XXXII Olympic Games - Tokyo 2021

[ButteredToast]

With the Opening Ceremonies coming up in just a few days, I feel like it is just the right time to start up the Olympic Discussion thread. The Olympic Games are by the most enjoyable sporting event to watch for me, and I will be almost religiously watching as many different sports as humanly possible over the next few weeks.

This is the place for all your Olympic discussions, comments, takes, predictions, memes, complaints about time zones, and everything of the like.



To start us off, I figure I would share what events I am looking forward to the most for the upcoming games. I will obviously be watching all of the regular "main stream stuff" like Track, Gymnastics, Swimming as well as literally everything else I can get my eyeballs on. Sailing? Yup. Fencing? Stab them suckers. Cycling? Absolutely hope there's a lady with a sign that takes out half the field again. The following though are the more unique sports that I will be planning to make a priority though.

3x3 Basketball
Regular Olympic Basketball has never really done it for me, as it seems like a foregone conclusion that the United States will just dominate. That isn't fun for me. What does get me going is the new basketball format of 3x3. It's half court, first to 21 streetball. The U.S. Men's failed to qualify, but the US Women's did. Going through the qualifying matches on YouTube, it's defiantly an event that I will try to catch as much of as possible.

Beach Volleyball
One of my favorite memories of the Olympic Games was watching Men's Beach Volleyball when Todd Rodgers and Phil Dalhausser won gold. Those matches were electric. Dalhausser, now 41, is back in the Olympic games with his partner Nick Lucena who is also 41. They're not expected to go very far, but I will be consuming every one of the matches that they do play and will be rooting for an old man upset. With the women, there is no Misty May or Kerri Walsh Jennings to lead the field, but the US Women have 2 teams that should make it pretty far with the team of Alix Klineman and April Ross expected to be one of the top medal contenders.

Water Polo
This is an absolutely electric sport as well, and the USA Women are considered to be the best in the world. It absolutely blows my mind how physical this sport is. It's like hockey, with drowning. Best of all, legendary hockey announcer Doc Emrick usually calls the event which makes it all the more exciting.

Rugby 7s
I have always been intrigued with rugby as a sport, but never really took the time to understand it until the last Olympic games. The game is absolutely electric, and surprisingly the US Men's team actually has the 4th best odds of winning, which is higher than Australia's! The heavy heavy heavy favorites though are the New Zealand All Blacks, who I like purely for the Haka.

Surfing
It's a completely new entry to the games, but one I'm very interested in watching. I have no clue who the best surfers are, or how they are going to go about it. Feels like so much of surfing is up to just... nature? I mean skateboarding is also an event that I'll watch, but surfing just seems like... random depending on the size of the waves you get. Though, to be fair, I live on a Great Lake and don't really understand surfing that much. Either way seems cool to watch.

Climbing
Another new sport that I'm looking forward to watching just because it'll be something I've ever seen before in my life. There's apparently 3 different climbing events and all of them look electric. No clue who the best climbers in the world are, but I'll be sure to tune in.

 

[ButteredToast]

Opening Ceremony Review
Did I get up at 7:00 in the morning just to watch the Olympic Ceremony live just to be able to consume as many Olympic events as possible later tonight? Yuuuuup. Yup I did. Here are my thoughts/observations:

Hide

• The beginning was super weird. The guy became a leaf. There was a super long countdown. A tribute to quarantine. And then they recreated the
  
  picture to represent the blood and the connections of the body or something strange like that. Not a fan.
• It was super weird that there are no people in attendance, and just blank seats. I'm kind of glad that they didn't go the stupid ass cheesy route of putting cardboard people in the stands, because I'm tired of that shit. But it's weird there not being anyone there.
• They took a moment of silence to remember the murder of the Israeli Olympic Delegation by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich games. They said on the broadcast has not happened before in any of the games ever. Which... good for them. I'm honestly shocked it took this long and has not been done before today. Kind of strange that the country that still refuses to publicly acknowledge heinous war crimes in China during WWII decided to break that... silence?
• The fact that ICELAND of all countries is the first in the Parade of Nations after Greece and the Olympic Refugees because they come first in the Japanese alphabet is a wild move onto my Western mind. Also a random fact, I was watching Rowing last night and learned that Vanuatu is a country. I'm a history major, so the fact that I can still be surprised with countries I've never heard of is an impressive feet I didn't think possible.
• GUAM gets to walk by itself in the Olympics apart from the United States??? Was this always the case...? I never remembered them marching by themselves. Guess they have been separate since 1988, but never won any medal. They did send someone to the winter Olympics for BIATHALON of all sports though. Good for Guam. I demand that the Puerto Rico's and Guam's medals all count for the USA total too. We are all Americans. Good for Guam though. Gonna root the fuck out of Guam's guys to get one. Got 2 swimmers, 2 sprinters, a judo guy, and a wrestler. Also, if you were wondering, Taiwan and Hong Kong medals don't count for China cause America.
• The fact that Fake Russia got to walk is goofy to me. Are they banned or not? I get not punishing the athletes who didn't cheat. But who are we fooling here. Everyone knows that Fake Russia is Russia.
• There an ABSURD number of boxers who are flag bearers for their countries. Like I would say 60% of the countries so far have a boxer as a flag bearer using the eyeball test.
• There is a 12 year old female ping pong player for Syria. I'm floored. Is she the second coming of Forrest Gump or something? Can she SEE over the table? I'm in awe of how she even qualified for this. Good for her. It is now a must watch event for me to see her play ping pong. There was a 15ish year old skater girl who had her own commercial that I saw yesterday, and I thought I was amazed by that. But this one takes the cake. 12?????
• The USA uniforms are shit. We look like the love child of Mr. Mime and Fred from Scooby Doo. Bring back the cool uniforms when we were wearing berets for no reason.
• Correct that. Germany's uniforms are STRAIGHT TRASH. Like... they showed Tuvalu and they came out with leaf outfits bringing the heat and Tonga came out shirtless and oiled up. But then Germany shows up with stupid-ass-shit-ass looking plain white shirts with a small amount of grey camo. The rowers last night were using the German Eagle. How about you actually try Germany.
• AMERICAN SAMOA is marching by themselves too. This is ridiculous. I need some American Territorial unity here. I probably was aware of this 5 years ago and was equally shocked. No historical medals, same as Guam, but I still need them to count for the USA if they ever get them.
• Mauritius is another country that I have never heard of before ever in my life despite being a history major. They actually have a medal too!
• The United States is somehow the 2nd to last nation to enter. How does the Japanese Alphabet work????? What the heck. At least we weren't last. France was last. Ha! Get shit on France.
• The US flag bearer is a baseball team guy has only played professional baseball one season. He use to be a speed skater and was in the Olympics before for that. But like... really? This is the best we got? I'm all for baseball. I love baseball. All about showing the ol' stick and ball players some respect. But we didn't want to give anyone else some recognition that were, i don't know, doing their sport for over a year? :|
• Drone art is super fucking cool. Substantially better than fireworks. Like they made a rotating globe of the world out of drones. How is this not something that we as a modern society do more of?
• Singing Imagine with world celebrities after we are a year removed from celebrities butchering it into a super meme last year made me giggle because of the cringe. Get what they're trying to do. Just pick a different song.
• The speech from the IOC guy was boring. News dropped about the new Cleveland Indians logo, and as a Clevelander, I spent the last like 15 minutes ignoring the dude talking about the pandemic and started screaming about how bad the name and the logo and the stretch of alocal connection are. No one likes it. This is why I abandoned ship as a young young lad and became a Boston sports fan when I was like 5. And I'm 27, so when I started liking Boston there was no Tom Brady and the Red Sox were an embarrassment. Best decision of my entire life. Cleveland is the worst.
• The segment with the pictograms and the actors recreating the logos of every event was SUPER SUPER cool even though the actor fucked up a few times and dropped some shit. Didn't know the Olympic sports symbols were created by Japan in the 60s to bridge a language gap and communicate. Was a super cool segment. Way better than string heart blood thing from earlier.
• Torch time. Wonder what the torch was doing for the past year. Was there a guy somewhere just running in place this whole time? Did they put out the flame and then run it around the world again? I don't want to look it up. Don't tell me.
• Oh shit, it's baseball star Hideki Matsui. Dude just got all his Japanese born power records blown up by a pitcher before the All Star break. Couldn't have gotten Ichiro to do the torch? Is Ichiro PLAYING for the Japanese team? Dude still like works out with the Mariners every day. Looked up the answer: Ichiro is not playing. Seems like a missed opportunity for Japan just from just a cool/respect factor. Like... guy can legitimately still play replacement level MLB baseball if he wanted to.

Final thoughts: Best segment was the pictogram, followed by the drones. Everything else was just ehhhhhh. Was not great. Would not be worth my time to watch anything but the highlights if I knew this would be what it was. Obviously everyone references China as being the standard, but I remember London's and Vancouver's being good too. Korea's was really good the last time too I thought. This one did not come close to live up to those. Maybe it lived up to Rio, because I don't remember that. Whatever. In the grand scheme, what does it matter? Let the games begin!/SPOILER]