Oldira

Cian and his 1 time penalties, London 2012 memories all over again!
But I take the Olympic quota with open arms and I am running away happy  

going to the Olympics at first time of asking
 
Unreal

Small bit of Irish rowing history happened today. First ever womens 8 to compete internationally 
 
Made up of our 4-, 2-, 2x and a cox 
 
 

I attended the games in Barcelona and London. I arrived in Barcelona on the Wednesday of the first week without a hotel or ticket and within an hour of arriving had a hotel and tickets for Tennis, Boxing,Athletics and Volleyball. There were plenty of tickets on sale for most events and there were plenty of hotel rooms even though the city was packed.
same with London...no issue with accommodation and while I had bought tickets in advance plenty of others became available online during the games and you could buy and then collect at ANY venue.
My advice is do not panic. There will be tickets floating about and Paris has lots of accommodation.
 

I attended the games in Barcelona and London. I arrived in Barcelona on the Wednesday of the first week without a hotel or ticket and within an hour of arriving had a hotel and tickets for Tennis, Boxing,Athletics and Volleyball. There were plenty of tickets on sale for most events and there were plenty of hotel rooms even though the city was packed.
same with London...no issue with accommodation and while I had bought tickets in advance plenty of others became available online during the games and you could buy and then collect at ANY venue.
My advice is do not panic. There will be tickets floating about and Paris has lots of accommodation.
 

I gave an 8. I was very apprehensive in the lead up to the games and didn’t enjoy the opening ceremony and felt little of the normal excitement I’d feel in the lead up to an Olympics. However on Day 1 of competition everything turned. Seeing competitors delighted in winning or distraught when losing showed me that the Olympics is really all about the athletes. The crowds at the men’s road race also added a touch of normality. As the games progressed I barely noticed the lack of crowd and  following our athletes on social media showed that they were having the adventure of their lives. Thankfully no event was disrupted by Covid and by end of games. Covid  was barely a factor and although cases rose in Tokyo it doesn’t seem games related. 
In the end I am so glad the games happened if only for the sake of the athletes. Sad as I am now the fact the Paris is only 3 years away is a major help.

At first I didn't really feel excited. There was too much negativity revolving around the games and Covid, I didn't expect there to be a great atmosphere. Then came the first matches in softball and football before the opening ceremony, still didn't feel much. It all got better with the opening ceremony for me and all of a sudden, I got excited. It was the Olympics after all and  the organisers did their best to make them happen.
 
I was telling myself before, I would not change my sleeping schedule. In the end, I didn't, but I couldn't really sleep on the night towards the first day. I checked the first result online and then I got up and I was hooked immediately. Gone was the negativity the months before. And it felt like there were no spectators needed. The athletes created the tension and emotions all by themselves. Literally everyone was crying, over 4th place as well as the bronze. Daria Bilodid's bout comes to mind. Eventually, we got to see two weeks of exciting sports, shifts and turnarounds in the medal table. Many records were broken, many nations had their best games ever (some not, of course).
 
About the new sports, I enjoyed all of them. There's none I would say they shouldn't return.
Softball/baseball is one of my favourite team sports now, even if they take a while. Not to mention one of the less Euro-centric ones which is also nice to have. Skateboarding I fully enjoyed but definitely park more than street. I expected street to be more than just a bit of "slopestyle". Sport climbing too of course, and we can all agree on having to separate speed from lead/boulder. The combined format was not the greatest.
Behind  those three comes karate. Someone said it's more exciting than judo and I can see that. This time, judo felt like it dragged on too much with a lot of golden score decisions. Definitely wouldn't mind karate returning. The only slight problem I had was following  the surfing. It's relaxing  to watch but on busy days with tons of stuff going on I didn't feel like waiting for the waves to come. It's still nice to have it but it certainly didn't get my priority here. 
 
More about specific teams to follow later. All in all a better Olympics than I thought they would be. Sorry Japan didn't get to show its full potential here, but still.
Arigatou Tokyo.  

Of course I understand it. As right now you are 3 active Irish users, it would not make sense to create a sub-forum just for you. Maybe it would if one day the Irish community would grow so much that writing here in the national thread would not be enough for you anymore and you would like to have different sections and threads to talk about Irish athletes results, medal prospects etc.
 
Also, being English your language it makes it less useful than for other nations, where they could also gather users who are not active here because they don't speak English or feel shy to write in another language.

Usually followed the next day by 'one of those OTHER days'!

Yet another clear for Ireland! Color me impressed.

Onto showjumping tomorrow and the individual qualifier. All 3 Irish will either be top 10 or will not qualify. We don’t do inbetween

The BBC didn’t imply anything during the 2012 Olympics so they should be quiet here IMO

Although with no discards this time there could be carnage if the Cross Country turns out to be difficult.

Rather hard - would require many of the top teams to suffer big errors and perfect performances from all three Irish competitors. 

Or the absence of countries in 1980 and 1984

It won’t matter in the end.  Some countries have lost medals to poor judging. Some because of injured or ill athletes. Even freak weather has impacted results in some events. 
 
There are literally hundreds of factors at play and COVID is just another one. 

Maybe not a surprise either........

No surprise that the first medal contenders to test positive for something is Russian 

Well, only one athlete/horse are back from that team. Double medalist McCarthy is missing completely, while both Ennis and Watson still have to prove the worth of their Tokyo rides.

But Daniels was the 4th best in Tryon and he's one of the best in the world now. I still see Ireland as outsiders for a medal but I think the lack of a discard score could help them as we're usually stronger in cross country than most.
 
You'd have to imagine Germany would win but they were only 5th in Tryon so anything is possible.

Interesting story in the heats with Ireland's world champion Sanita Puspure going up against Uganda's Kathleen Noble
 
Her parents left Ireland for missionary work in Uganda a year before she was born. She represented Uganda in swimming at the world short cross championships in 2012 and only took up rowing during her second year at Princeton in the US
 
She's Uganda's first ever rower at the Olympics
 
https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic-games/en/results/rowing/athlete-profile-n1451047-noble-kathleen.htm

talking of Japanese baseball...
 
well, 3 of the 12 NPB teams are located in Tokyo and 3 more in the greater Tokyo Metropolitan area (1 in Yokohama, where the Olympic Baseball tournament will be staged)...
 
and they all had 20% capacity crowd in their stadiums until last week (when the championship stopped to make room for the Olympics)...
 
in the rest of Japan the allowed audience was even higher, up to 50% capacity (Fukuoka)...
 
so, to me, it's only the usual hypocracy...it's the Japanese political forces of the opposing parties (and their supporters in the industrial conglomerates, like Toyota or Rakuten) trying to make the government look stupid and not taking care of the local population...
 
they are pure shit (I'm well used to it, since it reminds me the exact behaviour of our politicians...but I never thought in Japan they were so similar to us)... 

I’ve never seen anybody not want an Olympics as much as you don’t want one orangehair 
 
 

All our competitors travelled first class so this would have lessened the risk. I’m sure the Italians did the same.

I would take those numbers with a huge chunk of salt. Their polls can't predict presidential race in US even though they poll it million times, now I'm suppose to beleive they nailed summer olympic sports...