Olympic Bullshit

faustus

Well-known member
Olympic Bullshit Watch

Bit early to start whining about the olympics, but never mind:

Games chief tells Britain to wake up to 'extraordinary opportunity' of Olympics

Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog), said he was concerned that many businesses and members of the public would not recognise its scale until shortly before it started.

"When the world starts arriving here, the light will begin to go on and people will start to say 'Wow, I had no idea. This will be the experience of a lifetime.' This is my real concern," he said.

"The thing that keeps me up at night is whether we will take full advantage of the extraordinary opportunity coming our way this summer. I know that by the time we get to the end of this most people will say that they had no idea of the scale and opportunity of this, if only. I don't want too many if onlys."

Funnily enough, comments aren't switched on for this particular piece of crack reporting
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
When the world starts arriving here for..two weeks. An extraordinary opportunity to do what, exactly? I'm sure we'll sell slightly more T-shirts than normal. Is that what he means?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I'm seriously thinking about renting out my flat if I can tidy it up in time. Is that the kind of opportunity they mean?
 

Leo

Well-known member
i know a couple in sydney who rented out their apartment during the olympics because they wanted to avoid the whole thing, and then later got kind of swept up in all the excitement and actually got some tickets and came back to town to attend! personally, i'm more the type to want to get out of town even if i didn't rent out my place.
 

faustus

Well-known member
i know a couple in sydney who rented out their apartment during the olympics because they wanted to avoid the whole thing, and then later got kind of swept up in all the excitement and actually got some tickets and came back to town to attend! personally, i'm more the type to want to get out of town even if i didn't rent out my place.

i'm definitely not coming back to england until it's all over and out of the papers and off the telly
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's gonna be horrible, the whole city will be crawling with cops (and squaddies!) in full zero-tolerance mode. You won't be able to fart without picking up an on-the-spot penalty. Which would be bad news for me, I can tell you. Glad to be out of it to be honest.

One of my former housemates has successfully tried out for some sort of display performance shenanigans, she's well into it. I'm sure it's going to be fun for the people actually taking part in some way.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
stadium-athens-415x275.jpg


Stratford in October 2012.

Of Athens post-2004: “The children are only interested in basketball and football. All the other Olympic sports — nobody has any interest.” This is pretty much the point, isn't it. Lots of the sports included are objectively rubbish.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And as Rich pointed out during the last lot, it's pointless to include sports like football, rugby, tennis and so on that already have their own World Cup or equivalent which is much more prestigious than the Olympic competition in the same sport.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I was amused to see that synchronised swimming was accidentally oversold meaning that tickets had to be returned. I guess that was a relief for some people who got stuck with tickets.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
@tea, and if the more minor sports were themselves popular enough, their own world championships would be watched by millions, and they wouldn't have to sell themselves by lumping themselves in with clay pigeon shooting. It's a pretty desperate manoeuvre by any standards. The track events appeal, but the introduction of the Athletics World Champs in 1983 at the very least took the shine off the Olympics. For all that the 2010 WC was rubbish for actual football, as an event it trumps the Olympics easily.

The Winter Olympics are better anyways. Luge shits all over fencing.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I like curling for its sheer ridiculousness. Wonder if a commentator has ever made a 'curling one out' gag on air? The temptation must be ever-present.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i always feel vaguely revulsed when a football commentator describes a free kick as a 'curler'.

I like ice hockey for the violence.
 

Bangpuss

Well-known member
Each host country gets to introduce a couple of sports as Olympic events as a one-off. So for example, we could technically choose snooker, darts or 20Twenty cricket -- the logical choices because we're good at darts and snooker, and cricket is the national summer sport that fans go mad about (and we're not bad at that now, either.

But I'd be interested to know what the Olympic committee have chosen. I bet they've gone for stiupid shit like water aerobics or horseback bow and arrow.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Squash would be a good shout. A proper sport that is played in quite a few countries and which is physically demanding but which could do with a shot in the arm.
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
I liked the one where they set buildings on fire, and the different countries competed to see who could put them out the fastest.
 

luka

Well-known member
hi. im not a fan of the Olympics, far from it but i do know it done some good. my little brother built it. he got a job as a trainee foreman thanks to the Olympics.
 
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