Paul Gasol seems to have a lot of that
No don't go there, its a family site

Who'd have thought it! Meanwhile Spain is still blaming the Venezuelan referee. They can't even get their own back, there is no male Spanish refs there.

I have watched most of the football, gymnastics and swimming, a lot of the archery and boxing....It’s easy to get caught up in the furore of the events and the passion shown by some athletes....But in the great scheme of things the Olympics is flawed from top to bottom...Inside and out....Organizers and participants.... From the opening ceremony that has been likened to a ‘Left wing parade of nonsense’ and a ‘Marxist’ subversive attempt to influence the masses by picking and choosing pivotal moments in Britain’s history to depict...Written and produced not for the nature and history of the games but from an ideological and political bent of an already unsuccessful and scorned government... To the corporate control of every aspect of the games from advertising, ticket allocation, sponsorship, down to the basic funding and the organizations who won contracts to participate in the great scam through nepotism......The media fuelled image of the athletes is for glory and medal status, not for glory’s sake but for financial reward and a semi celebrity career stretching on for years...
Convicted drug cheats who have ‘Done their time’ are allowed to compete.....Competitors attempting to take advantage of dubious and ill-thought out formats such as in badminton and boxing. Some successful others not.

Half empty venues, insider ticket manipulation, and the manipulative control of advertising from local and national businesses up to the giant sponsors who are multi national corporations from pharmaceutical companies with blemished reputations to global food giants who peddle products known to be damaging to health.

We all know it’s a frigging great scam but when you see the sheer enthusiasm and delight of most of the athletes as they take part in their dreams, you can see how easy, just for a while, it is to forget about the dark side of it all.

Exactly, but we might as well put it to one side for now and make the best of it, as obviously there's little we can do about it.

You are of course right DD.....As Missus Beastie keeps also telling me.....So I shall try and watch what I can of the remaining competition with blinkered and tunnelled vision focussed on the 'Spirit' of the events rather than the ' dark side' ....

First I have to take out the pool lights that have gone on the raz and it's a fiddly job as the bulbs are part of the sealed unit and you can't leave the lights out of the water for.....Blah....Blah....Blah....Or...... I could watch some more archery?

Yes, that's it Mr Beastie, stiff upper lip and all that, eh what.

No doubt we can have a good chinwag about all the shite and corruption when it's all over.

There'll probably be enough dodgy deeds to keep us occupied for four years until the next one.

.

Too much about this post is too true for comfort. Very difficuly to disagree with the majority of it.

I wonder if the spanish are all that bothered about the olympics? So far they have 2 medals, one silver & one bronze and are 29th in the medal table. As the TV cameras seem to concentrate (understandably) on the most likely winners, perhaps its no wonder you haven't seen much of the spanish. However as I know nothing about sport I wait to be corrected

Yesterday's IDEAL had a large photo of silver winner holding medal....

Maybe they're concentrating on the para Olympics as they did a few years ago.

They sent a team of fully fit and able bodied athletes to compete against other genuinely disabled competitors.
It worked for a while and they collected a nice haul of medals but the truth eventually came to light.

Shocking the depths to which some will plummet for the sake of a few medals and a bit of national glory.

well they aren't at war with anyone so those nationalistic attitudes have to come out in other ways

Spain not bothered about the Olympics? They are fanatical about sport, it's just that apart from football, tennis and F1, at the moment they don't have many athletes likely to win gold. Last Olympics they finished fifteenth with five golds and ten silvers, this year doesn't look so good, but maybe they'll pick up some in the athletics. They seem to have quite a lot of athletes taking part. I'm sure they'll pick up more medals before the end.

Plenty of stuff in the papers. Malaga Sur has a chart every day of spanish who take part. Few reports on the front page too.

http://www.diariosur.es/

Not too sure that they have a lot of chance in the football and tennis, aren't they out of the football at the group stage, both men and women and in the tennis, all they are still in is the mens doubles. F1 still isn't an Olympic sport.

OK, lets get it back on the Sport shall we?

After a brilliant day yesterday with mixed fortunes and a slightly dubious bit of gamesmanship from the great Sir Hoy and his team we ended up in the winnings, we stand 4th on the table, remember, I don't count China, never have, never will, and we have got the start of the athletics today. I have to admit, I am not normally obsessive about much of the athletics, I find it all a bit over rated, over as soon as its begun but I do love the multi discipline events and for obvious reasons will be watching the gorgeous Jess Ennis. She has just done the 100mtrs hurdles and smashed it but the most amazing aspect was the crown, a full house and the noise when her name, and the names of all the GB athletes, was read out was fantastic!
So far the games have proved the critics completely wrong, when the papers started running calls for gold on the third damned day that was it, I stopped watching the news, looking at the Beeb website and reading papers, the media is an arse, it knows bugger all about anything and yet tells us all how we should think!

Anyway, rowing at lunch, Heptathlon all day and swimming tonight.... happy days!