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Everything posted by Sir Rols
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Wait till Brisbane… Potential medal design…
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Thanks. I just occurred to me, possibly the closest analogy is the Academy Awards. No-one knows how the limited number of individuals on the academy will vote. The reasons for votes are opaque and are influenced by all sorts of idiosyncratic reasons - campaigns, politics, sentimentality, agendas, friendships and enmities etc. But those who observe it closely usually have a pretty good idea of the favourites and the undercurrents of any particular year.
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- ioc president
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It’s the closest we get now to the old time host city votes. And in most cases, forecasts in the Olympic media and betting markets (and here) were pretty close. The biggest surprise I remember was 2016 - not that Rio won (it was favourite and I actually won good money on that), but that Chicago was eliminated in the first round. The Olympic media have their sources inside the IOC and have a good idea of how the politics stacks up. As to here? Well, some of us follow the Olympic media closely. I’m seeing consistent mention that this is seen as a Coe versus Samaranch race. But of course many of us also project their personal biases and preferences in too. Actually, speaking of the vote, does anyone know if it’s going to be conducted under old IOC rules - first to 50 per cent plus, and rounds with the lowest scorers eliminated until that majority is reached?
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Shanghai new year crush kills 36 That was in 2015. You might also want to look up similar incidents in England, Germany, Korea and more. All are tragic.
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Okay, I’ll throw this one out there. I’d imagine many of us would consider Watanabe’s idea of a 24-hour games across five continents a bit wacky. I personally think it would dilute a lot of the spirit and appeal of the summer games. But could this be a viable future for the winter games? Potential snow hosts are fast disappearing, and the luge/bobsled track is a real white elephant and burden for most. The IOC is talking about a potential limited pool of winter hosts to choose from in the future, but maybe it just might be better to split the games across the world. Alpine Skiing in, say, Sapporo (one of the few places forecasted to still be able to reliably offer snow cover in a few decades), bob/luge in one of the existing tracks in the US or Europe. Ice events are easy enough to find cities with venues for rinks, cross country skiing might still be viable in Scandinavia. In the winter context, such a worldwide, 24-hour split might make some sense.
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I’m a committed leftist (and getting more - militantly so - as I get older), but I’m pretty disheartened by the Australian left’s (Labor and Greens) refusal to consider nuclear power. I mean, jeez, we’ve long exported uranium to most of the world and it’s one of the few zero carbon options for large capacity energy production. I get it, it scares people (and led to Germany and Sweden’s de-nuclearisation of power), but it really needs to be considered here outside of ideological divides. Petty personal vendetta’s and games.
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I don’t fault the IOC for that, though. They’ve placed plenty of pressure on the Italians - even arranged Lake Placid on standby - but in this case good intentions was met by Italian chauvinism and intransigence. We’ve sen with the choices of Paris, LA, France-Alps and SLC, and the original selling pitch for Brisbane, that zero and minimal builds is very high, if not at the top, of their selection criteria. The test will be to see if that’s sustained for 2036 and beyond.
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Again, that basically is the existing IOC policy - they won’t approve new builds for the games now unless it can be demonstrated to have a beyond-games use/need. That’s one of the reasons for Brisbane’s main stadium kerfuffle - the IOC encouraged and waved through a sub-par QSAC, even though there was a demonstrateable need for a new oval stadium.
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That’s true. Just as surely as the Olympic Games’ carbon footprint is miniscule compared to day-to-day industry and corporate activities. But small gestures and symbolic examples do matter. Ultimately, any truly meaningful climate action is going to require a total overhaul of society, because modern society as we all enjoy at the moment is ultimately not sustainable. Currently our internet emissions account for 3.7 per cent of global carbon emissions, on par with the airlines industry. And that is set to grow massively with the growth of AIs, which are hugely power devouring. And yet EVERY SINGLE CANDIDATE for the IOC presidential seat is trumpeting wish washy guff about “harnessing the powers of AI” - personally, I think they’ve just latched onto the current buzz word rather than have any clear vision about the technology. This is one thing that I will give the IOC. They’ve been championing this since long before the “New Norm” with Agenda 2020, and they do seem to be quite serious in at least trying to enforce, or at least encourage, it. Though I think they’ve jreached that spot more for financial and PR reasons than for climate reasons. But, good on them. That said, sometimes it may well be better for sustainability reasons to build anew. Most modern building codes for public buildings require environmental and sustainable design elements. In many cases new structures would surely have smaller footprints than legacy stadiums. Take Tokyo’s new Olympic Stadium - I’m sure that’s far more environmentally friendly than the big concrete bowl it replaced.
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“Enhanced” Games - Dopers’ Alternative to Olympics
Sir Rols replied to Sir Rols's topic in General Olympics Discussion
He would, wouldn’t he… Trump Jr. backs Enhanced Games -
Agreed, these are not solutions. They’re just reactions to practical necessity. Shifting hosting time slots itself will do nothing to combat emissions, just move emissions to a different month. And, yeah, energy production is THE major hurdle. In France you are lucky, and can take some pride, in your far more decarbonised energy industry. Here in Oz, it’s a hot potato that has poisoned politics for decades now. The increasingly rabid Right HATE anything renewable, while the Left is firmly anti-nuclear because, well, nukes are bad. In the meantime, we just continue our addiction to coal-fired electricity. Personally, I’d be open to nuclear energy here, but we probably should have started that shift twenty or thirty years ago - it’s not something we can adopt overnight.
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That’s a pretty nice idea. Well worth considering. But again, human selfishness and politics. Can you imagine the reaction of the current ogre in the White House, fresh from reinstating plastic straws because paper straws are “woke”, if he was told the LA games required mandatory climate requirements and offset investments?
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Interesting topic @sebastien1214. And some good, thoughtful, points you’ve raised. I’ll note that mention has already been made about relaxing the hosting time window and selecting a pool of winter hosts. True, both are probably needed, but are both strategies that are REACTING and adapting to climate change rather than trying to reduce the games’ climate impact. It’s like shifting your holidays from July to September because Majorca or the Bahamas are getting too hot to enjoy in summer, rather than cutting out such travel altogether to lessen your footprint. i would question just how much of an impact the games have in terms of total annual emissions from travel, leisure, industry, transport etc. I suspect it’s but a blip. But also acknowledge it could be an important symbolic example to set. All the games since London, if not earlier, have been keen to label themselves “carbon neutral”, so obviously they’re aware of the importance of making such gestures. I also suspect though most of such efforts have concentrated on recycling and renewable and offsets for their claims, rather than addressing real issues. i’ll hazard the guess that the two biggest carbon impacts from the Olympics are, firstly, the air travel, and secondly, the server farms required for the broadcasting, streaming and dissemination of the games. And both of these beg the question of just how far are we, especially in rich western nations, prepared to curtail or forgo these “necessities” in order to seriously tackle global warming. i’m not sure if the Olympics actually increases air travel at games time compared to regular massive tourist and business travel. Many hosts have expressed how the games times themselves actually experience a cut to the usual of tourists coming into their cities. But nevertheless, it’s easy to point to the numbers of athletes and celebrities and spectators flying in as a negative impact. And while it might be easier in Europe, for example, to utilise more train travel for these attendees, Americans, Asians, Australians and NZers, African et al, don’t have that convenience, and when we host, as you mentioned, our options are limited. But how ready is the world to give up air travel? Are we ready to go back to using ships for long distance trips. How many of us are ready yet to give up holidaying abroad? I’m planning a trip to Europe later this year - am I selfish to be even considering it? I’d travel by boat if I could - I find long distance air travel an ordeal to be endured - but such options are very limited and expensive. Ditto our internet addiction. None of us think that individually we’re doing much harm scrolling through GamesBids or watching streaming content or doing our school or business work on our computers. It’s pretty impossible to do any of that without the internet nowadays - society is now reliant on it. But collectively we’re fuelling massive arrays of energy guzzling and heat emitting server farms that are also hugely impacting the climate. Is the world ready, or even capable, of going back voluntarily to analogue? Is anyone willing to go back to consuming the Olympics only on pedal-powered radios or TVs or just reading about it in print newspapers or magazines? At the end of the day, I probably think it’s important that the Olympics sets examples, but I doubt the games themselves contribute more than a miniscule fraction of a single per cent of existing normal global emissions. And society is really too dependent and hypocritical and selfish, and just not plain ready, to make the kind of sacrifices required to really make any difference.
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Milano Cortina 2026
Sir Rols replied to AustralianFan's topic in Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games
No it’s not. The city of Naples Coat of Arms -
“I didn’t think he meant what he said” is a pretty poor excuse as well. Yet there’s more than enough “reasonable conservatives” to aid and abet them. You don’t get to ignore the parts you don’t like and then try to say “but that’s nothing to do with me”.
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A Red state is still a Red state. It still means they were more comfortable having this bunch of gangsters in the White House than a Democratic woman. If you’re going to break bread with Nazis, don’t then come out and say “but we’re not really like them”.
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BONUS EXTRA! You’ll get an Aussie Queen. She’ll (kinda) already speak your language! Who could ask for anything more!
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Yes, the main trappings all get taken down, but it’s funny how that even many years down the track you may still run across remnants. Even 25 years on in Sydney, I still occasionally come upon artefacts - driving along a road and noticing that some of the blue line from the marathon course hasn’t been worn away yet, travelling in a train past a props warehouse and seeing an abandoned OC prop, traffic signs to the velodrome that still display the Sydney 2000 logo. And many cars still sporting the souvenir Sydney 2000 license plates, or the odd person still going around with their volunteer jackets.
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Baseball and softball actually do have followings and well established leagues here. Not as huge as cricket, but we’ve medaled in both at the Olympics - in softball’s case, multiple bronzes and silver.
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Okay, I see now. Pity. Admittedly, it is a while ago since I was there. Stayed there in my younger years when I was bumming down from LA to San Diego. Just liked the vibes, and remember as one of the occasions I got to meet some very stereotypical archetypes - real, like totally, (1980s) surfer dudes.
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- los angeles 2028
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