I've been out...so what do we have available for background?
A line of four german and dutch people doing a synchronised TRON impression, not enough people playing basketball against each other, or a collection of british and dutch girls bent over and all playing with sticks and balls.
A no brainer.
Egypt take the lead against France in the semi. Get in!
France get back in it. VAR check right at the end of normal time. Over five minutes for the officials to show that they have no idea what they are looking at.
Extra time then.
Fuck football.
Michael Jordan is a terrific pundit. Definite echoes of John McEnroe for me.
Johnson not Jordan!
Whereas Jess Ennis-Hill is terrible. Offers nothing except bland pleasantries and restating the obvious.
Johnson has long been terrific. The only other person worth listening to is Daley Thompson. My all time athletics hero. Let's face it. Apart from the counting, the Olympics is mostly just wallpaper.
Was just saying to the Mrs how good Johnson is. His ability to see the technical nuance on an execution and then explain it clearly is second to none.
He’s been great for years and is happy to be constructively critical of the Brits. It helps that he was one of the best runners ever.
In contrast, the skateboarding looks fun but I cannot understand a word of the commentary….they seem to be very loud cheerleaders and have zero insight into whart the marks are going to be.
Steve Backley was really good on the javelin this morning as well. Explaining technical stuff really clearly. Yet to see how good he’ll be on the other field events.
I think Laura Kenny has been interesting on the cycling too.
She’s a bit more real than Chris Hoy, who seems to revel in his Mr Incredible persona. She gives quite a lot of psychological insight. Brilliant section yesterday when she was describing to Clare Balding what it’s like to come back after childbirth and Hoy looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up.
He’s been doing the field commentary for years and is normally great. I have noticed this year that he’s getting a few more things wrong and Jazmin Sawyers (who is new to it) is having to correct him quite a lot. I think it’s because they often cut to the field events in between track races and he’s having to summarise and gets a bit muddled.
Yeah, yeah. But I can’t help but feel that all of this fawning over expert commentators is taking something away from the fact that Jessica Ennis-Hill has an absolutely world class dirtbox.
As you were.
Yeah, knew he'd been doing it, but just seemed a bit more technical this year - maybe it's just more obvious compared with 'Dirtbox' Ennis-Hill and "he/she'll be pleased with that" and "you can see in their face what it means to them".
Jazmin is an interesting one - her first solo attempt was terrible, stumbling over her words and sentences. Her improvement in just a few days is phenomenal.
Men throwing themselves at water. Again. Endless it seems. I'd only give them marks if they missed. Had to turn it off.
