2024 Paris Olympics megathread

[Sheilbh]

The USA has hundreds of medalist in all sorts of sports. Having a majority of them enter the public consciousness is an un realistic expectation.

Canada doesn't. We remember our silver and bronze medalist vividly.

I remember the Quebec based one more. People like Nicolas Gill the first Judo medalist. He won Bronze in 92 and Silver in 2000.

To be honest I barely remember any medalists from Olympics to Olympics.

Like my interest in speed climbing, it is intense and very, very transitory

[crazy canuck]

For the folks who thinks that winning a silver and bronze isn't a big deal, here is the Serbian basketball team celebrating their medal.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-ftYjaszw1/?igsh=MTMzZjlqYjFiOWl5dQ==

I remember a number of Canadian medallist who didn't win gold.  Including Gary MacDonald, Silver in Montreal for swimming.  Came back to his hometown of Mission, and he was my swim coach for a couple of years, so I have a special reason for remembering him.   

[Valmy]

To be honest I barely remember any medalists from Olympics to Olympics.

Unless you are a true super star like 1980s Flo Jo, Carl Lewis, Mary Lou Retton, and 2020s Michael Phelps and Simone Biles you get quickly forgotten except in your little corner of the sports world.

[Sheilbh]

Absolutely love this stuff (Like the 1 in 3 men - I think in America - who thought they could win a set against Serena Williams or the what animals could you beat in a fight):


Walked around today thinking of every 16 people I passed in the street, 1 of them thinks that if they started training now they could make the LA Olympics team as a 100m sprinter. Admirably mad.

[Josquius]

Another area where it sucks to be British.
If only I was from San Marino I could have my pick of whatever international sports I fancied.
Plus presumably good food.
Shit weather though.

[HVC]

One word. Breakdancing.

[HVC]

For those that haven't seen

[Admiral Yi]

 

That should take the edge off Shelf and Squeeze's Aussie insecurity.

[Sheilbh]

For those that haven't seen

I love Raygun

I genuinely think this might be an academic exercise in cultural studies autoethnography. Or perhaps just a really good example of don't send a 36 year old with a PhD in breakdancing to compete against 16 year olds

The rest of the breakdancers were amazing and feel kind of bad they got a little overshadowed.

[HVC]

She has a PhD on breaking dancing? Well now I just lost some respect for PhDs

[Sheilbh]

She has a PhD on breaking dancing? Well now I just lost some respect for PhDs

I think it's safe to say it wasn't a primarily practical course of study.

[Razgovory]

She has a PhD on breaking dancing? Well now I just lost some respect for PhDs

This is her thesis.

Deterritorializing gender in Sydney's breakdancing scene: a B-girl's experience of B-boying

This thesis critically interrogates how masculinist practices of breakdancing offers a site for the transgression of gendered norms. Drawing on my own experiences as a female within the male-dominated breakdancing scene in Sydney, first as a spectator, then as an active crew member, this thesis questions why so few female participants engage in this creative space, and how breakdancing might be the space to displace and deterritorialise gender. I use analytic autoetthnography and interviews with scene members in collaboration with theoretical frameworks offered by Deleuze and Guttari, Butler, Bourdieu and other feminist and post-structuralist philosophers, to critically examine how the capacities of bodies are constituted and shaped in Sydney's breakdancing scene, and to also locate the potentiality for moments of transgression. In other words, I conceptualize the breaking body as not a 'body' constituted through regulations and assumptions, but as an assemblage open to new rhizomatic connections. Breaking is a space that embraces difference, whereby the rituals of the dance not only augment its capacity to deterritorialize the body, but also facilitate new possibilities for performativities beyond the confines of dominant modes of thought and normative gender construction. Consequently, this thesis attempts to contribute to what I perceive as a significant gap in scholarship on hip-hop, breakdancing, and autoethnographic explorations of Deleuze-Guattarian theory.

https://figshare.mq.edu.au/articles/thesis/Deterritorializing_gender_in_Sydney_s_breakdancing_scene_a_B-girl_s_experience_of_B-boying/19433291?file=34528847&fbclid=IwY2xjawEmblRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVtWly8ZtJBK9R3XpG83ChQlhcRQ70euraBOAsFPS8Tg3y78ATjZz6QHag_aem__wXl3ZrV5zApVvDAgiZ4QQ

[Sheilbh]

I was not aware her thesis had been autoethnography. She's 100% writing on this

[Sheilbh]

A Kiwi comments

Jemaine Clement
@AJemaineClement
I've been to Australia. That was their best dancer.

[crazy canuck]

A Kiwi comments

Jemaine Clement
@AJemaineClement
I've been to Australia. That was their best dancer.