Finally I'm slightly surprised to see how popular college football is
You don't live in Columbus, Ohio, do you?
And that chart just confirms every stereotype, right?
I predict WWE fan turnout will be unusually high this year.
I couldn't figure out why lefty soccer fans have low voter turnout, but then I decided it's because they are mostly young.
I would have expected Monster Trucks to be adjacent to NASCAR, wherever they were on the chart.
4: Also largely recent immigrants, wouldn't you think?
Pro Bull Riding is slightly more liberal than pro rodeo (but will similar turnout). If that's statistically significant, maybe it boils down to ethnic differences? I would guess rodeo is more white and PBR more Hispanic. But maybe not--all the American champions have Anglo names.
I would have expected Monster Trucks to be adjacent to NASCAR, wherever they were on the chart.
Similarly pro rodeo (as opposed to amateur rodeo? Is that a thing? Isn't that just goofing off on a farm?).
True story. My dad's clerk was a rodeo clown. He tried to get my dad to enter a wild cow milking contest, but dad said no.
I wonder why college football is more rightwing than NFL. More Southern?
He tried to get my dad to enter a wild cow milking contest, but dad said no "Fuck you, clown!"
FTFY
I'm surprised the Olympics skew Republican.
The way American liberals coo over European soccer because "it's so cosmopolitan" is disgusting. And that's why I'm voting for Gary Johnson this fall. (Trump has reached the point where he doesn't even get joke votes.)
I'm surprised the Olympics skew Republican.
Historically, they skew Nazi.
13 is great.
New respect for the WNBA and tennis.
And I'm completely unsurprised by the PGA and LPGA.
I guess I'm slightly surprised that there's a cluster of sports that seems to represent sports-loving America generally, and then the NFL has the same slight rightwards lean as them but lower turnout.
Also that the NHL is the most conservative of the big sports. I guess it being the whitest outweighs it being the most northern.
I'm surprised WWE and UFC aren't more Republican.
I like the fact UFC, motorcycle racing, and monster trucks are politically nonpartisan. United by the love of speed, pointless risk-taking, and car-crushing. But it doesn't matter, because who votes when they can crush some cars instead?
Also, political liberalism is correlated with the ball being closer to a perfect sphere. Tennis - spherical. Soccer - spherical. Basketball - spherical. Golf - covered in bumps. College football - oval. Hockey - not a goddamn ball.
Not sure what to do with baseball. Cricket, of course, is perfectly centrist as the ball would be a perfectly smooth sphere if it wasn't for the seam.
19: The WWE fans I know are all over the field politically, but are generally young. I would expect libertarians, socialists, and apathetistas to be overrepresented.
Baseballs have seams. It all checks out.
United by the love of speed, pointless risk-taking, and car-crushing. But it doesn't matter, because who votes when they can crush some cars instead?
See also Final Fight characters. And that includes a mayor.
I'm surprised the Olympics skew Republican.
Older and richer (I saw somewhere that the average age of Olympics viewers this year was close to 50).
Mike Haggar may be the most Reagan-era video game hero.
25
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I'm the only person in my millennial/young gen x, very leftist social circle I know of who watches the Olympics. I wonder if there's a difference between winter vs. summer Olympics (I'd imagine winter skews richer and whiter, so if there is a difference it's probably more conservative.)
I'm watching swimming and gymnastics, and the commentators are Australian (well, Kiwi and Aussie, to be precise), and coverage is geared as much towards an Aussie audience as an American one. I'm not complaining, but I can't believe that NBC is so cheap it buys Aussie commentary instead of hiring people to do its own. Also, swimming and gymnastics are major sports, and some of the most popular in the US where Americans do extremely well. (By contrast, I noticed they did have American commentators on women's beach volleyball.)
I should amend that to commentators with N. American accents. They could very well be Canadian.
25: also more nationalistic. "The Olympics" isn't a sport, it's an event. But there's no corresponding non-international event of any prominence; it's not like there's a National Polevaulting League that gets televised. The Olympics is all about "have we won more gold medals than the filthy outlanders?"
Being Southern Hemispheric, Kiwis/Aussies are better able to explain what's happening in Rio, e.g. why the water in the pools doesn't fall out onto the ceiling.
"And exactly as you'd expect, Bruce, the freestyle swimmers are gradually starting to move in clockwise circles around the pool."
"Well, that's the coriolis force for ya, Bruce."
30
I could be wrong, but I'm not sure it totally has that effect in the US. Lots of real 'Muricans don't really care how Americans perform in sissy sports (i.e. those involving spandex and not clobbering people) and don't consider other countries to be rivals in red-blooded manly man sports. Like, no American is excited for Olympic basketball. There is a USA! USA! chest thumping value to winning the medal counts, but you can get that by reading the stats online, so there's no need to watch foreigners in sparkly spandex on the pommel horse.
, e.g. why the water in the pools doesn't fall out onto the ceiling.
But do we know why it's green?
33: But there must be a fair number of patriotic viewers that enjoy watching the athletes stand there while the national anthem plays or they wouldn't broadcast that.
I've wondered, this year, how Trump voters cheer for diverse American teams. I haven't wondered this about Republicans in other years, since this is the first time since I started really paying attention in the 1990s that white nationalism is so overt.
It's completely unsurprising that golf is the most right wing sport.
I may previously have mentioned watching the Olympic dressage event with a fairly varied group of people, including a sergeant from the Black Watch, who watched it intently and silently for some time before remarking in a disapproving tone "That horse just canna settle doon".
35
To be fair, nightly Olympics coverage is now basically a montage of medals ceremonies, interspersed with a few feel good stories on cancer and women's spandex.
28: Are referring to streaming? The tv broadcast commentators mostly sound American when I've had it on.
My guess is that the streaming taps into the "world feeds", which probably just have one set of commentators in each of the languages they're covering. When I was in Canada in 2010, you could get Olympic coverage online through the Canadian tv channel* that was just video feeds (with graphics), no commentators, and as far as I know it was just the raw feeds that tv broadcasts can choose to tap into at any moment.
*I don't think it was CBC that year.
40: "You're watching the Ogged Channel."
41
Yeah, the ANZAC commentators are through live online streaming, which are edited and come with commentary. (This might be shown somewhere on TV). There are full event replays available, which show the entire event with no commentary. Then there are also the nightly broadcasts available, which AFAICT involve very little actual sporting event coverage and mostly just feel good stories.
39
I decided to watch the dressage stream, and they have the plucky Aussies doing that as well.
Michael Phelps currently has 21 Olympic gold medals and presumably will have more before the end of the current Olympics. Surely that's enough? Can't he just call it quits now and enjoy a life of luxury?
41
Also, the commentary is pretty specifically Australian, which makes it feel less like "generic English language commentary." Like, we learn whose father played for the Adelaide Crows, the last time an ANZAC team won in gymnastics (1912), and the no. of Australian athletes competing in each event.
39
Now they've added an English commentator who presumably knows something more about dressage.
Back when I could get Alpine World Cup CBC feeds, they also had an Australian covering skiing, along with some Canadian women who had presumably actually seen snow. The Aussie guy would add helpful comments like, "Dinky di! They're going pretty fast on those little wooden sticks, aren't they!"
I read an article about Ichiro and his pursuit of 3000 hits, and it made it sound like he has literally nothing in his life other than baseball. If he stopped, what would he do instead? Maybe Phelps is similar.
Speaking of sports; the story about OK City NBA player, Enes Kanter's support for the Turkish coup is fascinating.
First his father disowned him.
Kanter's father Mehmet Kanter disowned his son for his ties with the Gülen Movement. Saying that Enes was hypnotized by the Gülenist Terror Organization [FETÖ], his father wrote: "I apologize to the Turkish people and the president for having such a son."
Following the release of the letter, Daily Sabah reached out to Mehmet Kanter, who told Daily Sabah that he has been quite disturbed by his son's behavior and insulting tweets directed at President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Then Enes replied and his response was signed, "Enes (Kanter) Gülen" which lead to this">http://www.dailysabah.com/basketball/2016/08/08/nba-player-enes-kanter-says-ready-to-sacrifice-his-life-for-gulenist-terror-cult">this story.
He signed the letter as Enes (Kanter) Gülen, changing his surname after his family said that they were disowning him for having ties to the terror organization.
Kanter had recently tweeted that he would sacrifice his mother, father and whole family for Gülen's sake.
The 24-year-old Oklahoma City Thunder player has always been active on his official Twitter account, tweeting about political events in Turkey and siding with U.S.-based, fugitive preacher Gülen.
46.last: just to be clear, the sergeant was also watching it, in the same room as me. I was not watching some strange sports channel in which all the commentary is supplied by British senior non-commissioned officers.
Though were such a channel to exist, I would.
51.2
Be the change you want to see in the world.
OT: With apologies to Peter Thiel.
I thought the chart omitted pro bowling for some reason or other (my guess is it'd lean Republican and be slightly low turnout). I was not aware the sport had declined so much.
Voter Turnout Index mostly means age, right?
I let the wife talk me into buying an antenna, so now, for the first time in 7 years, we get something on the T that didn't stream from computers. So we watched some NBC Olympic coverage -- it's way worse than I remembered.
NBC's theory that its mostly women who watch the Olympics and mostly they don't like sports certainly shows in the choices.
Saw a couple of Clinton commercials, and a couple for Gov. Bullock: I suppose this reflects the demographics too.
+V
My V key sticks, which is really inconvenient.
nightly broadcasts available, which AFAICT involve very little actual sporting event coverage and mostly just feel good storiesendless fucking swimming and some other stuff.
I've actually seen very little of the human interest stuff, but perhaps that's just the effect of watching with my family with each of us on screens; when the human interest stuff comes on, I either play with my iPad or talk with my family.
But honestly, I think there's way less than in the past, and not much in general. And this year is as much prime time coverage as I've seen in years. I mean, compared with a baseline of zero personal stuff, sure, but why am I supposed to care about any of this if it's a bunch of people I've never heard of performing sports I don't care about? As long as the clips are kept short, it doesn't bother me in the least.
56: and class. And probably at least somewhat immigration status, as noted re: soccer.
59: You're not actually obligated to watch them, you know.
4, 6:
Yup, it's likely mostly Latino immigrants who watch European soccer. Asians too, but Asians probably don't contribute much statistically.
That's racist. I know lots of Asians who do just fine in statistics.
Michael Phelps currently has 21 Olympic gold medals and presumably will have more before the end of the current Olympics. Surely that's enough? Can't he just call it quits now and enjoy a life of luxury?
He did, after 2012. Then he got bored.
Then he should give me some of the wealth I assume he has and I'll live a life of luxury.
Phelps without the Olympics is like McNulty riding the boat. Have some sympathy.
Somewhat OT: Today I went to a shooting range for the first time. My sister and I had pacifist parents who wouldn't let us have water guns, or play laser tag or Duck Hunt, so this was quite literally the first time I've handled any kind of firearm at all.
I'm happy to have had this experience, but unlikely to want to go shooting again. Mostly I'm just relieved that I hit a few targets, and that I did not hit any people.
67
If you really put your mind to it, I'm sure you could be ready for the 2020 Olympics. If you can x-country ski, there's the biathlon in 2018
68: I'm so proud of not shooting anybody else that I think I'd better take this as a victory and move on.
Part of me feels that American liberals should all buy guns and learn to use them to defend their homes from the Trumpistas after November.
Dogs are far better for home defence than guns. You don't need to keep them locked up, you don't need to worry about your children playing with them, they're cheaper, they're more accessible ("you're breaking into my house? Wait just a minute, I need to go and unlock my dog safe, get my dog out, and then re-install its teeth, which I keep separately for safety reasons"). Plus, even if you get one and then you end up never needing it for home defence, you still have a dog, which is nice.
Also, open-carry nuts are a lunatic fringe who scare people. Dog-walkers are nice.
Yes, I've heard ex-burglars say much the same thing. How are dogs in a riot and looting situation?
Yeah but my guns don't shit all over the house when I'm gone for the day.
Don't you already have a trained hunting gyrfalcon? And if not why not?
How are dogs in a riot and looting situation?
Not great. They have huge difficulty carrying flatscreen TVs.
76 Can't take them out in the summer here. They die within minutes.
I always used to wonder about that dogs for home defense thing. Dogbreath was a reasonably sized dog, and if she'd wanted to hurt someone, she could have, based on what I'd seen her do to cow bones. But she never reacted to a person in a way that suggested she was likely to do anything useful about a threat.
That wasn't what we had her for, of course, but I can't say I felt safer with her in the house.
The cops always say that dogs are much much better for home defense than guns. My former dog was actually purchased as a home protection dog of sorts (to protect tools stored in the backyard during a home renovation, tools are the one thing that are routinely burgled and we'd had two break-ins into a back garage to steal tools). The dog would only bark at squirrels and other dogs, not people, and was about the least "trained" dog ever, but the deterrence effect seemed to work - no more break ins.
We had a large German Shepherd once when we lived in an area subject to burglary. It kind of worked in that on at least one occasion somebody started to break in and did a runner when the dog started barking. But what the burglar didn't know was that it was the soppiest dog ever born, and if he had actually got into the house it would have jumped up to lick his face.
We were told that there was an understanding in the criminal fraternity that houses known to have big dogs were left alone.
When we moved in, I put two guns in the closet and two dogs. Today I'll check on them for the first time and see which ones are still working.
My dog is not large enough to actually hurt anyone badly--it could deliver a moderately painful bite but nothing worse. But it goes INSANE whenever anyone approaches the house, in a way that makes very clear that the person will at the very least have to fend off a painful bite, plus deal with a very loud barking dog. Given that almost all of the robberies around here are quick smash-and-grabs in midday when no one is home, I think it's pretty effective deterrent.
I have a couple of neighbors that have big dogs they got for security (as opposed to the majority of my neighbors who have little dogs). I always feel sorry for those dogs because they didn't get out except when it was time to empty them. The one dog got old and its owner took up walking and seems fine now, but I think the other dog was miserable the whole time. Plus, she couldn't control it (100 pound woman, 120 poorly trained dog).
Well, right. The minimum qualification for owning a dog for home defense or anything else is to actually like it enough to treat it well.
If you really liked it, would you set it out to defend your house without giving it a gun?
I wouldn't dream of having a big dog that wasn't a trained fencer.
(And I mean that. I don't think I've ever dreamed about having a big dog at all.)
My wife is trying to nudge our son to take up fencing. It's sort of working.
That's exactly the same thing, except that he gets to eat at the table with us.
Or another dog. Clearly the situation in 82 is that Moby bought the gun to hunt with, he bought the other gun to defend his home against people trying to steal his first gun, he bought a dog to discourage people trying to steal either of his guns, and he bought another, larger dog to defend the first dog. The next step will be to buy either a gun for the second dog or a leopard.
I also have a nice hunting bow, but don't have any arrows. When I got my first real job, I was going to try a new hobby, but never got around to buying arrows.
One of humanity's many unforgivable crimes is, in my view, having turned magnificent loping wolves into fucking poodles.
Just try and get a wolf to bring you a dead duck back from a cold lake.
I was really proud of myself for getting after the girls to shut the gate at the new house so the dog can't get out only to find the dog slipping between the fence posts in the wrought-iron portion. Hounds are slippery like that.
Just try and get a wolf to bring you a dead duck back from a cold lake.
Try getting a gun to do the same thing, too. They're equally useless.
I feel like no-shit tear-your-fucking-throat-out dogs are okay. And possibly tiny yappy dogs that are in actual fact retrieving dead ducks. Otherwise, fucking criminal.
Poodles are great dogs, at least the big ones. The tiny ones are kind of awful, I admit.
The gun deads the duck and dog brings it back. It's a package.
I admit I am tempted by the idea of getting one of those crossbreeds with a silly name, like a cockapoo or a Labradoodle. Perhaps I could get a King Charles' Spadoodle, or a weimaranoodle.
And have read that poodles would actually make fine guard dogs, if not for the PR issues -- people don't take them seriously.
And have read that poodles would actually make fine guard dogs, if not for the PR issues -- people don't take them seriously.
A grey hound ate a cockapoo at the dog park near my house (the one with all the Pikachu in it).
Producing a greyhockapoochu?
I'm not quite sure how dog breeding works.
"Ate" is an exaggeration. "Bit to death" would have been more accurate.
I see numerous people here walking tiny ridiculous dogs or sometimes pushing them in strollers (?!). Others have great big lollopy dogs which have to be living in apartments smaller than the territory they would naturally need just to scratch their ears in. I'm not saying I want a nuclear apocalypse, but I wouldn't be crying.
99. My niece and nephew (technically Mrs y's, but same difference) are getting a cockapoo next month. I shall keep you posted. The only one I've met was very friendly and ferociously intelligent
Just tell them to be careful at the dog park.
104.2 When a daddy dog and a mommy dog love each other very much...
While moving we discovered the circumstances where the dog would provide security. Strangers (to the dog) packed up and walked off with the tv, computer, couch etc. and dog didn't show any interest. When one of them tried to pick up the favored dog toy, a torn up rag doll, he went full Cujl, and the mover sensibly dropped it and backed out of the building.
I used to know a Rotweiller/Australian Shepherd cross. Looked just like a slightly fluffy Rottie until it moved, at which point it was clearly a wiggly, bouncy sheepdog rather than a stoic, dignified Rottie. Funniest thing ever. I always wondered how sheep would have reacted.
poodles are great dogs. All the dog breeder/fancier terribleness gets expressed in bad haircuts instead of breeding in traits for non-functional snouts or droopy skin or hip displasia like most other breeds.
I wonder if it is that criminal are all jerkwads who, if they have a dog, who they beat around until it is mean and assume every other dog is just as ill-treated.
In Mossheimat they make a habit of poisoning the big ones in advance. Which is a great reason not to have them for home defense.
Not to have dogs that is. Not having criminals for home defense is kind of self-explanatory.
Especially as you'd only be able to have a little criminal anyway, all the big ones having been poisoned in advance. And a little criminal would be doubly useless for home defence, because he would either steal your stuff himself or be unable to stop another larger criminal doing the same thing.
A little criminal might have trouble lifting stuff over the wall though.
90
So, the only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a dog with another even bigger dog with a gun.
Let's get this on a bumper sticker.
The only thing stopping a bad guy with a dog is a good guy with a wolfpack.
He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. A gun with a dog bungeed to it. And the dog has another smaller dog gaffer taped on to its back, which is carrying a gun as well. Probably with a bayonet fixed. That's the Chicago way.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and dogs.
Nothing's scarier than looking down the barrel of a Dobi-o-matic.
Now I want to go find the Far Side collection I must still have somewhere in a box in the basement.
I used to have several of his galleries memorized.
My dog, like many street dogs in Mexico or near the Mexican border, was part pit bull, part chihuahua. This made literally everyone one mentioned this to think about uncomfortable dog sex (even if someone doesn't admit it, that's where everyone's mind naturally goes when you say part pit, part chihuahua).
Slave ships, viking ships, a ship of fools...
Our dog walker had a litter of Jack Russell/Rottweilers. The Jack Russell had been neutered, but apparently it takes a couple of days for it to work, and had one last improbable hurrah. They came out oddly dachshund-like -- long bodies, short legs.
I don't want to know why your dog walker fucked a Jack Russell. I just want to know why you hired a Rottweiler as a dog walker.
They command total obedience very easily.
It's not that a Rottweiler does it well, but that it's done at all.
I don't know. I've never watched a Rottweiler have sex.
59: You're not actually obligated to watch them, you know.
Actually I quite like the Olympics, it's just the endless goddamn swimming (which they're showing because A. live and B. American-dominated) that gets me down. And they show other stuff before and after swimming, but not on a schedule, so it's not like I could just turn it off during the swimming.
I don't think I've ever dreamed about having a big dog at all.
I was under the impression that Dogbreath was decently large. Or are you drawing a strict line between medium-large ~50 lb dogs and 100 lb monsters?
More than one of the points on this graph startled me in their very existence. Which then made me think, why am I startled that there are fans of men's tennis?
Are there really fans of men's tennis? Like, as their #1 sport, above all others? In the United States? I guess there's a lot of people in the United States.
Our neighbors have a part-chihuahua dog, who goes loudly nuts every time someone is in the driveway (ours or theirs), ran into our yard and bit my wife, and has attacked and bit one or two other people when it has gotten out unleashed. A menace. All I can hope is that they move out and the next tenant has a less-terrible dog (the landlord is clearly treating the house as a pit and as such may be one of the few landlords willing to rent to dog-owners.)
It might be a pit bull mix. Certainly something large enough to make one wonder about uncomfortable dog sex.
I echo yoyo, shut the gobs about poodles. They're extremely smart, mostly well-tempered, non-aggressive - if I wanted a dog, they would be my pick.
Chihuahuas IME are vicious aggressive maniacs and if they were as big as a pit bull they'd be illegal. At one level I can't blame them, if you were a wolf who had been bred to the size of a rat you'd be resentful too. But I cannot find it in me to love them.
I've made a tinder account this week and been really surprised how many people make a big deal about being dog people, right up to "swipe left if you don't love dogs," which is what I did. (I have nothing against dogs, but that's a bit much for me.) I am very fond of our (formerly Lee's) dog but she's finally showing her age and I don't have any plans to replace her once she's gone. Other people in the family will assuredly feel differently, but too bad for them.
If only you had access to a taxidermist, there's a middle road.
Actually I did give the taxidermist friend my pet turtle's body, which is still in a freezer somewhere and hasn't been used yet. But I nixed doing the same when the kitten died and definitely won't be passing along the dog's body either.
Dogbreath was medium sized -- 45 pounds and lanky. But I didn't dream about her.
If it hasn't been used yet, here's a recipe.
I'm guessing there isn't 2.5 pounds of meat on a household-grade turtle.
I watched the women's gymnastics qualifiers, and it really is amazing how much better the US is than any other team. I was wondering, how does that end up--lots of other countries have money, skilled coaching, and large pool of talent. We have 6 (or however many women are on the team) who to the last one can perform the most difficult routines absolutely flawlessly. China was a distant second, and while they were very good you could still see how hard they were working. The US girls made it look easy.
Cassandane's a dog person. I get along with the dogs of friends and family members just fine but they're too demanding and co-dependent for me to live with.
We currently have a cat. He is perfectly capable of using the cat door I made for him in the back window (and it wasn't easy, by the way) if we aren't around, but he prefers that I open the front door for him. In addition, these days we need to supervise him when Atossa is around because he's scratched her once or twice and put his food out of reach because she likes to eat it, but presumably that stuff will stop soon. The I-prefer-the-front-door stuff is the level of pet care I'm comfortable with.
146: From some very minimal watching (like, just bits and clips here and there online, nothing systematic) the US body-types are different than any other team I noticed. All the other countries looked as though they'd trained/selected for lightness, and the US team looked as though it had been picked and trained for muscularity. Obviously, it's gymnastics, you have to have both, but I wonder if there was a worldwide swing too far in one direction, and the US coaches broke from the pack.
At this point when I see stand-out performances that's my default assumption. Better at drugs.
But it could be sexist body-type preferences, as in tennis.
I could never date a dog person. They are horrible beasts with nasty fur and they eat shit and then lick your face. And that's just the owners. They are disgusting on all axes. Authoritarian followers, racist litte mongrels. Cat's rule, dogs drool.
You are clearly just trying to pick fights here. Which is a bad choice when the other faction's pet of choice could eat yours.
I'm a people person. Where else can you find a pet that does household chores?
I am putting 120 on my Tinder profile. As soon as I set one up.
153: Have you ever actually watched your cat groom? It's a full-body wash. Then it wants to lick you with sandpaper.
I love cats (and have one) but I have no illusions about them.
149
I thought about that, but there are some muscular girls on the other teams. The Brits and Canadians and Germans aren't all bird boned.
150
With doping, would that help you nail your routine in competition? Like, I can see how it would make you faster or stronger, but would it help you not fall off a balance beam in a high pressure setting? (Maybe they're all on xanax. With some of the other teams, you could see visible nervousness.) The commentators mentioned that the US girls trained harder, but that doesn't seem right. I can't imagine that, say, the Chinese or Russians aren't pushing their girls to the max.
The only other athlete who was insanely good on the American level was a vaulter from N. Korea, which somehow makes sense, if you've seen N. Korean choreography.
I don't know about China, which had been getting better, but I vaguely remember hearing Russia and Romania self-destructed organizationally. I don't think that many countries actually care about gymnastics so there's not much after those two.
Maybe it is the case that we're the only country with the money, desire, organization, and body types. China is getting into being good at sports as a way to demonstrate world superpower status, but Chinese gymnasts are pretty far on the featherweight side of things, so can't always get the power necessary for some routines.
Maybe it is the case that we're the only country with the money, desire, organization, and body types.
On the other hand, you pretty much can't be a champion female gymnast if you are over 5'2", so we are at a disadvantage there with our good nutrition and whatnot.
161
Luckily we're working on that.
Anyone in the US watching the rugby 7s?
My entire interest in the Olympics is encompassed by confirming every 4 years that rhythmic gym is still part if the festivities. I don't want to watch it, lord no, I just like the insane deranged wackyness of it existing and being part of the whole shebang.
re: 149
I don't think that's true at all, actually. With the exception of the Chinese, and I think a couple of the Russians, most of the female gymnasts run to fairly compact and powerful.* In fact, I wouldn't say that the US team is even particularly an outlier.
* this is a dramatic change from 20 years ago, obviously.
163: I watched France-Spain women's on Day One, but I haven't had time to get back to any of it. If I had my shit together, I'd have it on on my iPad next to my monitor during the day.
Has anyone seen the Olga Korbut uneven parallel bars from '72? Missing all the releases they do now, but also includes some moves that they don't do anymore that are kind of mind bending.
164 - teacher to fellow student: "stop it! this is dance not rhythmic gymnastics!"
Has anyone seen the Olga Korbut uneven parallel bars from '72?
I hadn't, but this video is good and has multiple replays of a particularly impressive extended sequence. Thank you for mentioning it.
168: the russian ballet school has a former crack rhythmic gym champ on staff to torture the young ones into flexibility by teaching them how to put themselves into stress positions whilst euro pop pounds relentlessly at them.
one of my fondest memories as a dance performance attending parent was when sitting through some mind bendingly horrendous piece for the ~5-7 year olds involving streamers and hoops and what not, set to a medley of disney-broadway tunes, I had a brilliant aperçu that San Francisco could sweep Eurovision by teaming Svetlana's choreagraphic skills with the Castro's best nightclub attendees. Of course I immediately passed this on to the better half who snorted so loud I thought at least three doting mothers nearby were going to do him harm.
poodles without stupid haircuts
If that dog didn't win Best In Show, I don't even want to know.
159. I vaguely remember hearing Russia and Romania self-destructed organizationally.
Dunno about Russia but didn't Romania destruct due to the fall of Ceaucescu and the revelation that the coaches and other party big-wigs were abusing the gymnasts? Nadia Comaneci had some comments on that, IIRC. Not to mention coaches moved to the West once it was possible.
171 is blocked as adult/mature content here.
171 is blocked as adult/mature content here.
It's a poodle with a remarkable shave and dye-job, appearing in the end to be a ninja turtle.
The New Yorker article that I can't find at the moment explained U.S. dominance by appealing to Marta Karolyi's obsessive attention to the gymnastics Code of Points (e.g., American gymnasts do the wolf spin because it gets a lot of points even though it's not terribly graceful) and to her system where the gymnasts train primarily at their home gyms but regularly come to her facility for training, which keeps them competitive with each other.
176: & if that's not mature I don't know what is!