Archive for the ‘Distractions’ Category

What a games! I have such good memories of watching London 2012 and Rio 2016 was a superb performance from Team GB. In comparison, Tokyo 2020 was a little deflating because everything was on in the middle of the night and you would just wake up to see what happened. So, when Paris rolled around and back in our kind of timezone, I cleared my schedule to watch.

In fairness to the organisers, they were brave in trying to do something different with the opening ceremony. But it wasn’t my favourite part. The athletes parade is long enough when they are walking, let alone when you put them on a barge. And stuff needed faster cuts. That horse was running down The Seine for like five minutes. Just get Danny Boyle to direct it next time.

The water quality in The Seine was also an issue. But people in glasses houses and all that. The UK struggles with water pollution and there were similar problems in Rio.

Everything else was brilliant. The venues were beautiful. It was right in the heart of historic Paris. The Eiffel Tower was ever-present and made for some amazing finish lines. And world records were broken in a slow pool. I tried to take in as much as possible. At one point with the gymnastics on the TV, golf on my laptop and road cycling on my phone. I was pretty Olympic-fatigued by day 14.

Overall, we can be really proud of Team GB. Seventh in the medal table is a low finish for us. Japan is arguably on a post-hosting bounce, and similarly France were the hosts. But we would want to beat Netherlands and Australia. Some things just didn’t go our way with Josh Kerr, Matt Hudson-Smith, Beth Shriever, Beth Potter, Kimberley Woods and others narrowly missing out on gold. And it would have been great to see Kate French try to defend her title. But there were plenty of success stories, too: Alex Yee and Tom Pidpock both made amazing comebacks. Bryony Page smashed it, Keely Hodgkinson was a dominant as everyone expected and Nathan Hales set a massive new Olympic record in trap. Also, Toby Roberts is Spiderman.

So, despite being seventh, if you rank it in terms of total medals, we’re third behind the US and China. We have one first place, back in 1908 but by Atlanta in 1996 we were down to 36th place with just one gold and 15 total medals. Compare that to 14 golds and 65 medals in Paris. The BBC has a good breakdown. Many of our Olympic athletes are trying to fit training in around working full-time. When we fund British athletes, we unlock their potential and we win medals.

It’s a shame that Discovery+ own the rights. The BBC’s coverage of London 2012 was much better, whereas Discovery+ has consistently bad service and technical problems.

Two weeks until the Paralympics. We’re consistently the second strongest nation in the Paralympics, after China, so let’s hope we can keep that streak going.

Cav! The Merckx record has been topppled with Cavendish winning his 35th stage of the tour.

Otherwise, some had described it as a dull tour. It’s true that Pog mostly dominated. But Evenepoel and Vingegaard both took stages. I wasn’t sure about Pogačar at first but I’ve come around to him over the years. Shame he isn’t going to ride La Vuelta.

Fantasy league went well:

I had Pogačar-Vingegaard one-two as well as Almeida and Ciconne. Cav was my sprinter and while there were lots more points to be had with others, I’m happy with my choice.

Back to back finals. Not to mention we already hold the trophy on the women’s side. What a time to be an England fan. Shame that Southgate has gone. I managed to get a £100 disappointment offsetting bet on Spain half way through the match so even though football didn’t come home, I did come out in profit.

Tadej Pogačar. Others also cycled.

I almost managed to catch Bogdan in the fantasy league. I had Pogačar and Martínez but alas, wasted all of my sprinter points on Jakobsen.

Didn’t want to be in the Premiership anyway.

Well-earned victory by Switzerland. It was a good song. Croatia I was a bit more surprised at. Also that France scored so many jury points even that Graham Norton said his voice broke for the jury final. How can these scores be accurate when the technical quality was notably low?

Disappointing night for the UK. After 2022, we known people will vote for us. We just need a good song and it just wasn’t a banger. The staging was very innovative. But it was also in a toilet an I don’t want to look at a toilet for three minutes.

It was odd that Israel were allowed to compete with Russia have been excluded from the competition when both countries are accused of committing war crimes. People have expressed surprise about Israel getting so much of the public vote but I think it is the nature of voting. Israel’s actions are highly polarising. 66% of people think they should stop committting genocide, according to YouGov, but 13% think they should continue. That’s ten million people in the UK. That’s a lot of votes. And you can’t unvote Israel, not really tactically vote against them given countries give points to ten or so countries and there were 23 options to choose from.

Ironically, Eden Golan lives in Russia. Also ironic that Graham Norton commented on our Loreen is such a good performer and then she sat on a chair the whole time.

Good to see Finland in the final, and Ireland not only in the final but coming 6th. I’ll finish by allowing Nemo to sing us out.

Sean Conway is an ultra-endurance athlete. But he is also a pretty normal guy. Until 30 he was a photographer before deciding his life as boring and quitting to do cool stuff. He cycled around the world, completed a triathlon along the entire British coastline and last year set the world record when he completed 105 full distance triathlons in 105 days.

The talk was him telling his life story which was highly entertaining. Plus I got a signed book.

If you like following this kind of thing, Sean said Jonas Deichmann is going for 120 triathlons this year. Sean and Jonas have been friends since Sean took the self-supported cycling across Europe record off Jonas: some friendly competition going on at the moment!

It’s less than 100 days until Paris! TCD put on a small exhibition last week and had some cool stuff: Olympic torches, kit, medals and display boards on famous athletes.

At the end of January, Dire Staits guitarist and front man Mark Knopfler auctioned off over 100 of his guitars.

It was announced months in advance and took place at the famous auction house Christie’s. The offer bidding in person, on the phones and via their online system in a hybrid style, as well as live streaming the event on YouTube. The sale proved to be much more popular than they had expected and was delayed by two hours as their online auction system was overwhelmed.

Everything in it went for big money. The Les Paul he used for Money For Nothing was expected to go for a large amount and predictably did: £470,000. But even the guitars he received as gifts and barely played went for £20,000-£30,000 and upwards. And thing like the Fender Strats he used on stage were around £100,000. Here are some of the “budget” lots:

Predictably then, I didn’t buy anything. But it was an exciting event to watch: all six hours of it, not including the two hour delay!

Ever since I first watched the IRONMAN World Championship, I wanted a Felt IA. And now I have one. On Zwift.

For years I worked hard to get to level 37 to buy a digital Felt IA from the in-game shop. I made it to level 33. Then in December, they redid all of the levels and dropped the minimum level requirement for that bike down to 16.