What the Folk!

So who's been watching the Olympics? Favourite events and athletes? Thoughts on the Opening Ceremony? It's been a very cool experience so far having the Games in my city. I went to see the Men's Artistic Gymnastics over the weekend and that was an amazing experience, the atmosphere inside the arena was electric. Watching the Opening Ceremony technical rehearsal was a brilliant experience and I'm looking forward to volunteering very soon.

Meanwhile in the Athletes Village, this is what the Kiwis have been getting up to:

I admit it - I'm an Olympics-aholic!
I streamed it live on Saturday to watch Elizabeth Beisel capture the silver in the Women's 400 IM, but as suspected there is a question about the Gold Medalist. I felt she had to be wearing flippers to come from half a body length behind at the 100m to go mark, tie beisel at the 50m to go mark, and win by a body and a half length? They are pointing out that men's gold medalist Ryan Lochte didn't even have as fast a time, and to better her own time by 5 full seconds sounds fishy to me, sorry. Also, Beisel had tied the record in the prelims, and she's absolutely no slouch. (she's from my hometown, can you tell?)

Anyway, I wish I could be visiting London to see you and all the spectacle, Venus. What I saw of the opening I loved, especially the industrial revolution/gold rings segment, and obviously the Queen's entrance.

It's always great when an athlete from your hometown wins a medal. Congrats to Elizabeth!

Wish you could be here too! Glad you enjoyed what you saw of the opening ceremony. The Queen's entrance certainly wasn't conventional, eh?

I just watched the Women's Team Gymnastics final. I'm aware there's a time delay in the US so I won't say the result but I will say that it was absolutely thrilling to watch. Yesterday was the Men's Team Gymnastics final which was filled with drama after Team GB were initially given the silver medal position but then ended up with bronze after the Japanese team disputed a score but it's still a massive achievement for Team GB given that they weren't favourites to even get a medal.

Another Olympics-holic here.

Venus, you are so lucky! I'm so glad that you're having such a great time. I can't imagine how proud you must feel. Not only did you get to see an amazing opening ceremony, you also saw Sir Paul McCartney perform. And you got to sing along with him.

I loved the opening ceremony. I'd agree with Nancy, the industrial revolution and the creation of the Olympic symbol/rings was amazeballs. Who didn't love seeing the queen & bond meet and then sky dive into the stadium. Priceless! The segment with the childrens fairytales and the lighting of the cauldron were also favorite parts. Loved seeing Bec's on the speed boat with the torch. The entire production was so well done. So beautiful. Funny too.

I'm at work and took a sneak online, there goes my phone. Gotta go.

Congrats to GB, New Zealand the US for great team & individual wins! So proud.

I only got to see the rehearsal in the stadium and some live segments were omitted so unfortunately I didn't see him perform but I did see Rowan Atkinson aka Mr. Bean in action with the orchestra.

I'm very happy Team GB won their first gold medals today and NZ won their second bronze today.

Gotta love the kiwis.

I've got lots of thoughts on the opening ceremony. In short, I was thoroughly entertained despite the opening agricultural segment and the god awful McCartney performance. It was pretty out there, quite ADD, over the top and a wee bit bizarre but, like I said, I was entertained.

I'm eager to hear about how your ambassadorship is going Venus. Tell us exactly what you're duties are. It's very exciting.

Sadly I'm now done watching the Olympics. NBC's prime time coverage is appalling. Watching US athletes "compete" in a vacuum is no competition at all. I'm referring to the gymnastics segments which have been 99.0% focused on American athletes. Am I crazy in wanting to see all the teams/athletes compete against one another?

No kidding! That's how it used to be. I especially remember it in ice skating, the excitement of watching the competition between all of the athletes and sometimes rooting for someone from another country simply because they were so good and deserved to win. Don't know if this is a change made just this year or what. It's ridiculous, from what little I have seen.

We have a ginormous flat screen tv at work, the Olympics are on every day, pretty much all day, only without any volume. I am seeing all of the competitions. This morning I saw dressage, water polo, badmiton & so on. Right now I am watching China compete in table tennis. I will have to find out what channel we are watching here.

I don't have cable or tv at home so I'm not sure about the NBC/MSNBC coverage of the games. In the evenings I've just been selecting the segments I want to watch online. I'm really enjoying the games.

Haha, glad you were thoroughly entertained SW. It was bizarre and eccentric in places which is very British in itself. I'm intrigued to find out what the closing ceremony is going to be like since I've heard many rumours. I'll be on duty when it's airing so I'll have to record it. I've been doing lots of training and I've got a feel of what I'll be doing but I officially start next week so I'll reveal all about my involvement soon. There are thousands of volunteers around the UK doing shifts on different days and it's great to hear all the positive reviews about how useful volunteers have been.

A friend of mine has told me about NBC's coverage which is why she's live streaming BBC's coverage instead. Just let me know if you're interested in this as well. I guess it can be hard for TV stations to get the right balance when it comes to showing their own country's athletes and other nations. There is obviously an emphasis on Team GB on BBC but we definitely get to watch other nations so I'm sure it's not as biased as NBC. The BBC are usually good when it comes to broadcasting the Olympics but as the host nation, they've upped their game even more this year given that we now have 24 BBC Olympic channels plus BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Three so we pretty much have round the clock coverage of all the events going on with good presenting and commentating so I'm pretty satisfied with our coverage so far.

That's great you're able to watch so many events at work, 4ever.

Overall, today has been a brilliant day for Team GB with more gold medals and NZ won their first gold medal too!

We saw that on NBC, that was the most time they spent away from the US team & it was probably only because there was drama involved. It was nice to see the Brits do so well. The guy with the funky hair was really good. So was the big one I called Bison Boy. lol. (as you can tell I'm not too good with the names) Shame they didn’t get silver but honestly who could have missed the fact that the Japanese athlete did in fact attempt a handstand?? Well all of the judges apparently until the money showed up. Talk about dodgy.

In retrospect I should have live streamed gymnastics from BBC but I’m not usually in a position to be able to watch uninterrupted during the day and also in past years there hasn’t been an issue with balance, so I didn't anticipate the issue. To be honest I was a bit suspicious from the jump once I heard that NBC had edited out a tribute to terror victims segment from the opening ceremony and their defense of that decision was positively insulting.

I'm sulking that I never got to see one single male gymnast on rings. Not one! And that's my favorite Olympicy thing to watch.

Can you tell I'm bitter?

Venus, can't wait to hear what you'll be getting up to next week.
Nancy, how's your hometown girl doing, does she have any more events? SW, sorry to hear that you're not feeling it for the 2012 games, is it just the London games or the Olympics all around? LauraK hang in there sounds like Venus has some good suggestions for the BBC streams. I do consider myself quite lucky to view daytime events at work. My boss is generous when it comes to special events. Otherwise the tv is off or on the stock market. Would be great if we could have volume turned to 'on' though. Off topic when we first got the tv the boss was so excited, he got dvds of fish and oceans. He said it would be calming in the call center. NOT! Nice try boss. Congrats to team GB, team NZ, and our US team! The wins are ver exciting.

As I said I wasn't feeling it for NBC's primetime coverage, not the Olympics as a whole. I'm streaming men's trampoline now & there is "US vs kiwi" women's soccer happening. Is that the official Olympic name for NZ now? Kiwi? lol.

Ha! I'd just like to point out that right now NZ has 3 gold medals and Oz has only 1.

Our hometown girl, Elizabeth Beisel, won a silver in the 400m IM against the Chinese girl who beat Ryan Lochte's personal best time, and he holds the world's record. Don't ask how she came out of nowhere and did it. Go figure. I streamed that race live and enjoyed it more than anything else this week. She also won a bronze when Missy Franklin won the gold tonight in the 200m backstroke. We're very proud here!
Wait - the men are all done with gymnastics??? No rings? How can they call that covering men's gymnastics?

I'm going to say something I used to hear older folks say when I was little: "why, when I was a kid"... they showed every team's performance for every sport. But now with people's attention spans only about 2 seconds long, they try to squish too many different events into a night of coverage instead of dedicating a night to one or two sports and covering them completely.

No rings??? For real? I'm crushed, SW. I missed the men's gymnastics altogether. Bummer. I must have blinked.

I'm in rehearsal for Wizard Of Oz, so I can't stream any day this week, but I it's my favorite way of watching the Olympics.

Can't wait to hear about all of your adventures, Venus.
Wonder if Turnip or any other old WTFer is involved in the inner workings of the Olympics in any way.

I though I missed it coz I kept seeing men on rings in the background but they never covered it. However, there is more gymnastics listed on NBCs primetime schedule for Sun & Mon. Rings are listed for Monday.