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Olympics Oddness

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http://foxsports.news.com.au/olympics/story/0,9744,10500594-34056,00.html

Moths invade Olympic stadium
August 20, 2004
From Sharon Labi in Athens

LARGE moths, similar to the bogongs that made a nuisance of themselves at the Sydney Olympics four years ago, have invaded the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens.

Invasion ... it's Moths galore at Panathinaiko Stadium / File
Home of the first modern Olympics, the stadium's white marble seating has been covered with the black dust-like guts of hundreds of dead moths.

As the world's top 16 archers today shot for a berth in the Olympic quarterfinals, spectators grew aggravated as they tried to swat the pests.

The moths also distracted the archers. Many had to down their bows, and with just 40 seconds to complete their shot, had to rid themselves of the insects.

Australian Tim Cuddihy, who narrowly won his match said they were a little annoying.

"I had one land on my leg when I was shooting and I didn't know what to do there - lean down or just ignore it," he said.

Bogong moths swarmed the Olympic Stadium in Sydney and played havoc with the lighting at the Opening Ceremony and during the track and field competition.

Locals can't seem to explain the invasion but Con Saltis, a volunteer at the venue who has lived in Sydney the past 57 years offered on explanation.

"If they're the same ones we had in Sydney, maybe they've come to judge which is the better venue," he said.
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I'm sure I started a similar thread but can't find it.

Earthquake Rattles Olympic Venues

Tue Aug 24, 9:28 AM ET

ATHENS, Greece - An earthquake rattled Olympic venues Tuesday in and around Athens.


The Athens Geodynamic Institute said the tremor had a preliminary magnitude of 4.5 and occurred at 3:38 p.m. local time. It was centered about 42 miles northeast of Athens, 12 miles beneath the Aegean Sea.

"There is no reason to panic. It was a very small quake," said Giorgos Stavrakakis, a seismologist with the Geodynamic Institute. "It is a very active area and we often have quakes there."

The head of the Greek Civil Defense Agency, Panagitiotis Fourlas, said there were no reports of injuries or damage from the quake, felt throughout the greater Athens area.

Earthquakes (news - web sites) are common in Greece, one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

In 1999, a 5.9-magnitude quake near Athens killed 143 people, injured about 2,000 and left thousands more homeless.

Venues including the Olympic Village and the 9,000-seat Ano Liossia Olympic Hall for wrestling and judo were built near the fault line and designed to withstand a potentially massive quake.

An earthquake also hit Nagano, Japan, during the 1998 Winter Games, jolting athletes and spectators but causing no major damage.
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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=554&u=/ap/20040824/ap_on_sp_ol/oly_greece_earthquake_2
 
Did China fake carrying the Olympic torch up Mt Everest?

The latest word out of Nepal is that the whole thing was done in secrecy some time ago, and then presented as live last month. People who were on the mountain the day the torch apparently went up reported it was a crisp, clear day with maximum visibility. However the official Chinese pictures of the relay showed the mountain shrouded in mist. HimaLiars?
 
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Not one of the things I'm going to worry about, in the great scheme of things.
 
Don't mind him Phi. Thanks for posting that info. It's another reason why propaganda and communists don't go along to well with the whole purity aspect of the non professional athlete.
 
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I agree! In a country where huge numbers are prosecuted and summarily executed apparently to feed a trade in organs for transplant, I have no difficulty in believing that the flag-planting was staged.
 
tonyblair11 said:
Don't mind him Phi. Thanks for posting that info. It's another reason why propaganda and communists don't go along to well with the whole purity aspect
of the non professional athlete.
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The 'whole purity aspect of the non professional athlete? :rofl:

Do you mean how pure the non professional athlete's steroids are, or how ingeniously their product endorsement packages have been financed, to keep them looking clean and smelling fresh?

The whole Olympic Flame nonsense was dreamed up by the Nazi propaganda machine, for the 1936 Olympics, to look nice in Leni Riefenstahl's film of the event.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7330949.stm

The Olympic torch's shadowy past

BBC News. By Chris Bowlby. April 2008


The Olympic torch is being welcomed this weekend in the UK as a symbol of the sporting spirit, uniting people around the world in peaceful competition.

But the idea of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and then running it through different countries has much darker origins.

It was invented in its modern form by the organisers of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

And it was planned with immense care by the Nazi leadership to project the image of the Third Reich as a modern, economically dynamic state with growing international influence.

The organiser of the 1936 Olympics, Carl Diem, wanted an event linking the modern Olympics to the ancient.

The idea chimed perfectly with the Nazi belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.

And the event blended perfectly the perversion of history with publicity for contemporary German power.

The first torch was lit in Greece with the help of mirrors made by the German company Zeiss.

Steel-clad magnesium torches to carry the flame were specially produced by the Ruhr-based industrial giant Krupp.

Media coverage was masterminded by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, using the latest techniques and technology.

Dramatic regular radio coverage of the torch's progress kept up the excitement, and Leni Riefenstahl filmed it to create powerful images.

Beijing relay

The route the torch takes has always been a matter of careful political planning too.

This year's route has already proved highly controversial.

Beijing wanted to take the torch through Taiwan's capital, Taipei, but this had to be changed by Olympic authorities due to political tensions between the Chinese and Taiwanese leaders.

And there is now great tension over plans to run the torch through Tibet after recent disturbances there.

In 1936 the torch made its way from Greece to Berlin through countries in south-eastern and central Europe where the Nazis were especially keen to enhance their influence.

Given what happened a few years later that route seems especially poignant now.

"Sporting chivalrous contest," Hitler declared just before the torch was lit, "helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire."

Yet the flame's arrival in Vienna prompted major pro-Nazi demonstrations, helping pave the way for the Anschluss, or annexation of Austria, in 1938.

In Hungary gypsy musicians who serenaded the flame faced within a few years deportation to Nazi death camps.

Other countries on the relay route like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia would soon be invaded by Germans equipped not with Krupp torches but with Krupp munitions.

And Carl Diem, the relay's inventor, ended the war as fanatical military commander at the Olympic stadium in Berlin, refusing to accept that the Third Reich was over.

Sparta

Reinhard Appel, a teenage member of the Hitler Youth based at the stadium, described to me a speech made by Diem in 1945 as the Red Army closed in.

"He kept referring to Sparta - the history of how the Spartans had not feared dying for their country. He demanded that we be heroes."

Hundreds of the youngsters were killed in a futile attempt to defend the stadium.

Diem however survived, and reinvented himself after the war as an academic specialising in the philosophy of sport.

Germans are still debating his reputation today.

In 1936 itself there was no doubt that the spectacle of his torch relay was judged a great international success.

As a suitably Aryan-looking German athlete carried the torch into the stadium in Berlin the BBC radio commentator was deeply impressed: "He's a fair young man in white shorts, he's beautifully made, a very fine sight as an athlete."

Another relay runner was Siegfried Eifrig, who had carried the torch as it arrived in the centre of Berlin.

Flanked by huge swastika flags, he then lit a fire on an altar - typical of the pseudo-religious symbolism Nazism relished.

Eifrig is still alive, aged 98, and still has his Krupp torch engraved with the route of the 1936 relay.

But he told me this week that he was saddened by the controversy this year's relay has attracted, as it ought to be kept a "purely sporting" affair.

And he is critical of the way the politicians always seek to exploit it, seeing the plan to take the torch across the summit of Mount Everest as a "pointless gesture" that makes a nonsense of the relay as an athletic challenge.

Having survived the war as a soldier and then a British prisoner of war, he now sees the 1936 relay in a more sober light than when he was one of its stars.

No matter how great the emphasis on the torch as a bright sporting symbol, he knows better than most that, amid the political wrangling and media hype, less welcome historical ghosts are running alongside.
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The whole Olympics is bunk and it has been bunk, for a very long time. It's like that ' Southern Tree' in the song, 'Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.'

I don't care if the Chinese faked the Everest stage of the flame's journey, the whole journey has been a fiasco.

I remember Munich, Moscow and Atlanta, too. Real high points of human excellence. :roll:
 
Of course there is some corruption. Do you really think that someone that has worked their ass off and dedicated a good portion of their life towards achieving their goals and dreams is doing something that is "bunk" or worthless? I'd like to see you say that to their face.
 
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Is it really that big a deal? It's not like anybody's going to change their mind about China either way as a result of the images and it's hardly the worst sin the Chinese regime will ever commit. It's a bit like fussing over whether or not Darth Vader took a bribe from the catering company that got the contract for the Death Star.
 
ted_bloody_maul said:
Is it really that big a deal? It's not like anybody's going to change their mind about China either way as a result of the images and it's hardly the worst sin the Chinese regime will ever commit. It's a bit like fussing over whether or not Darth Vader took a bribe from the catering company that got the contract for the Death Star.
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Exactly.
 
tonyblair11 said:
Of course there is some corruption. Do you really think that someone that has worked their ass off and dedicated a good portion of their life towards achieving their goals and dreams is doing something that is "bunk" or worthless? I'd like to see you say that to their face.
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Oh, I would, and have done. I've refused to work with a certain ex-athlete who demanded a helicopter from the airport to avoid traffic when he delivered a speech about the efforts to raise money for the Olympic bid. (Try going by taxi, you 2-faced ponce!)

I've also been physically restrained from accosting the CEO of a certain Power company who were merrily throwing money at an event promoting their sponsorship of the 2012 games to their board members, at a cost of somewhere in the region of £250, 000. Might well have been more, that's an estimate based on the production costs of the small breakout seminar we were contracted to do, and that alone was obscene money. This was on the very same day they announced their bills would be rising by up to 17%. I bet Granny Smith in her freezing flat, too scared to put the heating on understands though, right?

Now 250 grand is nothing compared to the money they are chucking into the 2012 bash, mere loose change, but the gall (Gaul? he he) of their pleading hard times in one Press release whilst their board were lapping up the jolly across town which celebrated their spending more mega-cash on people chucking balls and jumping in sandpits made me sick.

It would have been career suicide to have asked the bastard if he thought that was fair, but meh, I wasn't getting much out of the job anyway! It's hard to take the cash from these people and smile when you think they are scum! Still, having principles doesn't pay my mortgage, so I have to grin and bear it.

The Olympics is a festering barrel of corruption from top to bottom. The sad sap who is trying to jump higher than the bloke before him is the most insignificant bit of it all, which is why, for the most part, you have no idea who these people are or what they are doing for the other years between Olympics.
Why the sudden interest in them breaking records at the Olympics when they could do the same next week in a shitty run-down stadium in Watford, watched by their family and a couple of dog-walkers sheltering from the rain? It's the same thing - the event doesn't change. The difference is that there's more opportunity to grab land, contracts, etc and stick your snout in the trough with the Olympics.
It has nothing to do with anyone working hard to achieve their goals in sporting prowess, that's a side issue. If they could dispense with the irritating sports part of the Olympics, they'd be more than happy, IMHO, and could concentrate on fleecing people and furthering their own ends.
 
I don't think anyone denigrated the achievements of the athletes, but I have to say I agree that the reliance on performance-enhancing substances, the corporate sponsorships and the corruption of the IOC itself has seriously tarnished the Olympian image.
 
If you believe in omens this isn't a good one. :twisted:

Reuters

Friday, 12 June 2009

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ancient mass grave found on Olympics site © REUTERS2009
By Stefano Ambrogi
LONDON (Reuters) - An ancient burial pit containing 45 severed skulls, that could be a mass war grave dating back to Roman times, has been found under a road being built for the 2012 British Olympics.
Archaeologists, who have only just begun excavating the site, say they do not yet know who the bones might belong to.
"We think that these dismembered bodies are likely to be native Iron Age Britons. The question is -- how did they die and who killed them," said dig head, David Score, of Oxford Archaeology.
"Were they fighting amongst themselves? Were they executed by the Romans? Did they die in a battle with the Romans?
"The exciting scenario for us possibly is that there were skirmishes with the invading Romans and that's how they ended up chopped up in a pit," he told Reuters.
When the main Roman invasion force landed in Britain in AD 43, Claudius' legions moved swiftly through western England to subdue fierce Celtic tribes.
The skulls and other bones were unearthed at a place called Ridgeway Hill, on the construction site of a new major relief road to Weymouth, on the Dorset coast in southwest England.
The seaside town -- in the heart of Thomas Hardy country -- is to host sailing events for the London Olympics.
The grave site is close to Maiden Castle -- Europe's largest Iron Age hill fort where local tribes are said to have staged a last stand against the Roman legions after the invasion.
Some historians believe the Romans sacked the site, butchering its population including women and children, before burning it to the ground.
Score said they had counted 45 skulls so far in the 6-metre wide pit, together with a tangle of torsos, arms and legs, More could be found in the coming weeks.
Most of the skulls were those of young men, supporting the theory they could have been killed in battle or executed en masse.
"One of the things that we will be looking for is do they have sword cut marks on the bones, and how were the heads dismembered: prior to or after death in an act of victory," Score said.
Archaeologists say they could also be Roman citizens or indigenous people who had died through disease or disaster.
Few artefacts have so far been found with the bones, though pottery shards dating to the late Iron Age and early Roman period have been found scattered around the pit.
"It is rare to find a burial site like this one," Score said. "There are lots of different types of burial where skeletons may be aligned along a compass axis or in a crouched position, but to find something like this is just incredible."
(Editing by Steve Addison)
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Looks like a classic UFO, doesn't it?
I'm sure the blimp theory would be easy to check.
 
Story from back in April, not one I'd hear of before:

At least two people have been killed and three others are missing after a cycle lane built for the Rio 2016 Olympics collapsed into the sea.

Rescue workers recovered two bodies from the water but witnesses said five were on the bike path when it fell apart, local media reported.

Harrowing images and footage showed how a long stretch of the bike lane, which hung 50m above the water, had crumbled apart.
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The bike lane, on Niemeyer avenue and 800m from São Conrado beach, cost around £31million to build and runs several miles through southern parts of the city.

It snaked along sheer cliffs and cliffs, tens of metres above the ocean surface, connecting the beachfront neighborhoods of Leblon and Sao Conrado.
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Link contains photos of fatalities.

Daily Fail
 
At least one of these could equally go in photoshop fails:

A publicity campaign for the Rio 2016 Paralympics has come under fire for digitally altering photos of able-bodied pin ups to give them disabilities.
The images of actors Cleo Pires and Paulo Vilhena, who are ambassadors for the Brazilian Paralympic Committee (CPB), appeared in Vogue Brazil under the tag “We are all Paralympians”.
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FakedParalympians.jpg
FakedParalympians-B.jpeg



Telegraph
 
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Where can you buy shorts like that?
Snd why don't I have a permanent marker line outlining my chin?
 
ramonmercado said:
This is bolloxology. Why not Morris Dancing or Sword Dancing as well? Or whatever they get up to in Cromer. ...
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It won't prove acceptable in the international sporting context unless the event is designed to allow competitors to pursue some objective (if only a finish line ... ) using one or another of their own countries' dances.

I'd suggest something like a 100 yard dash, wherein each competitor must proceed by exclusively using a single dance or dance step from his / her own culture.
 
EnolaGaia said:
It won't prove acceptable in the international sporting context unless the event is designed to allow competitors to pursue some objective (if only a finish line ... ) using one or another of their own countries' dances.

I'd suggest something like a 100 yard dash, wherein each competitor must proceed by exclusively using a single dance or dance step from his / her own culture.
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A sword dance might work better, competitors could fight it out. Morris Dancers could use swords instead of sticks.


There Can Only Be One!
 
Well, they have ice dancing as an Olympic event, and isn't synchronised swimming one too? No more ridiculous than those. Personally I'd like to see a dance-off in the Olympics.
 
GNC said:
Well, they have ice dancing as an Olympic event, and isn't synchronised swimming one too? No more ridiculous than those. Personally I'd like to see a dance-off in the Olympics.
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Adriano Celentano would win gold for Italy.
 
GNC said:
Well, they have ice dancing as an Olympic event, and isn't synchronised swimming one too? No more ridiculous than those. Personally I'd like to see a dance-off in the Olympics.
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I just think it's a bit much though, Irish Dancing was invented in the 19th Century, it's not really traditional. The same is likely true of the Scottish variants on such dances.
 
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