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Beijing 2008 Olympic Games - Caution, may contain results!

Who is the star of Beijing 08

  • Ben Ainslie - Gold Finn class - Sailing - 3rd consecutive gold

    Votes: 1 1.5%

  • China's Table Tennis team - 4 out of 4 golds

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Michael Phelps - 8 gold 7 world records 1 olympic record

    Votes: 47 71.2%

  • Usain Bolt - 3 golds 3 world records

    Votes: 11 16.7%

  • Tirunesh Dibaba - 2 golds - Women's 5,000 & 10,000 meters

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Chris Hoy - 3 golds - track cycling

    Votes: 7 10.6%

  • Kenenisa Bekele - 2 golds - Men's 5,000 & 10,000 meters

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    66
  • Poll closed .
rasmasyean said:
Oh pluleeezzz...don't be so gullible to be manipulated by media. They sell ads causing controversy. Like that never happens in the USA. It's called Show-biz. :cool:
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But its not just one or two news channels or just the USA! Its EVERYWHERE!
NBC, BBC, ABC, Star, FOX, Reuters, CBS......
And Im in Asia right now (horrible weather down south) and its everywhere here as well!


zioxide said:
Do you know how difficult and dangerous it would be to shoot those footprint fireworks above the city live? Yeah, the shot was CGI, but who cares.. they even said it on the broadcast. I'm pretty sure they still had the fireworks go off in the city.
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Agreed..... but they could have disclosed this fact rather than having media wonder what the humongous traffic was doing during their country's historic moment! They only said it after BBC splashed it!

So much for promising the IOC of an "open" Olympics!

But after all this, its really not Olympic's fault nor is it IOC's! So I'm currently enjoying Federer getting choppy and blaming his defeat on bad schedules!
 
swiftaw said:
NBC decides which sports to show based on only 1 thing, can an American win, especially one who is attractive with a tragic background for a good human interest story. :)
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so tragic hero in, great athletes out?

rasmasyean said:
Phht... half of that they make up or over-dramatize it to "capture the audience" so they watch stupid GE commercials.
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it's so annoying that all of these athletes seem to have struggled through everything instead of having more or less a normal life.
 
rasmasyean said:
Why didn't he just buy a ticket if he wanted to go?
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Because I suspect he only wanted to go if someone else bought his ticket and there were going to be cameras on him watching his reaction to Phelps beating his record. More about "Look at me, I'm Mark Spitz" and less about "Look at Phelps, he broke a record."
 
rasmasyean said:
Actually modern swimmers do have that extra advantage on that note. They have a suit where some scientists reverse engineer the skin of dolphins and replicated it on the molecular level. The suit that they are wearing is a nanotech device actually, so one can wonder whether Phelps can actually beat his record on even grounds...with a moustache too... :D
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Further to the new-fangled costumes and stuff helping their times, it seems that our aquatic Olympians may have been handed a further advantage by the pool itself, which has apparently been designed with fast times in mind...

From Karen Pickering's BBC Blog...

[the Water Cube pool] has extra lanes outside of the eight used for racing; a depth of three metres which helps stop the waves the swimmers create bouncing back up from the bottom of the pool; and lane ropes which dissipate the waves travelling sideways.
 
who would have thought you could have fast water...

Big weekend for teamGB should start getting some lead medals (oops sorry, gold medals) with the cycling, rowing and sailing. Maybe (fingers crossed) there will also be a gold for Kelly Sotherton in the heptathlon
 
Jaffa Cake said:
Further to the new-fangled costumes and stuff helping their times, it seems that our aquatic Olympians may have been handed a further advantage by the pool itself, which has apparently been designed with fast times in mind...

From Karen Pickering's BBC Blog...

[the Water Cube pool] has extra lanes outside of the eight used for racing; a depth of three metres which helps stop the waves the swimmers create bouncing back up from the bottom of the pool; and lane ropes which dissipate the waves travelling sideways.
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I noticed that the pool had 10 lanes. Didn't think anything of it. Does that make it an unofficial olympic pool or can they have 20 lanes as long as it is the same distance end to end. I would think they would all need to have the same specs.
 
MacNut said:
I noticed that the pool had 10 lanes. Didn't think anything of it. Does that make it an unofficial olympic pool or can they have 20 lanes as long as it is the same distance end to end. I would think they would all need to have the same specs.
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I would imagine it's the length that matters – after all, if the pool didn't meet Olympic criteria then surely the design wouldn't have been approved and they wouldn't be using it?

I wouldn't like to be the one to tell Phelps that, on a technicality, the pool wasn't official and he'd have to give his medals back... :p
 
motivator177833d4dd6.jpg


thoughts?
 
off topic for a second.

Since the last post (by furcalchick) I can't open this thread in Safari. Every time I try Safari crashes. Works fine with firefox though. Anyone else getting this problem?

Back on Topic.

Just hope they build the London 2012 pool with 10 lanes and much deeper than this one. So much fun to see the world records getting smashed.
 
Ya I crashed as well, not sure if it is my link, I just resized it but I am still crashing on this page.:eek:
 
MacNut said:
Ya I crashed as well, not sure if it is my link, I just resized it but I am still crashing on this page.:eek:
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still crashes even after you changed your link so don't think it's that.

EDIT - Seems OK now you've removed the link MacNut. Strange!!!


Topic again.

Olympic-Sized Pool Dimensions
The dimensions of an Olympic pool are required to be 25 metres by 50 metres.

According to the rules of FINA.org, an Olympic pool should be 50 m long by 8 times 2.5 meter lanes with 2.5m outside lanes 1 and 8 (so 10*2.5 = 25m) - minimum depth 2m.

In English units:

50m = 164.042 ft

25m = 82.02 ft

2.0m = 6.56 ft

Surface area = 13,454.72 sq ft

Volume ~= 88,263 cu ft

~= 660,253.09 gallons of water

That's about 5,511,556 lbs (2755.8 tons) of water.

Most lap pools are 25 yards long. Most NCAA swimming programs compete in 25 yard swimming pools, which are often 50M swimming pools sized down with the use of a bulkhead. Many NCAA competitions take place in a 50M competition swimming pool during olympic years, or depending on which international competitions are in the near future.

The term Olympic-sized pool is often misused by hotels, and real estate advertisements. It is highly unusual for these establishments and homes to have an ACTUAL olympic sized swimming pool. If it is not 25Mx50M it really shouldn´t be called Olympic-sized.

The dimensions of an Olympic pool are: 2 meters deep, 25 meters wide, and 50 meters long.

----------------

The BBC coverage of the Olympics just stepped up a gear. The great Michael Johnson is now part of the BBC team. Could listen to him talking about Athletics (track & Field) all day long.
 
scotthayes said:
Just hope they build the London 2012 pool with 10 lanes and much deeper than this one. So much fun to see the world records getting smashed.
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I think there is actually an optimum depth for pools, beyond which you get slower times again. Otherwise, we should just put up bulkheads in the ocean. ;)

Edit: just found this article also
To promote the breaking of swimming world records, the Chinese have optimized their Water Cube pool for speed by:
(1) Keeping the water at 80.6 degrees, the temperature considered optimal for swimmers;
(2) pumping 'microbubbles' into the pool to break the water's surface tension;
(3) building the pool to a depth of approximately 10 feet, which prevents water-temperature interference;
(4) introducing a ventilation system that whisks chlorine fumes off the surface of the water, allowing the athletes to breathe clean air.
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gauchogolfer said:
I think there is actually an optimum depth for pools, beyond which you get slower times again. Otherwise, we should just put up bulkheads in the ocean. ;)
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Think they need to wait and see if Phelps is coming to London. With the depth he gets on the turn they may need to look at digging the hole twice as deep as the would for mere mortal swimmers.
 
dejo said:
Because I suspect he only wanted to go if someone else bought his ticket and there were going to be cameras on him watching his reaction to Phelps beating his record. More about "Look at me, I'm Mark Spitz" and less about "Look at Phelps, he broke a record."
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:)

scotthayes said:
who would have thought you could have fast water...
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:)

gauchogolfer said:
I think there is actually an optimum depth for pools, beyond which you get slower times again.

Edit: just found this article also
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Interesting.

Can you imagine if a pool was constructed that by accident was 1 millimeter too short. Couldn't use it. :eek:
 
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