One of my favorite memories was when I was at a bar in Toronto (probably early 2000s) and Donovan Bailey arrived with some friends and tried to act like a big time celebrity and demand special treatment and they laughed him out of the place. I guess we admire hockey and basketball players a lot more than sprinters.
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wind-aided +2.9 m/s. Anything over 2 doesn’t count for a record
Wheelchair rugby is not a thing I knew existed, but it seems pretty awesome.
There’s a great documentary called Murderball about wheelchair rugby players. Highly recommend.
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I’ve played golf with a couple guys on that team and the USA sled hockey team. So damn impressive what they’re able to do.
Bump.
All sorta stuff lately
https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/louis-vuitton-olympics-paris-lvmh-sponsorship-76343e54?mod=mhp
PARIS—The Olympics are coming to Paris and, despite promises of a more austere, more sober event, the world’s largest luxury company is treating them like the ultimate home game. LVMH, the group headed by Bernard Arnault, is pulling out all the stops to take over Paris 2024.
One of its jewelers, Chaumet, is designing gold, silver and bronze medals for the Olympics and Paralympics. One of its fashion brands, Berluti, is creating the uniforms that French athletes will wear during a lavish opening ceremony on the Seine. Moët Champagne and Hennessy cognac will flow through every VIP suite. And Louis Vuitton leather goods, which are already used to ferry prizes such as the World Cup and the NBA Finals trophy, will be impossible to miss at the Games.
and this was inevitable
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/travel/paris-olympics-ticket-prices.html
Good luck, though, getting any one of the 100,000 ticketed seats to be front and center at the party. Those are mostly sold out — and the few left cost an eye-popping 2,700 euros, about $2,930 each. Tickets to watch another popular Olympic event, 10-meter men’s platform diving, are now only available through special-service hospitality packages starting at €875, or women’s artistic gymnastics finals, a perennial crowd pleaser: around €1,799.
…
Many hotels and rental apartments have doubled or tripled their typical summer rates (think an average of €1,000 a night instead of €300), and some have even quintupled them. Airfares are rising fast. The cost of a Paris Metro ticket is temporarily doubling. Even the Louvre Museum and Palace of Versailles have ratcheted up admission fees.
That was wild. I wonder if the other skaters were just conceding first to her in their minds, but then got mixed up on which was the final lap? There’s no way they could have not noticed her sprinting out like that. Although maybe they saw her teammate and thought the pack had caught up to her. I guess that could happen if the pack leaders keep changing and they get confused.
That sounds like something my 8-year-old would have cooked up and I’d have to explain to him that it would never work because they’re pros.
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I’d imagine that even if you consciously remembered what happened, it’s hard to override your subconscious muscle memory and instincts that have been trained to certain patterns and rhythms over thousands of previous races.
Also, I’m not sure what to call it, but there is an interesting sort of hive mind / collective action issue. Everyone in the group that is a lap down is to some extent taking cues from other members of the group about things like how to react to the front runner or when to start the final sprint. Even if you individually think there is still a lap left, it must be hard to keep that in mind and respond correctly when you hear the final lap bell and a few other people start sprinting for the finish line.
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Tik tok auto-captioning turned “Li Jenzi” into “Legion Z” which is an awesome name.
It could be a rapper, a doomsday cult, a record label, anything really.
In fact, when my new LEGION Z streetwear brand blows up in a couple of months, you’ll know it’s me.
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You may want to check with any Ukrainian friends you may have before you go too far with that idea.
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Under baseball’s unwritten rules, she would’ve gotten beaned in her next AB.
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She’ll get a skate blade to the achilles in her next race. That’s the rules.
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Agreed. If, the next time she tries it, a few people in the back light her up like it’s roller derby it might change the strategy.
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I was watching a vid of Charles Barkley telling a Dream Team story and it CC’d Karl Malone as Carmelone. That one killed me.
Clearly they were counting on all the caucasians to be unable to tell the two Chinese skaters apart. Duh.
Yeah I got a dream team story, when I was 7 my dad took me to the hotel they were staying at when they were in San Diego for practice and I saw Scotty Pippen and asked him to sign a Chicago bulls card I brought and he said “I don’t sign cards, kid” and I cried and hated him forever.
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I’ve never understood why the strongest skaters in the Short Track races don’t just make it an all out sprint from the start. There just can’t be much of an advantage to drafting and the races aren’t that long where you can’t go at full tilt for more than 2-3 laps
Ice derby definitely needs to be an Olympic sport.
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