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!
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| 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.
