the timezone difference is that with the most popular sports such as the track events being pushed into our early morning the "minority sports" have been given a chance to shine. I wish more was made of the lower-profile sports in the UK, because although they are sometimes shown on TV more often than every four years they're given so little promotion that unless you're a dedicated fan of all sports it's all too easy to miss them, buried as they are under hundreds of hours of football, cricket, golf and tennis.

So, with the last event coming to a close, we now have seventeen days to wait until the Paralympics, and then four years during which most people will forget that all these wonderful sports exist.

I can't actually remember an Olympics without her, though it turns out she's only been presenting it on TV since 2000. It wouldn't seem like the Olympics if she wasn't presenting it.

Relatedly, it was strange to have gymnastics without the late Mitch Fenner.