The Olympics Thread

Congratulations to boxer Paddy Barnes who is now guaranteed at least a bronze medal in the light-flyweight category having won his quarter final. It is Ireland's first medal of the Olympiad.



I have to say I am greatly impressed with the Olympic coverage on the BBC. For anyone who has digital, the red button is absolutely fantastic for it. They are also giving alot of mainstream coverage of any medal chances that Ireland has which is nice of them.

Huge congratulations to Britain also who are holding fast to their third place on the overall medals table, they added three further gold medals this morning bringing their tally to fifteen - their most successful games since Antwerp in 1920 and arguably their greatest achievement since the true expansion of the modern games.

Maith an fear Paddy Barnes. Ken Egan is back in the ring in an hour and Hession runs in his semi about the same time.

Ádh mór don bheirt s'acu.

Anybody watching the boxing analysis on rte. I wish to god Dunne would stop interupting Katie Taylor every time she nears the end of a sentence.

Bernard Dunne gets on my nerves. Mick Dowling is a nice chap.

johnfás wrote:

Bernard Dunne gets on my nerves. Mick Dowling is a nice chap.

Bill O'Hurling and Carruth nailed him last week when he completely contradicted himself in the evening from what he said in the afternoon. It was a hoot. Mick is good but he does seem to be talking down to Katie at times.

johnfás wrote:

It will be very interesting to see how Hession fairs against Usain the Lightning Bolt.

He'll have to get to the final to find out. Heres hoping. Bolt will probably whip out the paper, light the pipe and pick his nose in the last 50m.

Just like the 100m where he broke the world record.

It was very funny watching BBC - Michael Johnson has assured the public that Bolt won't be taking his world record .

johnfás wrote:

Just like the 100m where he broke the world record.

It was very funny watching BBC - Michael Johnson has assured the public that Bolt won't be taking his world record .

Ah Johnson is a bit of crack. His world record is exactly a second quicker than Hession ran yeesterday. That's some gap for 200m

The Olympics are a bit like Space exploration in that they involve vast public expenditure for amorphous and uncertain benefits.

We have to grasp any spin-off benefits going if we're going to get value out of them. The organisation and community involvement of the Melbourne Olympics are worth learning from, as is the impressive gearing up of the British to collect the little gold baubles.

Good man Egan. Gave the Brazilian a hammerin. 8-0. Tough luck on Paul Hession

Well two bronze at least

How did Hesson do ? He got into the final ?

Yeee-haah !

Hession came fifth in the semi. Didn't qualify

They just showed a fantastic close up of a full moon. Craters very visible. The bbc guy wondered "Now, can we see the great wall from here?"

Our two bronzes automatically bring us up to 66 out of 204 competing nations. Should we win 2 golds at things stand at the moment we would move up to the top 30.

Current top 5:

#	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	China	43	14	19	76
2	USA	25	26	27	78
3	Britain	16	9	8	33
4	Australia	11	11	12	34
5	Germany	11	8	9	28

It's a Britisher up next for Egan. Tony Jeffries hand a good win too 10-2. He use to sell burgers outside the Stadium of Light. He'll be spittin in all those Irish Sudetenland fans' lunches if Egan whips him.

SeathrúnCeitinn wrote:

It's a Britisher up next for Egan. Tony Jeffries hand a good win too 10-2. He use to sell burgers outside the Stadium of Light. He'll be spittin in all those Irish Sudetenland fans' lunches if Egan whips him.

And there's a bit of previous...... according to the BBC when they met each other at the European Championships Jeffries was leading 14-7 when he had to retire with a cut above the eye.Afterwards Jeffries said he didn't think Egan was as good as that to which Egan retorted "That's cheeky. i won't forget that. Believe me."

Time to walk the walk. Kenny boy

The two bronzes are fandabydozy! It's already an improvement on the last Olympics where the gold was withdrawn. I'd say Ken Egan is a hot favourite for getting the gold. I hope Paddy Barnes does squeeze past the Chinese boxer he's up against next to get us two golds but it's a big ask. Here's hoping Darren Sutherland makes it a hat-trick tomorrow. And Hession, poor man, but it's not a sport Europe never mind Ireland does well in. He's still a medal hopeful for London which is alright really. A great day altogether.

Ah the crankies, that used freak me out as a kid.

The commentators on BBC were doing an introduction to the 10km swim by the waterside and a guest/expert was talking about the authorities prodding something (i took it to be underwater creatures) with electric prongs.....then the picture went suddenly again to idyllic camera shots of Beijing and environs and stayed that way while the presenter hadn't a clue what was going on.

Good man Darren Sutherland. Another bronze medal at least. He looked even more in control than Egan. 11-1 in the end.

Now he's meeting a Londoner who beat him 23-22 previously.

Oh is a third boxer through as well? That is excellent news, who knows we might end up with three golds. That would be a fantastic result.

johnfás wrote:

Oh is a third boxer through as well? That is excellent news, who knows we might end up with three golds. That would be a fantastic result.

The Venezuelan he beat, Blanco, beat him fairly comprehensively before. This time Blanco landed one scoring punch so there's the form book for ye.

Very controled and controling prformance

The Lightning 'Bolt' just broke Michael Johnson's 200m world record by 2/100 of a second. That's a full second better than Hession's personal best. He's in a different class. I just hope we don't find out in a few years time that there was something dodge

Dang I was about to go down watch it!

SeathrúnCeitinn wrote:

Good man Darren Sutherland. Another bronze medal at least. He looked even more in control than Egan. 11-1 in the end.

Now he's meeting a Londoner who beat him 23-22 previously.

Yeah, it was great to watch him comprehensively trump the Venezuelan through all the rounds. He was a great boxer and the Dregal(?) fella he's up against next should be beatable. He was a lot messier against the Kazakh than Darren. He also conceded 3 times more points in his bout. It's just magic that we have three boxers in the semi finals. We're looking at some gold heading our way!