Say hello to my little friends

First tickets have arrived!

USA Today predictions - Poland

To follow up on my international comments on the USA Today medal tracker, let's see how my home country stands. They predict 15 medals (including only 2 gold ones). Which is a rather low number, also compared to the previous optimistic estimate of 23.

First, let's see where they got it spot-on:

Boxing, Women's Lightweight - Karolina Graczyk 3rd
Silver in WC. Go get 'em!

Women's K2 500m - Mikolajczyk/Konieczna 3rd
2nd in Beijing. Konieczna already brought medals from three different Olympics, a fourth one would be awesome for her!

MTB women - Maja Wloszczowska 2nd
That's the bad case scenario, mind you!

Women's double sculls - 3rd

Magdalena Fularczyk & Julia Michalska won the WC before, thus definitely doable.

Men's RS:X - Piotr Myszka 2nd
2010 World Champion.

Women's RS:X - Zofia Klepacka-Noceti 3rd
Windsurfing World Champion.

100m Butterfly - Konrad Czerniak 2nd
2nd in the WC too, can anybody apart from Phelps beat him?

Men's Discus Throw - Piotr Malachowski 3rd
2nd in Beijing, 2nd in WC, European Champion, übercool guy too!

Men's Shot Put - Tomasz Majewski 3rd
Speaking of übercool guys: Malachowski's drinking buddy. Fear the beard!

Men's Volleyball - 3rd
Anything is possible. As in, pretty pretty please!!!

Weightlifting, Men's 105kg - Marcin Dolega 3rd
Triple WC, only 4th in Beijing though, having lost because of the infamous body weight difference. Safe bet!

Weightlifting, Men's 85kg - Adrian Zielinski 1st
That's why I got this ticket! It will be tricky though. He became the WC in 2010, finished third in 2011, and soon after his coach died tragically. How will it affect him?

Wrestling, Greco-Roman, 84kg - Damian Janikowski 2nd
2nd in WC. Hey, it's been a while, so why not?!

Now, where are they wrong, in my opinion?

Men's K1 200m
Mark my words: Piotr Siemionowski is not finishing this race second. He's going for gold!

 And yes, I know we've suffered from an awful jinx over the last decade or so: every time Poland was supposed to dominate water sports at the Games, and every time we failed. Until now, I say! But because the Universe must remain in harmony...

Women's K1 200m
Marta Walczykiewicz for gold?
3 times silver at the WC, but zero Olympic experience. Forgive my scepticism...

Men's Quadruple Sculls - 4th
2008 Olympic Champions, 2009 World Champions, 2010 European Champions. Now in dire straits after a freak injury to Adam Korol - the most important member of the team. Can "the Terminators" win one more medal before retiring collectively?

Women's tennis - Agnieszka Radwanska outside top 8
Say whut?!

Men's Handball - 7th
In other news, they failed to qualify...

800m Men - Adam Kszczot outside top 9
Hello?

Women's Pole Vault - Anna Rogowska 5th, Monika Pyrek 8th
Rogowska is the 2009 World Champion, Pyrek - with her personal best of 4,82m - can be dangerous too.

Men's Pole Vault - Pawel Wojciechowski 5th, Lukasz Michalski outside top 8
Wojciechowski is a 22-year-old reigning World Champion, for God's sake! Michalski - only 1 year older - finished 4th in Daegu.

USA Today predictions - global

USA Today has been running a great project called the London 2012 medal tracker, where based on the results of all kinds of events they're trying to predict the outcome of every single competition - award virtual medals - and then sum up the tally for each country. Obviously, with the huge amount of data available, they take quite a risk when trying to apply the same algorithm to all sports. And since they have recently come up with another monthly update, here are my two cents.

Not surprisingly, USA (42 gold medals, 89 overall) and China (35, 92) are head and shoulders above the others, with Russia (20,81) the best of the rest. The host country (15, 59) and Germany (18,56) are way behind, but I have a strong feeling the Brits could easily end up with 70-80 medals!

Digging deeper, let's take a look at a couple of horrible mistakes:

Cycling - road: Joaquim Rodríguez 4th, Mark Cavendish outside top 8. Now, let us look at the race profile:

 'nuff said!

Football: Brazil - 1st, Mexico - 2nd, United Arab Emirates, Korea, or Spain - 3rd
Watch out, Team Great Britain (featuring the likes of Gareth Bale and probable captain David Beckham) and defending champions Argentina. UAE are coming for you! Not.

Summing up, fantastic idea and all, but it could be improved so easily. In case of football, it just takes one intern to take a critical look at whatever the computer spits out. As far as cycling is concerned, even if you don't have the know-how, you could cross-reference your prediction with what the bookies think. Those guys are pros, y'know. (Here, not surprisingly, they all consider Cav the man to beat.)

Dear USA Today, thanks a lot, but please put more work into the 2016 edition!

Not what you're selling, but how

There are so many sports-related commercials that are remembered for any number of reasons. Embracing the greatest rivalries, getting to know the stars from a different perspective, humour, trickery, famous victories, famous defeats - you name it! Here's my short list of the most remarkable ones, so just sit back and enjoy!

The Tune

Gatorade started airing their “Be Like Mike” commercials in 1991. The catchy song provided the background theme for these spots. And you know what? 21 years later, sometimes I still catch myself humming it!

The Series

ESPN is to a sports fan what the Bible is to a Catholic. When they started the "This is SportsCenter" series back in 1994, you just knew every single one was going to be hilarious. Here's my personal favourite:

The Fraternity

Long before the curse on Henry, Federer, and Woods, long before everybody was all in, there was a very simple Adidas commercial that - as far as I know - pretty much started the trend. By now some of these athletes have had their careers ruined by injuries, others by doping. But back in 2004, every single one of them was at the very top of their respective sport. Ladies and gents, your alternative version of "We are the world":

The First Person Shooter

With computer games quickly taking over the world, Guy Ritchie had this fantastic idea that makes you feel like you're an upcoming football star yourself. Simply brilliant!

The bar has been set pretty high! Can't wait to see the London-themed commercials, which should start popping up in a couple of weeks now!

The Invincibles

In recent sports history, this label has been widely associated with a fantastic achievement of Arsenal F.C., who won the 2003/04 season of the English Premier League without a single defeat. Geographically speaking, it serves as a rather appropriate introduction too, as the Gunners play their home games in North London. Oh what a team that was...

But back to London 2012. In fact there are a couple of Olympians whose recent achievements could easily be described using these very words: the Invincibles! Of course the big question is whether they can maintain that status by winning the gold medal in the upcoming Games. What follows below is a short list of my favourite Invincibles.

Recent achievements of the French national handball team are mighty impressive: Olympic Champions 2008, World Champions 2009, European Champions 2010, and again World Champions 2011. To put this into perspective: it is so far the only national handball team in history to have won four major titles in a row. They are widely considered by observers as the greatest handball team of all times. Can Nikola Karabatic lead them to extend that incredible run?

Maria Valentina Vezzali is the first fencer in Olympic history to win three Individual Foil gold medals at three consecutive Olympics: in Sydney, Athens, and Beijing. In November 2011, a month after winning her sixth individual gold medal at the World Championships in Catania, she was seriously injured in a car crash. It is still unclear if she'll have the time to come back to top shape - so far she's been rather unimpressive in this year's World Cup. But although I keep my fingers crossed for the Polish foil team, it would be great to see Valentina back on the podium!

 

His arms span 201cm - disproportionate to his height of 193cm - and act as long, propulsive "paddles". His relatively short legs lower drag, and perhaps add the speed enhancement of a hydrofoil. His size 14 feet provide the effect of flippers. And his hypermobile ankles can extend beyond the pointe of a ballet dancer, enabling him to whip his feet as if they were fins for maximum thrust through the water. His name is Michael Phelps, and he doesn't like losing all that much. In Beijing, upon completing the event that awarded him his eighth gold medal and eighth Olympic record in as many events (spanning over a week only), he humbly said: "Records are always made to be broken no matter what they are. Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to." Incidentally, it sounds almost identical to one of my favourite slogans ever:

Which reminds me: next time, my favourite sports-related ads of all time!

It's not easy being green

Eight months later, I literally have no news. (Other than trivia like train/hostel bookings, that is.) This January they intended to resell some tickets, but the whole concept failed spectacularly, so they shut it down till April. Deep sigh, followed by a quick change of topic, because sports-wise, I couple of great rivalries are fuelling my imagination already!

Men's basketball tournament could easily go down as the best in history. USA remains the dream team, but the Spaniards seem stronger than ever before. Tricky Ricky Rubio is having a dream start to his NBA career (2nd in the league in steals, one Kyrie Irving away from running away with the Rookie of the Year award), Serge Ibaka had three games with 10+ blocks THIS MONTH, and the Gasol bros are solid as ever. Add some excellent 3-point shooting from the likes of Navarro, Calderón, or Rudy, and I'm not betting my money against that team!

Long story short, in road cycling home boy Mark Cavendish is the man to beat. Luckily for him, he's also the best sprinter of his generation, which makes the job somewhat easier. Still, Andre Greipel and Matt Goss are ready to use the slightest miscalculation to their advantage. And who knows, maybe a youngster like Peter Sagan, Marcel Kittel, or Michael Matthews rises to the occasion? Also, we've heard some disturbing rumours that the profile might actually prove more selective than expected. Great rouleurs like Philippe Gilbert and Fabian Cancellara should take every opportunity to tire the sprinters when climbing Box Hill no less than 9 times. You'll find the complete profile here.

Oops

Well, at least that's the short version. Out of 42289 tickets I've asked for, I've been assigned... three. Yay. Not. I'm not sure whether it's because so many people have applied, or so many tickets have been made available through the official website, or I've been very unlucky. Anybody with similar experience out there?

Anyway, I'm going to see weight-lifting 85kg on 3.08, athletics on the 5.08 (starring Usain Bolt in the 100m final!), and one men's handball semifinal on 10.08. Now comes the tough part - somehow filling the gaps between those three - let's see how that goes. Looks like an uphill battle at the moment, considering that the official website can't offer me much more, the national Olympic Committee of the country where I reside requires local nationality (no can do), and the one where I originate from raised all prices by 30% and can't really offer anything special either... I'll keep you posted!

Almost there

I'll know it very very soon! In the meantime, kinda managed to talk a couple of people into joining me in case I succeed in renting a flat big enough for hosting visitors. Speaking of which - no progress on the apartment front so far. So if only you know a Londoner who doesn't like sports/noise/traffic, and thus plans to escape during the Olympics and rent out his/her flat for that period, let me know!

Anticipation

Post travel depression sucks. (Shocking discovery, I know.) But what can you possibly do when you have just returned from a trip around the world? Oh, I know: how about planning another big trip! And since after you-know-what I'm left with very few holidays for the rest of 2011, it has to be some long-term planning. And going to the Olympic Games actually needs some serious long-term planning anyway. Et voila, all pieces of the puzzle fall into place :-)

The Olympics and me, you must know, we have quite some history. It all started in Athens in 2004, where I (student, 22y) met that American guy (show-off, around 70y). We were standing there by the road forever with absolutely nothing to do. (Yes kids, watching a marathon is pure excitement: hours of travel and waiting, followed by 20 seconds of watching sweaty guys run, while taking some really badly moved pictures of them.) So we ended up chatting casually. One word led to another, and suddenly there he was - with pride written all over his face - bragging about how he hadn't missed any Olympic Games since Tokyo*. Myself, being an insanely competitive creature, automatically understood it as a bet, and promised myself I would beat his streak. It's on, mister!

This inner bet has had both good and bad effects on my life. The worst of all is clearly all that broccoli I have to eat now in order to live long enough to attend the Olympics for 40+ years. The best one is that I actually get to see lots of live sports! Athens was where a single trip transformed into a lifelong plan. Beijing was an absolute blast, and my only regret is a poor choice of language for the blog, a mistake I'm here to rectify!

Enough history, back to London now! Although the Olympic Games won't open until 27.07.2012, the tickets are already on sale. You need to apply on-line until April 26th, and a lottery will follow if there are not enough seats for everyone. I'll come back with my schedule once the results are out. Wish me luck!



* - Summer Olympics that is (as much as I love curling, skiing with a rifle, and freezing outside with zero visibility in general, Winter Olympics don't count)