[POLL] How is the hype around Paris Olympics in your country?

[stratocumulus 68]

Well I noticed some interviews and background stories in prime information portals about more niche athletes (fencing, canoe slalom) - something one usually does not get in between the Olympics. So I guess it start mounting and now that EURO 2024 is over I think the focus is going to switch completely to the Olympics. Two weeks to go, c'mon, it is time

[mpjmcevoy 362]

2 minutes ago, dodge said:

I’ll go against the grain and report that hype in  might be a little too much 

 

Our 400m relay teams, with Adeleke leading them, are stars. The athletics national championships are usually played out in front of hundreds but nearly 7,000 were there 2 weeks ago on the Sunday. 

 

Daniel Wiffen is our first potential swimming medalist this millennium 

 

Rugby 7s is even poking into the rugby discourse now 

 

I think the general public expect our rowers to repeat and our boxers to win several medals too. 
 

It’s great to see people interested but I’m not sure enough realise how huge a step up the Olympics will be 

But as the old Irish saying goes, we must live in hope, should we die in despair.

 

We never win a large number of medals - our sporting landscape historically has been almost anti-Olympic - horseracing, GAA, pre-Olympic golf, Men's soccer, Rugby (15s), and the one or two times we did well, Our swimmer ended up pissing pure Jamesons, and our horse was a junkie. We had the odd excellent boxer, it's true, and a history in middle distance athletics that had seemed to be just that, history.

 

And we were understandbly uncomfortable with the pretty benign but still there jingoism of our big and frankly rather successful Olympic neighbour (hell, I'm part of that too with my odd split Olympic loyalties). It's easy to love the Olympics when you're good at 'em

 

Suddenly, on a much smaller (obviously) scale, with some basic state funding along the GB model, we've discovered we can do some of this stuff. We can row a rowboat, we can sail a sailboat, we can paddle a ... paddleboat, so long as its downhill, we can swing around a horse as well as ride them, we're no' bad at the oul 7's, or with a hockey stick (give some of our lads a hurling stick and watch the mayhem!), we're still good at punching people, our girls even more so than our boys (like we didn't secretly know that for decades!), but we have a lad who is not bad at kicking them too, and we've found a number of good swimmers, none of whom so far are burning the arse out of the test tubes they have to pee in.

 

It's wonderful, and some of them are going to break our hearts, and we need to embrace that.

 

We must live in hope, should we die in despair.

[kungshamra71 889]

In The Netherlands  I started to get ads in my feed the day after the Euro elimination  (for the TeamNL Huis in Paris), but apart from that not that much.

 

In Portugal  the team was received by the President of Portugal and that barely got in the news at all, so i could bet 90% of the people don't even recall there's gonna be Olympics in 10 days. BUT that was all due to EURO in football of course, over the next days i expect some bigger attention from the media.

 

But in general very little is given to it, except when the media share news like "athlete A didn't managed to get a medal, even though he/she made his personal best ever" and everyone grabs their torch and starts to say stuff like "we are paying this guys and they don't even get medals? what a bunch of losers!!". This gets bigger at the end of the games, becomes a big topic for the 3/4 days after the games, and then goes into oblivion for the next 4 years.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Joshi 123]

Sports hype is not really happening much in NZ with people's attention  focused on the economy, cost of living, inflation. When the official cash rate is going to drop,? Which if it does will lead to lower interest rates. 

 

There are more pressing issues at the moment. It could change a little if we win a medal very early during the olympics. But in the meantime you wouldn't know that it's only a week and a bit away.

Edited July 15 by Joshi

[Makedonas 2,155]

Not too much but people are starting to talk about it mostly because the basketball team just qualified and they got a lot of media attention.

 

Otherwise, no one is really talking about specific athletes/teams for other sports but in general people are slowly starting to talk about the Olympics. And I think once the Olympics start people will be more interested.