The Olympics Thread

[Roofus]

They don't start until tomorrow, but the hilarity started early.

Officials Lock Selves Out of Stadium

Let the Games begin, once they can just get this damn thing open.

The opening ceremony isn’t until Friday evening, but the Olympic events kicked off at the Maracanã yesterday with some women’s soccer, a necessity to cram all the matches in. And just before kickoff, officials realized they didn’t have the key to one of the stadium’s two gates. Enter the fire patrol with the bolt cutters.

[Bandit]

3 athletes have already been armed robbery victims inside the Olympic Village, probably by 11 year olds like what happens there in tourist areas. Hooray for third world countries. Nice job, Olympic Committee.

[Bandit]

[Bandit]

Moroccan Boxer Arrested For Double Rape That Happened Inside Olympic Village

[Roofus]

Bus full of Chinese basketball reporters caught in roadside gunfight on the way to Olympic Village in Rio



The 2016 Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin today, but for some it has already began with a bang.

Upon their arrival in Rio, a bus full of Chinese basketball reporters was caught in a roadside gunfight. Six locals were killed in the exchange, but no Chinese casualties have been reported.

Initially, the Chinese-language Basketball Magazine posted onWeibo that Chinese national basketball team players had been caught near the flurry of bullets, where they would have presumably suffered from flashbacks to their two exhibition matches against Team USA last month.

However, Basketball Magazine later corrected this report. Upon arriving at the Rio airport, players and reporters boarded different buses headed for the Olympic Village. The bus full of basketball players made it there without incident, while the one full of reporters got held up about 2km away from the airport.

Chinese hurdler Shi Dongpeng received a less dangerous, but more bizarre greeting in Rio earlier this week. Upon arriving at his hotel,Shi was vomited on by one Brazilian man, while an accomplice made off with his luggage.

Elsewhere in Rio, a Russian official, and reportedly a master of jiu-jitsu, snatched away a robber's gun and shot him dead in the street, according to police. Russia's embassy in Rio has denied the reports.

Looks like it's shaping up to be an interesting next few weeks.

[Roofus]

Report: Olympic kayaker capsizes after hitting a sofa



Pollutants may not be the only thing that get you in Rio's waters.

A Sky News reporter tweeted that an Olympic kayaker on a practice run capsized after hitting a sofa. The Olympic organizers are currently investigating.



It would hardly be a shocker if someone did encounter a rogue sofa. Photos of Guanabara Bay in the run-up to the Olympics showed all manner of trash and furniture in the waters. 

In fact, it's not the sofas that are the real hazard. The water quality in Rio is so poor that scientists recommended athletes keep their mouths closed to avoid ingesting it.

An AP article from last week reported:

[A] survey of the aquatic Olympic and Paralympic venues has revealed consistent and dangerously high levels of viruses from the pollution, a major black eye on Rio's Olympic project that has set off alarm bells among sailors, rowers and open-water swimmers.

In light of the findings, biomedical expert Valerie Harwood had one piece of advice for travelers to Rio: "Don't put your head under water."

The kayak prelims take place on Sunday, so we'll keep you updated on any further furniture encounters.

[melancholy]

So we have always watched the Olympics in our household. But this year the station that we normally watch it on must have some kind of issue because we can't pick up the signal with our antenna. No problem, this is 2016, there surely is some kind of streaming option, right?

Nope. They block all access to live streaming of Olympics in the US unless you pay for a premium cable or satellite package. So I'm looking for solutions around it, and I find a Lifehacker article that says to use a VPN to watch it for free from literally any country that isn't the US. Even fucking China can stream the Olympics for free, but not here. I eventually settled on Canada because they live stream nearly every event.

I know it's petty in the grand scheme of things, but it's amazing how much shit Americans have to pay for that the rest of the world gets for free.

[Skynet]

So we have always watched the Olympics in our household. But this year the station that we normally watch it on must have some kind of issue because we can't pick up the signal with our antenna. No problem, this is 2016, there surely is some kind of streaming option, right?

Nope. They block all access to live streaming of Olympics in the US unless you pay for a premium cable or satellite package. So I'm looking for solutions around it, and I find a Lifehacker article that says to use a VPN to watch it for free from literally any country that isn't the US. Even fucking China can stream the Olympics for free, but not here. I eventually settled on Canada because they live stream nearly every event.

I know it's petty in the grand scheme of things, but it's amazing how much shit Americans have to pay for that the rest of the world gets for free.

That's OK, one of the major free to air networks here has it streaming and apparently they've managed to fuck it up. Not only that, but instead of airing the games on their main channel, they put it on one of their secondary channels so we could watch assholes on a morning show sit around talking about the games.

[Bandit]

The cable channels NBC owns are airing most of it in the States.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[melancholy]

The cable channels NBC owns are airing most of it in the States.

Exactly, you have to have cable or satellite to watch it. I have neither. Not having cable to watch it on TV is one thing, but they block all streaming unless you can prove you pay for cable.

[Bandit]

It's their "Fuck You" to cord cutters. They will probably do the same thing to NFL games when they start streaming this season for MNF and NFL Channel games.

I keep cable for sports mainly, and it's easier to DVR something than to look for a torrent. I would rather just do that once a month for UFC Pay Per Views than several times a week.

[Bandit]

I just read Phelps named his son Boomer. Boomer Phelps. Ugh.

And you're a Ravens fan, Michael. You don't name your kid after a Bengals quarterback. I hope your buddy Ray Lewis yells at you.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

The star of the Olympics.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

Fuck yeah. We're #1 and nobody cares but people who hate real sports like football (the real kind with 300 pound motherfuckers!) Suck it, Lithuania!

[Big Boss Man]

Well we hosted four summer Olympics so it's all good.

[Roofus]

During Diving Event, Pool Transforms From Crystal Blue to Garishly Green

RIO DE JANEIRO — An unsettling thing happened at the Olympic diving pool on Tuesday: the water inexplicably turned green, just in time for the women’s synchronized 10-meter platform diving competition.

Officials said they did not know what caused the trouble, exactly. But they declared the water had been tested and was not dangerous. It was an unsettling sight, appearing to become greener and murkier as the day went on, having been a lovely light blue on Monday.

The British diver Tom Daley, who won a bronze medal in the same pool the day before, posted a photograph on Twitter showing the contrast between the colors of the pools. “Ermmmm – what happened?” he said.



The adjoining pool at the aquatic center, used for synchronized swimming and water polo, remained its normal blue color, which made the extreme greenness of the diving pool all the more striking.

Meanwhile, diving practice went on as planned, and so did the women’s synchronized event. Competitors generally said that the swampiness of the water did not put them off their form, although they found it weird and puzzling.

“I’ve never dived in anything like it,” said Britain’s Tonia Couch, who finished fifth, along with Lois Coulson.

The situation overshadowed the news conference after the event, with reporters more interested in the state of the water than in the quality of the diving. Officials released a brief statement that did not address the main questions: what had happened, why had it happened so quickly, and why wasn’t there a simple explanation, given that this is the sort of thing that commonly happens to swimming pools?

“To ensure a high quality field of play is mandatory to the Rio 2016 organizing committee,” the statement said. “Water tests at Maria Lenk Aquatic Center diving pool were conducted and found to be no risk to the athletes’ health. We’re investigating what the cause of the situation was.”

The statement also said, “We’re pleased to say the competition was successfully completed.”

Officials at the news conference declined to take questions from the news media about the water.

Steve Henderson, who owns AAA Pool Service in Santa Rosa, Calif., said that although he was not an expert on Brazilian swimming pools, there were two likely causes: a sudden algae bloom, which could be eradicated by zapping the pool with extra chlorine overnight; or a chemical reaction between chlorine and a metal in the water, most likely manganese.

“If they have manganese in the water, you will get a reaction depending on level of chlorination,” Henderson said. He said that it was a normal occurrence, as even a slight imbalance can cause a violent color change, and not a cause of alarm.

Still, he said, he found it puzzling that officials at the Games did not have a better explanation.

“I don’t know what they have down there in Rio, but any new commercial system, at least here in the U.S., is completely automated,” he said. “They self-test. If there’s an issue, everyone is alerted right away. I have some customers where I can monitor their pools from my phone.”

After the diving competition, the athletes said that the water had indeed been striking, even shocking, but had not put them off their stride.

“The first dive we went out and we thought, Whoa, this is greener than it was earlier in practice,” said Roseline Filion of Canada, who won the bronze with her partner, Meaghan Benfeito. “But we came here with a mind-set of ‘expect the unexpected.’ If the water was going to be orange, blue, green — it didn’t matter.”

Benfeito said that on sunny days, blue water can sometimes make diving more difficult, since it’s hard to distinguish between the sky and the water as divers rotate in the air. So the green water actually helped the divers see the pool more clearly.

Was she worried that the water would be unpleasant or riddled with bacteria? Not really, she said. “We kept our mouths shut, just in case.”

[melancholy]

I did notice that when I watched the diving competition. I thought it looked pretty green, but I thought that maybe the pool floor was a color that made the water look green.

[Roofus]

Judo Olympic Medalist Got Robbed On The Beach Following Medal Win

When it was revealed that the 2016 Summer Olympic games would be coming to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, all officials could think about was the scenery and how beautiful it would look on television. Just like every other location in the world, however, and there is a dark side to Rio and it has become a hotspot and major target for thieves in Brazil.

Judoka Dirk Van Tichelt earned a Bronze Medal in the Men’s 73KG Olympic Games this year, and later he was actually robbed on the beach! While the thief didn’t make it away with Tichelt’s medal, he was able to wrangle the phone from the athlete.