Have the Olympics Run its Course in History

Intl.Aperture

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Has anyone here seen the movie Munich, by Steven Spielberg? It's about Israel's retaliation to the 1972 Munich Olympics attack. I think it's underrated Spielberg. It's his biggest mold-breaker and devoid of his hallmark sentimentality and idealism.
 

Tidewater

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Has anyone here seen the movie Munich, by Steven Spielberg? It's about Israel's retaliation to the 1972 Munich Olympics attack. I think it's underrated Spielberg. It's his biggest mold-breaker and devoid of his hallmark sentimentality and idealism.
I like the bit in which the Mossad grossly over-estimated how much explosives to put under the terrorist's mattress. That was too bad.
 
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major tidefan

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The olympics are a nice break every four years from the usual sports.The snowboarding was gnarly,and it was good to see the US women beat those darn canucks finally for hockey gold .Beyond that the americans stunk it up this time around.
 

selmaborntidefan

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I'm fairly ambivalent.

There are a lot of reasons for doing it and a lot of reasons it's silly and should be put aside - like a lot of things in life.

The only thing that is REALLY annoying me this year is the ludicrousness of the media's coverage of North Korea. Their fantasy of the games legitimately positively influencing relations between NK, SK and the West is pure folly - and worse than that, it's self-aggrandizing folly and another opportunity for the media to fall in love with themselves.

And that's for one reason only: they have let their objectivity completely vanish with the Trump Presidency. (Well, they never had it but they used to try).

('Oh, that sister stared holes through Pence' - I mean, really?)
 

selmaborntidefan

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The olympics are a nice break every four years from the usual sports.The snowboarding was gnarly,and it was good to see the US women beat those darn canucks finally for hockey gold .Beyond that the americans stunk it up this time around.
The goalie is from Providence so odds are very high my news producer brother will have her on his show.
 

cbi1972

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One other thing: a lot of things owed their fame to being on TV when there were three channels and even color TV was kind of new. So the Olympics was different programming. It's kinda like Evel Knievel - does anyone have that big a name as a daredevil nowadays? I don't know of any. If I have to actually pay close attention
to what daredevils do then he's not Evel Knievel, whom people who knew nothing about stunts knew his name and that he was kinda nuts.
 

Tidewater

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surprisingly enough, i had never read about the '72 basketball nonsense before today. now i have a new grievance ;)
The Soviets used their professional athletes to "prove" the superiority of their "socialist" system.
They cheated like nobody's business.
The 1972 final was a complete and total disaster from an officiating perspective.
And, so we got the NBA all-stars playing in the olympics.
Serves them right.
As my favorite Auburn guy (Charles Barkley) said, "Take your butt-whoopin' like a man."
 

92tide

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The Soviets used their professional athletes to "prove" the superiority of their "socialist" system.
They cheated like nobody's business.
The 1972 final was a complete and total disaster from an officiating perspective.
And, so we got the NBA all-stars playing in the olympics.
Serves them right.
As my favorite Auburn guy (Charles Barkley) said, "Take your butt-whoopin' like a man."
i remember hearing some stuff in the lead up to the 92 games about some previous issues involving the ruskies but i didn't pay much attention to it. the 96 games were the only ones i ever paid much attention to since they were in atlanta. i did get to party with the irish olympic shooting team one night. that was fun.
 

selmaborntidefan

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surprisingly enough, i had never read about the '72 basketball nonsense before today. now i have a new grievance ;)
I'll admit this surprises me about you.

But.....we wuz three so....

I heard about it on the second edition of HBO's VHS series "Not So Great Moments In Sports." Doug Collins was featured prominently, and it's the one thing I've seen American journalists say they actually supporting our "sore losing" because it was so obviously rigged in outcome.
 

92tide

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I'll admit this surprises me about you.

But.....we wuz three so....

I heard about it on the second edition of HBO's VHS series "Not So Great Moments In Sports." Doug Collins was featured prominently, and it's the one thing I've seen American journalists say they actually supporting our "sore losing" because it was so obviously rigged in outcome.
beyond some bama stuff, i have fairly shallow knowledge of sports history
 

92tide

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atlanta and salt lake city did it right, Very little waste here as the olympic village became dorms on Techs campus. The stadium is being used by Ga State, aquatic center is at Tech, equestrian and soccer at UGA, centennial park is still in use etc. In fact the Atlanta story would be even better if we didn't just needlessly replace our dome
also the area near conyers where the mountain bike and (i think) equestrian events were held
 

TIDE-HSV

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The Soviets used their professional athletes to "prove" the superiority of their "socialist" system.
They cheated like nobody's business.
The 1972 final was a complete and total disaster from an officiating perspective.
And, so we got the NBA all-stars playing in the olympics.
Serves them right.
As my favorite Auburn guy (Charles Barkley) said, "Take your butt-whoopin' like a man."
I watched NBC's Olympic News channel from time to time and one commentator with some pretty good background had some insights into the Russian problem. He said that, following the soviet system coming down, the Russian sports system more or less devolved to something resembling the rest of the world - decentralized individual fiefdoms for the individual sports and the spectacular results tapered off.

When Putin came to power, he reorganized national sports, recentralizing with giant camps, directors of each sport, IOW the Soviet system in all but name. It paid off in medals, as it should, with heavy state incentives for both officials and athletes alike. Drugs, he said, were inevitable. It didn't matter if Putin had wanted to keep them out, which is doubtful. He also doubted that the "Go and sin no more approach" which is going to happen would work at all.

Last night, they had on Thomas Bach, the current IOC president. He stated that they would not let the Russians march and carry their flag in the ending ceremonies. He more or less said that it would be a travesty, in view of the fact that 2 of the 4 positive tests in these games were Russian. At the same time, he confirmed that the Russians would be welcomed back into the family, on promise of good behavior, of course...
 

Tidewater

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I watched NBC's Olympic News channel from time to time and one commentator with some pretty good background had some insights into the Russian problem. He said that, following the soviet system coming down, the Russian sports system more or less devolved to something resembling the rest of the world - decentralized individual fiefdoms for the individual sports and the spectacular results tapered off.

When Putin came to power, he reorganized national sports, recentralizing with giant camps, directors of each sport, IOW the Soviet system in all but name. It paid off in medals, as it should, with heavy state incentives for both officials and athletes alike. Drugs, he said, were inevitable. It didn't matter if Putin had wanted to keep them out, which is doubtful. He also doubted that the "Go and sin no more approach" which is going to happen would work at all.

Last night, they had on Thomas Bach, the current IOC president. He stated that they would not let the Russians march and carry their flag in the ending ceremonies. He more or less said that it would be a travesty, in view of the fact that 2 of the 4 positive tests in these games were Russian. At the same time, he confirmed that the Russians would be welcomed back into the family, on promise of good behavior, of course...
I don't think anybody cares about the Russian state supporting athletes. The Olympic games did away with real amateur athletes long ago. (Anybody consider Charles Barkley an "amateur" in 1996) I think the real problem was the Russian doping.
Trap doors in the urinalysis sample rooms is a typical Russian ploy. Their response at getting caught was probably "Well, you guys are doing it too! Why are you picking on us?"
The Russian World (Русский мир) demonstrating its superiority through success in international competition to me is a lot less threatening than international communism. What does the Русский мир stand for? Being anti-gay, supporting the Russian Orthodox Church (without taking the tenets of Christianity too seriously) and singing the praises of Vladimir Putin? That ain't gonna sell in Vietnam or El Sal or Angola. Communism, however, sold quite nicely in those environments and still sells on American college campuses.
Russia today is an oddball pariah, albeit one with nuclear weapons and an army that is illegally in several neighboring countries. Not harmless, but not what they used to be.
 

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