heywoodu

Nope, nobody says you're supposed to cheer. I'm also not cheering, and absolutely nobody is acting like nothing happened. In the first place he himself never acted like such, and most certainly people around him and inside the world of volleyball never acted like that. This has been a thing for years by the way, he's been playing on the world tour for years (meaning his opponents aren't suddenly going to be shocked or something, everyone from every country in the sport has been aware of this for years), and now 'journalists' and some Reddit screamers come crawling out of their holes they hide in for years, because now it's the Olympics. It is interesting we for example barely saw this backlash when a literal convicted terrorist was competing at the Paralympics, or do we need to rate one crime worse than the other and allow people who committed one crime and not those who committed another? But yeah, there is no point in discussing it more: like I said before, if you're not saying "he is the worst person ever", people will say you normalise what he did or think it's fine. Which literally nobody does, but alright.

Almost, postponed with 30 minutes due to a massive thunderstorm

Heijnen was clearly robbed. Clear and obvious theft!

It's not coincidence, it's because things like that interview are in Dutch and so other people only see each other yelling "child rapist!" and that's that, they have an image in mind of someone who pulls every random kid into the bushes. Which is just not at all the case (despite what he did obviously being wrong, that should not need to be stated all the time, but to avoid confusing, I'll do it anyway). In for example the main interview, which he really needed to be convinced to do, he could absolutely not have made it clearer that what he did was absolutely, in every possible way 100% his responsibility and something he should absolutely never have done. She started talking to him online, saying she was 2-3 years younger than him, they slowly built a kind of relationship as people do, but he failed to stop things when she confessed her real age. He strongly comes across as someone who isn't necessarily remorseful because of the consequences for his own life, but because of the consequences for her life (when they stayed in touch afterwards - not on his own initiative, by the way - he made it abundantly clear that he should never have done that and that none of it was in any way her 'fault', which is obvious, but still important, even long before law enforcement was involved). Again, everyone understands that what he did was in every way wrong, but it is somewhat frustrating to see people not even willing to read what he has to say. Simply opening up like that in an interview and taking the full 100% responsibility and blame (as he should, but lots of people wouldn't) instead of hiding away forever does show, for me at least, that he is not an evil person. He is someone who made a massive mistake, not a serial child predator or something. And, again: no, that does not 'normalise' what he did. At all.

And Reddit goes quiet Read a very interesting, honest and open-hearted interview with him from a few years ago btw, but that's not goign to make the Reddit "he's a predator!!!" screamers scream any less.

Exactly. By the way, I had Nemeth down for 12% medal chance (for what it's worth, of course, it's only an opinion), it's not like Nemeth simply reaching the final would have been enough for him. Being this incredibly close is going to hurt him possibly for the rest of his career/life, and understandably so. I hope one day at least he'll also be proud of his performance, but the hurt likely won't just go away.

Better end up actually nowhere near the medals than missing a historic one by a single hundredth of a second..

That reminds me to ask @Sindo if it's somehow also possible to hide quotes with the otherwise amazing ignore function

Last time the 100m freestyle world record was broken by a bigger margin was by Jonty Skinner in 1976

Haha Pan with the most epic of swims on the biggest event in swimming Slow pool

And we only had 18 events so far, imagine

OMG Ledecky won!

To be fair, I've literally never seen a Slovak national team in actual hockey, so that might be wasted money as well.

I'll go for that later, so avoiding the fencing thread and being safe and sound here in the swimming thread

Most likely it will still be the same situation then 4-5 golds expected, 1-2 behind

Did a quick count, I had USA on 3-4 gold medals at this point, they're 1-2 behind

Interview with Steenbergen, she barely had a clue what the reporter asked because at that time Marchand was getting gold and the whole thing was exploding

Excellent 31.03 in the 50 free last time, shouldn't be too difficult to go under 15 minutes

Right, time to cool down a bit with some semis and the longest of all pool finals

Nope, we can thank the Lord for giving Marchand breaststroke talent as well, so he has no time for that yet

Normally TV directors make unexplainable mistakes and choices nowadays, but the one directing this one deserves a race for the way they showed Milak vs Marchand in that last lane

What a battle! I love today and we've only just started

Nice and well, all those golds and medals in stroke that exist to fill up the program, but this is the one that really, really counts

The unavoidable 10 minute longer walk around after he wins, yes, but other than that, no

Ooooh yes, Sjöström's career deserves this so hard