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Isn't it funny how atheists spend moretime hating on Christians than anyone else?

Let's ban French Poodle 666.........

And american palo as well!!!

Went to see Brazil-Belgium today... Brazil... the defense wasn't really convincing, Belgium should have scored at least on 2 occasions where they had nice counterattacks and somehow managed to completely fuck it up...

For the rest... way too hot still around here... sitting and sweating like a pig for hours, seats too low and I'm not really that tall (taller than mate still...) As a good Euro I was for Belgium, but well... they are better at making beer, best beer in the world (just a little insult for Felix

Falc,
yeah...California.

Capt. Shit,
It was a better game than when they first played. Belgium still played with all their players behind the ball for the most part.

Captain Shithead wrote:And american palo as well!!!

Went to see Brazil-B***** today... Brazil... the defense wasn't really convincing, B***** should have scored at least on 2 occasions where they had nice counterattacks and somehow managed to completely fuck it up...

For the rest... way too hot still around here... sitting and sweating like a pig for hours, seats too low and I'm not really that tall (taller than mate still...) As a good Euro I was for B*****, but well... they are better at making beer, best beer in the world (just a little insult for Felix

Zeus,

I don't mind about your not appreciating German beer (not really an insult to me, all it does is demonstrate your lack of good taste), but your language is very foul at times. I mean, you've used the most offensive word in the universe THREE TIMES IN ONE SINGLE MESSAGE. Please try to avoid this word in the future. Thank you.

Now that Belgium has Budweiser, no doubt the best beer in the world!

Felix K wrote:

Captain Shithead wrote:And american palo as well!!!

Went to see Brazil-B***** today... Brazil... the defense wasn't really convincing, B***** should have scored at least on 2 occasions where they had nice counterattacks and somehow managed to completely fuck it up...

For the rest... way too hot still around here... sitting and sweating like a pig for hours, seats too low and I'm not really that tall (taller than mate still...) As a good Euro I was for B*****, but well... they are better at making beer, best beer in the world (just a little insult for Felix

Zeus,

I don't mind about your not appreciating German beer (not really an insult to me, all it does is demonstrate your lack of good taste), but your language is very foul at times. I mean, you've used the most offensive word in the universe THREE TIMES IN ONE SINGLE MESSAGE. Please try to avoid this word in the future. Thank you.

Captain Shithead wrote:And american palo as well!!!

Went to see Brazil-Belgium today... Brazil... the defense wasn't really convincing, Belgium should have scored at least on 2 occasions where they had nice counterattacks and somehow managed to completely fuck it up...

For the rest... way too hot still around here... sitting and sweating like a pig for hours, seats too low and I'm not really that tall (taller than mate still...) As a good Euro I was for Belgium, but well... they are better at making beer, best beer in the world (just a little insult for Felix

So who was the genius to schedule the gold medal match at noon? Unless it rains, the players will have little in them for the full 90 minutes.

what word is so offensive?

palo,

see this link

4 X 100M Relays

was suprised to see both the US Men & Women not qualify to the Finals. Tyson Gay wasn't to blame for the US's woes. Patton's hand off was sloppy.

No suprise that the Jamaicans won. I also pegged T&T to finish second (which they did). I was hoping that Canada would sneak in with the bronze but to no avail.

JAM women would have surely won but they dropped the stick. Just barely though. On this one I think the blame has to go to the anchor leg for not closing her hands.

400M Finals

good event as well. Shockin that Jeremy Warriner did't at least medal, but the guy who ended up winning it smoked the field.

Basketball

US vs Spain for Gold (I can't see the US failing)

Argentina vs Lithuania for Bronze (I'll pick Lithuania with the upset to win their 3rd straight bronze medal)

BTW: the Argentina vs Greece 1/4-final match was probably the best match in all team sports in these Olympics. They matched up in all areas in a game that had abou 15 lead changes and was decided in literally the final second.

Volleyball

I follow Volleyball throughout the year so I am not at all suprised to see the Gold Medal match be contested by USA vs Brazil. The US has never been this good in over 2 decades.

I'll pick Russia to beat Italy for the Bronze

Rumour

in the Closing Ceremony's when London 2012 has their segment, there is a rumour that David Beckham will appear in a genuine Double Decker bus

NBC

aside from not showing LIVE events, it has to be note that their ratings are up from Athens'04.

Last Saturdays Prime Time show that featured Michael Phelps was the 2nd most watched Saturday night in NBC history.

Oh oh. Belgium to you too.

Falc

It's mostly the humidity. Here in Shanghai noon or 19.00 isn't such a big difference, if it's humid both is hell. Of course noon is a bit hotter, but it doesn't really cool down at night to much either. ... but anyway, better in August than in July, that was much worse. 12 is a very weird time though.... I'd say TV ratings, but for where??? Europe is 6 in the morning... South America?

Anyway, 5000 Meter men today, let's see if Bekele makes the double this time.

It was the Bird's Nest. They played the final in the Olympic stadium. Considering that there probably are track and field events later in the evening, this match got scheduled for noon. And it was a full house. I think that was the main reason for the time schedule. A so-so match, not much to get excited about. Nice goal though.

I saw the match. It beats watching a bunch of Euros run up and down and defend for 90 minutes, but Argentina was tired and didn't offer much. Riquelme really set the pace to the game though. he is a master.

UNBELIEVEABLE !!!

Taekwando competitor assaults referee after decision

http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/taekwondo/story/2008/08/23/olympics-angel-matos.html

Biggest surprise for me was the S Korea baseball team.

I predict an avelanche of baseball scouts upon South Korea!

Doctor links Jamaica’s sprinting success to slavery
By Josh Peter, Yahoo! Sports

AFP - Aug 22, 12:41 pm EDT
BEIJING – Jamaica’s Olympic team doctor, who’s prepared to fend off accusations that banned drugs fueled the country’s sprinting success at these Olympic Games, said the record-breaking run stems in part from the history of slavery.

Herb Elliott, who oversees drug testing in Jamaica and serves as the Olympic team’s head doctor, said African slaves who ended up in Jamaica were among the strongest and most determined – qualities, he says, that have helped the likes of Usain Bolt, the 22-year-old Jamaican track star.

This week, Bolt became the first man since the Games resumed in 1896 to break the world record in the 100- and 200-meter dashes during the same Olympics. He also ran the third leg on the 4x100 Jamaican relay team that erased the 16-year-old record set by a U.S. team that included Carl Lewis.

The Jamaicans also swept the gold medals in the women’s 100 and 200. As people began searching for answers that explained the amazing sprint success for such a small nation, Elliott’s theory emerged as the most provocative and controversial.

“They say that our aggression, our toughness, came out of our slave situation,” said Elliott, who is black. The team doctor said he subscribes to the view “considering that Jamaica had more slavery rebellion than any country in the world.”

“It’s not a question of genetic pool, but we have that,” he added. “It’s a cultural thing, too, that we want to achieve.”

Until Elliott’s comments, attempts to explain Jamaica’s sprint dominance had ranged from the mundane to the amusing. When asked for the secret of his success earlier this week, Bolt said “there is no secret” and attributed his success to natural ability.

Asafa Powell, an Olympic teammate who held the world record in the 100 until Bolt broke it in May, cited the Jamaicans’ early-morning workouts and the country’s passion for sprinting as sources of their dominance here.

Bolt’s father, Wellesley, speaking to Reuters after his son won the 100, credited a vegetable grown in the region of Jamaica where his son was born. “It is definitely the Trelawny yam,” Wellesley Bolt said. The yam is said to have medicinal properties, according to the Reuters story.

Victor Conte, the mastermind of the BALCO lab that triggered the biggest steroids scandal in sports history, has mocked the drug testing programs in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries. He said they’re designed to protect drug cheats rather than catch them, and his criticism intensified after Jamaicans accomplished the sprint-double in the men’s and women’s 100 and 200.

“Herb Elliott is Jamaica’s cover-up man,” Conte wrote in an email. “I think that he knows full well that his athletes have been using drugs.”

Bristling at the remarks, Elliott denounced Conte.

“Victor Conte’s an idiot,” Elliott said. “He set out to set up a lab to cheat. They caught him, he went to prison and now he’s casting aspersions on other people who have stayed in this sport the last 40 years and have been clean. …

“From 1948 until now, we have been coming to the Olympics in sprints, OK? And we have done well. This is just a culmination of what has gone on for more than 40 years.”

Though they competed for other countries, three other Jamaican-born sprinters captured Olympic gold in the 100. Ben Johnson, who later tested positive for steroids, won it for Canada in 1988; Linford Christie won it for England in 1992; and Donovan Bailey won it for Canada in 1996.

Though Jamaica’s ties to achievements on the track is indisputable, Evelyn Higginbotham, a professor of African-American studies at Harvard University and a civil rights activist, said Elliott’s theory regarding slavery has no basis in fact.

“On many levels it doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Slavery is not unique to black people historically.”

Other academicians were less quick to dismiss Elliott’s theory outright.

Claire Nelson of the Institute of Caribbean Studies said the repression of slave rebellions is thought to have contributed to the Jamaican psyche that she said is captured in the country’s ancestral saying, “We lickle but we tallawah.”

“… which is difficult to translate exactly, but could be said to mean, ‘Though we may be small, we are powerful beyond expectations,’ ” Nelson wrote in an email.

Todd Boyd, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in the study of race and popular culture, said he always has been leery of claims about physical or biological superiority of any one group. But he said the argument is more plausible when one considers that culture such as the one Elliott cites is learned as opposed to being genetically passed down.

“At the end of the day, though, there is a culture of track that the Jamaicans have now mastered at a very high level,” Boyd wrote in an email.

Bolt grew up playing cricket and turned his attention to track when he realized he was the fastest boy in his grade school in rural Jamaica. His personal story supports the views of Diana Thorburn, a professor at the University of the West Indies, who cited the dearth of athletic options in Jamaica.

“If Usain Bolt were born in North America or Europe, he would be now earning far more money as a professional basketball player with the odds of a much longer and more lucrative career,” she wrote in an email.

But that might seem like blasphemy to Jamaica’s team doctor, a portly, bespectacled man who celebrated every Jamaican victory and clearly relished mingling with reporters. He entertained countless questions about Bolt and, during an interview with Yahoo! Sports, touched on his theory about slavery contributing to sprinting success.

“Once upon a time they were saying we have it because we have fast fibers,” Elliott said. “So I said to them, ‘How many countries have fast fibers? Only a few areas in the world?’ Ah, these are theories that don’t hold strong when you have a complex situation.”

The complexity, Elliott suggested, involves what is known as the Middle Passage, the second stage of the transatlantic slave trade. Ships carried enslaved Africans to the Caribbean islands in North and South America in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The slaves who staged frequent rebellions in Jamaica, Elliott said, have created a culture of resolve that led to success in sprinting and academics.

“We passed exams at universities abroad because of the strength where other blacks (failed),” he said.

Though Elliott struggled to control his contempt for Conte, he said he thinks Jamaicans indirectly have benefited from Conte’s role in a scandal that ensnared former U.S. track star Marion Jones and several other U.S. Olympic athletes. The BALCO scandal is widely viewed as a catalyst for the increased enforcement of anti-doping rules.

“We feel because other people are now caught, the playing field is now more level for us,” Elliott said.

Peppered by questions about Jamaican’s drug testing program, Elliott responded with a litany of assertions: the Jamaicans have spent about $930,000 on a government-sponsored drug testing program; he personally tested every Jamaican athlete that competed in the country’s Olympic trials; and sanctions against Julien Dunkley, a 32-year-old Jamaican sprinter, indicates the country is serious about drug testing. Dunkley was removed from the team in July for what Elliott said was a positive drug test.

He said Dunkley is among four athletes who have tested positive for drugs after Jamaican officials administered the tests.

“All of them trained in the States, and we caught them down in Kingston,” Elliott said. “So that is the end of that.”

Beyond regular drug testing, Elliott said, religious conviction deters Jamaicans from cheating. He used the movie “Chariots of Fire,” based on two British athletes competing in the 1924 Olympics, as an illustration.

“You remember that guy who believed in God so strongly?” he said. “Our athletes are strong believers in the Almighty. They believe that without the Almighty they can do nothing and with the Almighty they actually can do everything. …

“We know that our athletes have trained hard, that the country would not tolerate any kind of cheating because we are a moral, Christian country.”

Kerron Stewart, who won a silver medal when the Jamaicans swept the women’s 200, paused when asked whether increased drug testing has leveled the playing field during an Olympic competition in which no American won a gold medal in the marquee sprint races.

“What do you think?” she said, eyes widening. “What do you think?”

Falc

A lot of truth & half truths.

1.I happen to believe that poor nations do benefit from a more level playing field.

Why? Bigger sponsors mean bigger temptation for mischief becaus ethe lure of riches. WHich makes athletes like Bolt now more vulnarable, now that he is obviousely a sponsor target. But in his case he is so far ahead of his competition it will be easier for him to resist.

2. The slavery element. It is an undeniable fact that slaves were purposely bred to become stronger and have more endurance! That is one of the ugly details of slavery in the new world. So you can argue that physically blacks in the new world have an advantage. Of course this is not true across the board, nor do I know the percentages.
Also you must account for the mulattos, white slave master's children with slaves.

3. For poor countries like Jamaica it is also a case of access. As in Basketball scouting, US colleges scout new talent in the caribbean to join their athletics team. I know two people from Surinam personally who received scholarships from US universaties

There are ways of saying what this guy is saying that sound better, but basically he is talking a mind-set that is learned. Look at the people from the mid-west, look at the way of life of the people of the desert. Experience does shape the collective psyche of a people. Don't you think that Germans and Brasilians grow up believing that they can be football world cup champions?

loved Rudy Fernandez burning Lebron off the dribble and stuffing the ball down right in Dwight Howard's face... and one! We may have lost a close one, but I think this kid is gonna be a star one day

the white boys didn't do too shabby

The best player has to be Ricky Rubio. Only 17 and he plays like a champion.

Good show by my conquistador cuates.

Nice summer for Spain's athletes.

The Summer of George for sure!!!

Gabriele Marcotti on soccer at the Olympics: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 602561.ece

Rich and attractive Olympic interlopers appear unwelcome

…. In terms of aggregate audience, [football] blew all the other sports out of the water, but that did not stop it from being treated like some kind of interloper. While we were inundated with heart-warming stories about how hard gymnasts, skeet shooters and badminton players worked to attain their Olympic goals and how grateful they all were to their respective federations who got them training facilities, sponsorships and time off work, you got the sense that football’s powers-that-be wished this tournament had never taken place….

The organisers, perhaps not wishing to distract attention from the supposedly “pure” Olympic events, did their part to make the game feel unwelcome. The final at Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium was scheduled for 1pm on Saturday, which meant it was played in other-worldly conditions: 90 per cent humidity and a searing heat that hit 42C (107F)…..

Other than tradition, is there really a need for soccer to be an Olympic event? FIFA does not want it to upstage its WC. On the women's side, there are no qualifiers, just the top 12 teams from the previous summer WC. If basketball could make something of its world championships, is there a need for it in the Olympics. Baseball is being dropped because MLB does not release its players. Fine. In some sports, the Olympics is the top dog. Not the case in soccer. If it was dropped, I would not lose any sleep.