anyone watch the pole vaulting last night?

dudes do 1 jump, throw their bum in the corner saying they won't go anymore, & the officials fold.

two things i feel about it:
1) an australian would have just gone for it, and given his all. instead, steve hooker plus some french bloke led the charge in the whinge against jumping anymore
2) they literally said "we're saving ourselves, why would we jump now?". to me they should be held as equally accountable as the badminton chicks - where was their olympic spirit to try their best till the end?

i kind of understood the sentiment but it went to countback & some people who had cleared the exact same height as all the equal-ninths (inc hooker) were denied because of how many attempts it took them.

they didn't compete in the short-term to save themselves for the long-term - exactly what the badminton chicks did.

if hooker hadn't cleared the height on the first go, and was one of the people who were cut due to the amount of attempts, he wouldn't have been leading that charge.

Analysing the Olympic Final

Thursday, 9 August 2012 8:59 AM

It is fitting that the two best international teams in women's football will contest the Olympic Final on Friday morning (4.45am AEST on Fox Sports). This much anticipated 2011 World Cup Final rematch is the ideal finale to what has been a compelling Olympic Women's Football Tournament.

Team USA will be out to avenge last year's World Cup defeat to Japan while the Nadeshiko will be motivated to cement their place as a true world power in women's football. The game has all the makings of a classic.

Although both teams have their own distinct characteristics, to say this game will be a complete contrast of styles is perhaps too simplistic. The USA, renowned for their power and pace, has now added skill and sophistication to their play. On the other hand Japan, who are acknowledged as technically the most gifted team in the world, has significantly toughened up and no longer exhibit a soft underbelly

Despite the contrast in styles one element is prevalent in both adversaries; that is a steely determination to win matches regardless of performance or dominance in possession. This phenomenon has always been part of US culture but something only recently transparent in the Japanese team.

Although the outcome is difficult to predict, based on tournament performance to date, I would say the US has been more convincing and start as slight favourites.

They have an array of players capable of scoring goals, depth in the squad with impact players coming off the bench and the ability to come back after trailing in matches against quality opposition. They also had a convincing confidence boosting win against Japan just prior to the Olympics. They do display defensive frailties, however their pacy back four supported by arguably the world's best goalkeeper have on the whole covered over these potential cracks.

Japan on the other hand has found it more difficult to score goals and performed less consistently than expected.

They now play with an inordinate amount of confidence individually and collectively and have developed a strong winning culture. They no longer get intimidated or flustered and rarely concede goals. When you combine these qualities with their sublime technical skills you certainly wouldn't write them off.

One thing that can be assured is that this final will be an outstanding advertisement for women's football and will no doubt produce a hero, with Sawa, Miyama, Rapinoe or Wambach being the favourites.

http://www.footballaustralia.com.au/sermanni-opinion-display/Analysing-the-Olympic-Final/48471

As far as I am concerned if you qualify for the Olympics in the Pole vault then you compete until elimnated and the winner is decided

[size=6]Hulk-like move signals start of big night for Harting[/size]

Discus gold medallist Robert Harting wasn't afraid to show his joy at achieving his Olympic dream.

After winning with a 68.27m-throw on Tuesday, the German tore his shirt off in an Incredible Hulk-like move, flexed his muscles with a mighty roar and went on a victory lap around the track, jumping the equipment set up for the women's 100m hurdles final.

He jumped nearly all of them as the crowd in the 80,000-seat stadium cheered him on, before racing towards the Olympic cauldron and trying to liberate one of the flaming prongs, the Daily Mail reported.

"It's just amazing," Harting, 27, said of his gold medal win.

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"I've dreamed of this since I was 12 years old. I first picked up a discus in 2000, from then on I worked hard to get here."

The two-time world champion, who tears off his shirt whenever he wins a major title, beat Ehsan Hadadi of Iran, who finished with silver with a 68.18m-throw, and Gerd Kanter of Estonia, who took bronze with 68.03m

But Harting's on-track antics were just the start of his festivities. According to the London Telegraph he later boarded a German cruise liner docked in London to celebrate with friends. During the course of the night he was robbed, fell asleep on a train and the next morning, barred entry to the Olympic village.

"Puuh I just got robbed while I did some work to please athletic fans! I lost all my accredition [sic] for Olympic Village! - no entrance," he tweeted.

Arrangements were made to get him in at about 8am the next morning by German team manager Siegfriend Schonert.

Harting is unlikely to face disciplinary measures, though officials did inspect the Olympic cauldron afterwards for possible damage.
http://www.theage.com.au/olympics/off-the-field/hulklike-move-signals-start-of-big-night-for-harting-20120809-23vqj.html

The man who has been dubbed the Lord of the Ring, because of the circle from which the discus is thrown, said he will probably retire from hurdles.

Thought he was going to break his neck.

How long until the 200m?

6am tomorrow morning.

'60 percent of athletes at the Games are on drugs,' says BALCO founder

DateAugust 9, 2012 - 4:53PM

Victor Conte, convicted owner of the now-defunct BALCO laboratory that was at the centre of a global steroid scandal, said on Thursday that the drug-testing programme at the 2012 Olympics was irrelevant.

"It's basically propaganda to come out and say this is the most expensively-tested Games ever and 'we're doing 6,000 tests'," Conte was quoted as telling The Times newspaper.

"You have to put your hook and line in the water when the fish are biting and that was nine months ago. Is it easy to use drugs and benefit during (the) Olympics? Yes."

The British newspaper also quoted Conte as estimating that "60 percent of athletes at the Games were on drugs".

Scientists have been working around the clock at a specially equipped anti-doping laboratory on the outskirts of London analysing more than 6,000 urine and blood samples during the Games.

Any of the 10,000-plus competitors can be required to test anytime, anywhere -- trackside, poolside, in the athletes' village or in private houses -- and several have already been thrown out of the Olympics for doping.

Conte's BALCO laboratory in San Francisco supplied drugs to leading athletes including Britain's Dwain Chambers who was banned for two years after testing positive for the designer steroid THG in 2003.

Chambers was picked for the London Games after becoming eligible for selection in May when the British Olympic Association's policy of lifetime Olympic bans for drug cheats was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Conte was sentenced in 2005 to spend four months in prison and another four on house arrest.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/olympics/off-the-field/60-percent-of-athletes-at-the-games-are-on-drugs-says-balco-founder-20120809-23wj6.html#ixzz232UFSEs6

When the going gets tough, the tough get swimming
DateAugust 9, 2012 47 reading now76
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John HuxleyAssociate Editor, Sydney Morning Herald
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Mentally and physically exhausting, open-water swimming can be brutal, writes John Huxley.

Pin ItEmail articlePrint .More than six years have passed, but Melissa Gorman still winces with pain as she recalls the first time she competed in a 10 kilometre open-water swim - on Elk Lake, Vancouver Island, in the Pan Pacific Championships.

''It was horrible. Just horrible. I was going OK for the first seven or eight kilometres but then … well, it was like a piano dropped on top of me. I couldn't feel anything. I was pretty much not going anywhere. I didn't have the energy. The arms, the legs, were dead. I really didn't know what I'd let myself in for,'' says the 26-year-old Sydneysider, who still managed to finish fourth.

My will to live completely overcame my desire to win.
Undeterred, Gorman has since swum a dozen more 10km marathons, including at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where she finished 15th.


Open-water swimmer Melissa Gorman still winces at the thought of her first 10 kilometre event. Photo: Getty Images
''To be honest,'' she explains, ''there's no 10 kilometre race that won't hurt. When you've got experience you can switch off the pain. Or at least the bad pain. You can turn it into, like … good pain.''

Advertisement Gorman will race 24 others on a six-lap course on the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park. Ironman Ky Hurst will compete for Australia in the men's event on Friday.

''It's going to be amazing,'' Hurst says. ''I can't think of a better place in the world to showcase the event.''

Although the 10km swim became an Olympic event as recently as 2006, open-water racing has a long and colourful history, dating from 36BC, when Japanese warriors competed in aquatic marathons. In ancient Rome, races on the River Tiber attracted thousands of spectators. And the first Olympic swimming events were held not in purpose-built pools but on open water until 1908.

In 1896, competitors were taken to sea in rowing boats from the port of Piraeus in Greece and tipped into icy waters running a four-metre swell. Many had to be rescued as they struck out on the 1km swim back to shore.

The first man to cross the finish line, Hungary's Alfred Hajos, later recalled: ''My will to live completely overcame my desire to win.''

Such life-or-death struggles are not a thing of the past. Last year, American Fran Crippen, a six-time US champion, died in an open-water race in Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. A report suggested he died of a ''cardiac abnormality'' and ''uncontrolled exercise-induced asthma''. Several other competitors suffered heat exhaustion as water temperatures rose above 30.

As Greg Towle, the Australian national open-water swim coach, points out, on other occasions competitors have risked hypothermia, as well as water-borne hazards such as weeds, jellyfish and even floating carcasses.

No such extremes are expected on the Serpentine, a recreational lake topped up with tried, tested and quality-approved water from the nearby River Thames. Even the ducks are being excluded. But Towle says the snaky, tight-cornered course will bring extra excitement to an event described by one expert as ''two hours of aquatic anarchy'', which can leave swimmers with black eyes, bloodied noses and even broken ribs.

Officials patrol the 1.67km course, especially at the start, at the corners and near floating stations, where swimmers fuel up. Yellow and red cards is used to identify and punish offenders. Hurst insists most of the contact is unintentional. ''It's just part and parcel of the sport. There's no black line for us to follow. About 99 per cent of the world couldn't follow one anyway.''

Towle agrees. ''You can't put a bunch of athletes, especially guys topping six foot, in such a confined place and not expect there to be contact. But it's never a focus for us. That would just be a waste of energy. What we work on is ensuring Melissa and Ky have flexible plans to get around the course as safely and efficiently as they can.''

The dynamics of open-water swimming have changed, Towle says. ''Winning is no longer just about swimming at a constant pace over a long distance. You are not in your own lane, not just focusing on your own race. It's not always the fastest person who wins. It's the person who can swim in a pack, get out of trouble, read a race, get in the right place in the last few hundred metres.'' That includes negotiating crowded feeding stations.

''It's very tactical,'' Towle says. Some swimmers, such as British world champion Keri-Anne Payne, go straight for open water and try to stay to the finish. Most play cat and mouse. ''It's a race where experience gets you a long way. It's tactical,'' Towle says.

Such a combination of mental and physical demands, and unpredictable conditions, has prompted some observers to claim the 10km swim is the toughest event at the Olympics. Other claimants include rowers (''all-body intensity''), marathon runners (like open-water swimming, ''two hours of gruelling endurance'') and triathletes (''an unholy trinity of bloody tough sports''). Counting calories per hour burned, energy expended, suggests marathon runners and rowers might ''do it tougher'' than open-water swimmers, who can lose from half a kilogram to four or 5kg in a 10km race.

According to one rough, online calorie guide, in two hours a male swimmer weighing, say, 86kg, can expend 2700 calories, a rower 2000 and a swimmer 1400. But as Towle says, there are so many parameters. ''You can take measurements, but so much depends on an athlete's build, metabolism, intensity, environment and so on.''

How, too, does one measure the physical and mental toughness required not just to endure but to survive the roughing-up, accidental or not, that is inevitable. Peter Larkins, a doctor and sports physician who works with athletes across many disciplines, agrees marathon swimmers do it tough, although their rough ride is ameliorated in part by the ''buoyancy effect''. Significantly, his personal pick for ''toughest event'' is the decathlon. ''It's two days, 10 sports, jumping, throwing, sprinting, standing still, waiting. It tests a range of athletic skills and is mentally stressful.''

Ultimately, the toughness title does not matter. As Towle says: ''All I know is people doing open-swim for the first time come out of the water and say it's the hardest thing they've ever done. I've got the greatest respect for them.''

Gorman's regime, devised with coach Ken Wood of the Redcliffe City High Performance Centre, includes swimming 60 to 70km, and gym, riding and running sessions.She sees a long-term future in a sport whose widespread popularity is reflected in the packed Australian ocean swim program. She recently launched special edition Olympic togs for sponsor Aquadiva. At $400 they might sound expensive, but the revenue helps fund the athlete in a sport that still struggles for financial support. By contrast, 31-year-old Hurst says the London Olympics will be his last.

Having realised in Beijing a lifelong ambition to represent Australia, he will give London his best shot and return to ironman events. He will not be lost entirely to open-water swimming: he founded and will continue to run the Great Australian Swim Series.

Returning to ironman will be hard, but Hurst reckons the 10km race is among the world's toughest events. ''My first, I still remember. I almost died at the finish. I mean, I was toast.''



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/olympics/news-london-2012/when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-get-swimming-20120808-23ugw.html#ixzz232VC6VnC

Aussie Gold K4 Kayaking

At the kayaking the commentator said the crowd was acting like it was a Soccer match, someone better get on it and educate him that it is a Football match and not Soccer!