Tag: olympics

Public enemy number one

The biggest villain in NZ sport isn’t Eden Park hot dogs or Stephen Jones’ Twitter account. Not since we turned on that stupid Tiger Woods for the way he treated the always-cheerful Stevie Williams has NZ been as united in its scorn for an athlete. Office prophets of doom around the country who’d put the boot into Adams like they were starting a troublesome motorcycle, immediately got in behind Adams and turned their scorn-lasers on Ostapchuk.

sportreview.net.nz guide to things Kiwis have compared Nadzeya Ostapchuk to:

 
 Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel (h/t Public Address)
 
 A very masculine man.
 
 A fridge / freezer unit.

The situation now is that Ostapchuk has gone totally troppo in Belarus, refusing to hand over the medal and alleging Adams is ‘totally’ on drugs. NZ’s sporting media were quick to move from their previous ‘reporting the news’ responsibilities to ‘defending Valerie’s honour’ responsibilities, labelling the accusations a ‘pack of lies’ and labelling Ostapchuk ‘troppo’ so that Adams didn’t have to. Adams’ ‘4 more yrs lol’ texts to Ostapchuk went largely unreported.

In the national game, Steve ‘sleepy’ Hansen faced off against Robbie ‘no mates’ Deans for the first time in the opening Bledisloe. Deans is as popular as jandal snot in Australia for his coaching ‘record’ in Australia, making a list of All Blacks Australians love to hate. In fairness to Robbie, ‘rugby public hating the national coach’ has always been a key factor in New Zealand rugby, so he appears to be on the right track. On Saturday’s performance, Deans has lured the rusty All Blacks into a false sense of security of full blanket, milo and Coro levels. If Robbie was hoping to turn the tables on NZ at world cup time, he obviously missed the memo that tournament took place last year, and you have to question the advice he’s getting.

Is this burning an Olympic flame?

We’ve had a pretty decent Olympics, to say the least. Gold medals! Aussie baiting! Learning about our propensity to measure ourselves against the rest of the world sporting-success-wise in unrealistic terms!

The per capita medal website gets mad revenue from NZ targeted banner advertising.

The 2012 Olympics has been a gold medal bonanza for NZ, but more importantly, we learned a lot about ourselves and each other, with Val Adams and Nick Willis manfully (and womanfully) coping with the expectations of a nation and a nation’s media in a much, much more mature fashion than the nation. To our credit, we’ve reduced the time in which we go from ‘teenager denied Fall Out Boy tickets by the man’ tantrums to ‘hey you guys, they’ve done their best’ over ‘lost’ gold medals to a few minutes, way down from 25 years as per rugby world cup cycles.

Our rowers were obviously our stars, but I was most pleased for Keirin rider Simon van Velthooven, who got the tied-for-bronze medal after an agonising wait against an absolutely top class field. And our equestrians, who exuded an air of wanting to get all the facking horse riding bore out of the way fast, so they could get on with getting on the lash, what. Bravo.

This has been dubbed the ‘social’ Olympics, ‘cos people are using the internet now and that, in the same way that trips to the loo with a smartphone are dubbed the ‘social’ ablutions. And so, sportreview presents a selection of Olympic links. Enjoy.

Boris Johnson welcomes you to London.

Legendary gold medallist and Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins = Tyres from Spaced.

The Atlantic’s essential photo site In Focus have shots from the opening ceremony and the Olympic flame’s arrival – and here’s the first from the games themselves.

How would you go in the 100m against Usain Bolt? Spoiler alert! Not very well.

100m live blog from Toby Manhire.

“Almost fucked out of it there” – Yachting commentary to beat all yachting commentary (link fixed).

Find out which Olympic athlete shares your physique. Sportreview is evidently the equivalent of a Serbian table tennis player, one that looks like he’d kill a man in a second.

Potentially more awesome that any Olympic event:  Nah, it was quite good – Hamilton man rides his BMX off a 60m bridge and lands in the Waikato River.

Currie under impression he’s representing NZ in the Haka

NEWSDESK: New Zealand Chef De Mission Dave Currie outlined his plans to bring home the Haka gold medal at an awkward press conference in London overnight.

A New Zealand athlete who did not wish to be named said Currie has made himself at home in the Athletes village. “Dave’s…. you know. His ‘Barcelona 92’ training shorts have seen better days, and are a bit on the short side these days. It’s hard to get decent sleep with ‘Ka Mate Ka Mate’ coming through the wall at 4am every fucking night.”

Currie appeared unaware of any athlete unrest, or indeed that the Haka was not part of Olympic competition. “Our toughest competition will be the Aussies,” said Currie.

Unexpected answers in Olympic interviews

How do you feel?
Well, one of my nuts popped out at the 500 metre mark – I had to do the last K and a half with lefty chaffing the seat. The skin in that area’s pretty raw and I’m fairly sure it’s sunburnt, too. I’m in a great deal of pain and I can’t walk in a straight line. I’ll probably vomit if I see another oar.

Hey! You’re in Bejing! It must feel great to be here!
14 million people live in this city. That’s 7 million women. Seven. Million. Plus, you can get Tiger Balm at every single dairy.

You did a personal best, but still missed out on the final! Isn’t that gutting?
Not as gutted as I was when some ass-clown finished the peanut butter at breakfast. COME ON!  Just a bit of common fucking decency is all it takes. I’m looking at those Equestrian assholes. It’ll be tally-fuckin’-ho if I catch them. I mean it.

It must be a great honor to be out here representing New Zealand?
I’m South African.

Have you got anything to say to the family back home? I’m sure they’re watching.
I just wanna say to my partner Sarah, I love you. Mmmmm-mmmm. But baby, I’m a man. A man needs to relax sometimes, living in that village, with all those… athletes. I’m just saying. Nothing to worry about. Just think of my gold medal dreams. Our gold medal dreams.