“Bread and Circuses”

Olympian Laurel Hubbard says not a transgender icon but an athlete, plans to retire

TOKYO — The first openly transgender Olympian said on Tuesday she would retire from weightlifting and felt her landmark appearance at the Tokyo Games should be fast forgotten as sport takes greater strides to be more inclusive.

New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard, 43, said she had never sought publicity, nor regards herself a role model or trailblazer, but just wants to be treated like any other athlete on sport’s biggest stage.

The Olympics were damaged, now they’ve committed suicide.

Generally going into the Olympics, Americans are usually pretty enthused to root on the American athletes.

But this year, not only was enthusiasm lacking with the absence of an audience for the events, Americans felt split in their support for U.S. athletes who were representing us but weren’t being supportive of the country. The viewing audience for the Olympics has cratered, in part, because of those politics. The Olympics previously forbid political displays. Indeed, that was supposed to be the whole idea behind the Olympics, to meet on the field of sport in fair competition, without politics. Now they’re allowing it and it’s coming back to bite them.

More… ‘Little Ms. Purple Hair and her team of woke warriors fell flat on their faces’: Trump diversity aide Wayne Dupree leads critics slamming US women’s soccer team after their humiliating 1-0 loss to Canada

Transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard made Olympic history but failed to record a successful lift in the women’s +87kg weightlifting.

She became the first openly transgender athlete to compete at a Games in a different gender category to the one in which they were born.

But after a failed attempt to lift 120kg and two failed efforts at 125kg in the snatch, her competition ended.

Canadian women’s soccer team beats U.S., will play for gold

It took nine years, but Canada got its revenge on the United States at the Olympics.

Jessie Fleming scored from the penalty spot to give Canada a 1-0 win against the United States in the semifinal of the Tokyo Olympics at the Ibaraki Kashima Stadium on Monday.

Suiting up for Team Tranada – Quinn the non-binary whatever.

Almost half of U.S. adults — 46% — say athletes at the Summer Olympic Games should not be permitted to “publicly engage in protests, such as displaying political messaging in signs or armbands, kneeling, disrupting medal ceremonies or making political hand gestures.”

That’s the key finding of an Economist/YouGov poll of 1,500 U.S. adults conducted July 24-27.

TOKYO (AP) — Simone Biles will not defend her Olympic gold medal on floor exercise.

USA Gymnastics announced Sunday that the six-time Olympic medalist has opted not to compete on floor, where she won gold in Rio de Janeiro and placed second in qualifying last week.

Jennifer Gadirova of Britain will replace Biles in the finals, which are scheduled for Monday.

OK, I get the abuse/mental health thing. I get she has leave from the IOC to take restricted meds for ADHD. But you can’t help but wonder if something else is going on.

For many decades, the quadrennial Olympic games were grand moments of patriotism. Even as the Soviet teams used mountains of government money to train their athletes, our plucky amateurs somehow kept winning. There was a reason the Miracle on Ice was a miracle. Of late, though, our athletes are no longer amateurs; the Soviets are gone; we worship at the Chinese shrine; the Olympics are on every two years and broadcast 24/7, making for complete over-saturation; and too many of our Olympic athletes hate the country they’re representing. For that reason, those Americans who love their country the most have cared the least when Americans have fallen flat in Tokyo.

Empty seats, zero atmosphere, diminished team numbers, local protests and a world distracted by coronavirus all combined to deliver just 16.7 million viewers for NBC’s four-hour long broadcast of the Tokyo Olympic Games opening ceremony on Friday. It was the smallest U.S. television audience for the event in the past 33 years.

Last week, marketing research firm, Zeta Global, polled Americans about the Olympics and discovered the majority aren’t excited to watch the games this year.

“More than 60% of Americans were unable to express excitement or interest in the summer games, and at least 45% of Americans confirmed they are NOT looking forward to the games in any capacity,” the company found. This led it to predict this year’s Olympics will be the lowest-watched of the 21st century.

Today’s athletes have nothing on the ancients

Two and a half thousand years ago the cities of Greece faced the greatest crisis in their history. The invasion force led by Xerxes, the King of Persia, in 480 BC was on a stupefying scale. Europe would witness nothing to rival it until 1944, and the summer of D-Day. The best chance of keeping the Great King at bay, it seemed to the Greek high command, was to occupy the narrow pass of Thermopylae, where the terrain would serve to neutralise the Persian weight of numbers.

Hundreds of protesters marched through Tokyo Friday toward the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games — chanting for organizers to “go to hell” for holding the event despite the pandemic, videos show.

“Go to hell, IOC,” “go to hell, Olympics” with 30 minutes to go until the opening ceremony pic.twitter.com/A4SmV3s9JF

— Michelle Ye Hee Lee (@myhlee) July 23, 2021

Pretty much how I feel about this scam.

Tokyo Olympic organizers are scrambling to clean the local Odaiba Marine Park before its use as an official Olympic venue starting July 26 after local residents and Olympic athletes complained this week the park and its surrounding bay emit a “foul odor,” Australia’s Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

“A foul odour has been reported at the swimming venue for triathletes and open water swimmers, raising concerns about elevated levels of the dangerous E-coli bacteria,” according to the newspaper.