thiago_simoes

I trashed FIG for holding a team event, but now I kind of like this idea, to be honest. There's a senior team competition at the Winter Olympics in figure skating, so why not a team event in gymnastics?

Yes, this is it. I'm really surprised with the Iranian gymnast qualifying in 5th. This is the most unpredictable apparatus in men's artistic gymnastics, so there's a decent chance the Iranian boy can walk away with a medal.

I live in Santa Catarina, and this is the state in which Bolsonaro won with the largest margin among all states in the country. This is like living in hell.

My list of friends in Facebook went from around 1,100 people to 470 now. And I still think I'll have to double check about some people...

As I said before, I'm afraid of how people will react on the streets. I've seen two videos today of black people being assaulted, beaten and I've read about a man publicly stating he believes men have the right to beat their spouses. Bolsonaro is just the rotten face of what Brazil is, and there are 200 million reasons for me to worry.

I'd stay there all day, I'm sure!

Very few times in my life -- not even when my father died when I was a young child -- I've felt this hopeless, lost, afraid and confused. There's no point for me to cheer for Brazilian athletes anymore because they represent a nation I despise at the moment.

Some of the moves from the South African guy in breaking dance look like what I do in the morning when I search everywhere around my room trying to find my glasses.

The problem is not what he can do, but how his ideas make other people do what they do. Brazil is the most dangerous country in the world for LGBT people to live in. No other country registered such a high rate of crimes against LGBT people, and to top it off, homicide rates are among the highest in the world (and they are the highest in the world when it comes to gay and transgender people). In such a hostile environment, he adds fuel to the hatred against LGBT people. Last week, there was a huge protest on the streets against Bolsonaro, but a number of people in a subway platform chanted "faggots, take care, Bolsonaro will kill your kind". One of the major reasons for people to vote on him is that he promised everybody will be allowed to have a gun. Usually people think this will keep them safe, but in reality we'll have even more people murdering gays, transgenders, lesbians and women (Bolsonaro is also a misogynistic pig, for those who don't know already).

When the cauldron was lit, the opening they used to lit the flame was at crotch height and I could swear the guy would urinate inside the cauldron when the ceremony was over.

I don't follow this sport so I'm confused now: if he's a repeated doper, why has he not been banned for life?

Nothing about Bolsonaro is funny. Nothing. 5 years ago he was considered a (bad) joke, ranting nonstop about a non-existing communist threat, and now he's very close to becoming the president for the next four years. He's publicly stated he believes (pretty) women should be raped, women should earn less than men, black people and native Brazilians are lazy and should be killed, gay people should die... Basically, he should be jailed for even opening his mouth, but somehow he's running for president and many, many people are ignorant enough to vote for him. In fact, I fear for my life if he ever gets elected. Now, about the other politicians... Temer is as dirty as one can be. He's currently the illegitimate president after a coup d'état, and that says a lot. In short, the coup happened so he could sell for cheap (I'd say give) our oil to the Americans. Of course there's more to it, but it's too long (and boring) to explain. I'm a professor in a federal institution (basically, federal schools and colleges are usually the best in the country) and we've suffered huge losses of maintenance money, so we're screwed for the next years thanks to this coup. Haddad is not a bad politician, but he is from a party I sincerely hope will not elect a president in the next 30 years, since we've seen numerous scandals of corruption regarding this party. Haddad has good ideas, but he should never have run for president in the first place.

My comments about the opening ceremony: The good: it was a nice idea to take the ceremony to the streets and they made good use of the obelisk. I also liked the fact that athletes from every nation paraded together, and that the ceremony was short. Not charging for tickets was also a great move. The official song is nice too (for the first time a song for the Olympics doesn't bore me to death before it's over the first time I listen to it). The bad: the parade of flags was rushed to the point we could barely see the athletes, the costumes used by the dancers were terrible, the lighting was bad overall and sometimes we could barely see what was going on. The ugly: the camera angles were annoying, the whole "this guy, olympian, one bronze medal" thing was annoying, the pillow fight when athletes were marching in made no sense at all, the Olympic cauldron looked like an urinal. Overall, not a bad ceremony, but a terrible job from the director.

I understand he had to speak to the crowd in front of him, but I cringed when I realized there was little to no simultaneous translation during the transmission. I only realized it midway through his speech (it's a good thing I'm Brazilian and our language is so similar to Spanish I could understand everything). But I can imagine what it's like listen to this guy speaking without a single clue about what's going on.

I recognize some ideas from Brazilian carnival (the parade of samba schools): The inflated ball thing that the singer stood on before the parade of nations. The idea of letting rowers go up the obelisk vertically:

How about saying that Bolivia won the gold medal in men's football at the inaugural edition of the Youth Olympics? There's always something nice to say about one nation. It looks like they looked up the article about the country in Wikipedia and came up with something in literally 30 seconds. "Landlocked? Oh, this will do." Yikes.

Some of the comments by the official commentators made me cringe, like stating that Bolivia is one of the two landlocked countries in South America or that the United States do well at the Olympics but they don't perform well at the Youth Olympics. I mean, is this the best they could say about these nations? Really?

Whoever made the choice to film the parade of nations through this angle should be fired immediately.

I edited my comment. I see some good points now that I would like to see at the "big" Olympics. For example, I really liked the fact that all of the athletes paraded together and taking the opening ceremony to the streets is actually a brilliant idea. But the angles and the lighting are putting me off.

What the hell! I didn't know Swaziland is now Eswatini!

It's so nice that a gymnast carried the flag of Canada!

EDIT: I'll write about my impressions once the ceremony is over. I spoke... wrote too soon.

Podium training in gymnastics is underway and I'm even more disappointed with the female athlete from Brazil than I've been before. I expected a less than stellar performance, but speaking about stars, she's as close to being one as Icarus is close to planet Earth (hint: it's the most distant star from Earth).

I'm still amazed they qualified a gymnast! Even semi-decent nations in this sport with good results in recent women's artistic gymnastics competitions like Kazakhstan, India, Chinese Taipei and Indonesia failed to qualify a girl for the YOG.

Well, he did win a medal at the World Championships, so the guy deserves some credit. Still, I have to say I laughed hard at your post.