A thread for your stupid Olympics questions

[FriendlyNeighbourhoodAccountant]

If you have any "stupid" questions about the Olympics here's the place to ask them. Hopefully some knowledgeable people will know the answers.

At this temperature it's too hot for me to walk my dog but the horses are participating in the jumping events. Does the heat not impact them in the same way? Is it because they're bigger? Is it just because they're horses?

Thanks @MirandaWest and @TheTripThatWasnt - I looked up Tom Daley, and he was only 14 in his first Olympics 😲

Definitely the gymnasts are older these days.

@ticktickticktickBOOM none of the athletes rooms have air conditioning, but some countries have chosen to bring their own units. It's like food, everyone has access to the giant canteen, but many countries bring things that their athletes particularly want- Australia brought their own coffee bars for instance

Except it isn't scraped off! Dr.David Marlin who is a cooling expert has disproved scraping so now they don't scrape to cool. The rest is correct though ie mist/fans etc.

Watching the sailing today and thought...do they have to bring their own boats over?! Or do they just borrow someone's in France? That would be some oversized luggage!!

I wanted to ask this and the canoes and kayaks!

I'm sure I've heard they bring their own boats but maybe that was rowing boats not sailing boats 🤔

Why are so many gymnasts falling off equipment? I've never seen it before and there have been 3 or 4 in the last couple of days. Is it quite common?

I know the Canadian male gymnast yesterday fell cos his hand guard (or whatever it's called) broke but I was surprised that there didn't seem to be a 'reason' for the others.

The rule used to be that each person could have a false start. This caused problems as sometimes it would take FOREVER to get the race going when people were nervous and undisciplined. It would delay the whole event programme, and runners who were warmed up and ready to go would then get injured. Starting out of blocks puts a lot of force through the calves and achilles and keeping doing it at full race pelt and then being called back and having to go again without much recovery is a big injury risk.

Then they changed it to after the first false start, a warning went against the whole field. However, that was abused and some athletes would false start on purpose to put pressure on the whole field, particularly if there was a competitor that they knew was really good out of the blocks.

Now, the onus is on everyone to be disciplined, and the punishment was yours and yours alone. It's a tough rule, but it's a fair one.

Possibly because as the standards of gymnastics are getting higher & higher there's more push to do harder skills in order to get the higher difficulty score.

Don't know, but watching women's All-around right now and one of the Italians fell face first off the asymmetric bars - saved her face by landing on her wrists, 😢 ouch!

I asked my DH about the medal biting last night as I see people in my running club do it sometimes (for participatory medals which are definitely not gold).
Apparently years ago when coins were made of or contained gold, if you bit it, you left teeth-marks. I think the Olympic gold medals are gold plated so not sure how the biting business works in this case.

I was going to ask about the canoes and rowing boats too. Some of them are so long it must be crazy to transport them. And do they get checked to make sure teams haven't made them more lightweight or anything like that too as surely they must have regulations around things like that like F1 has for their cars?

Do the archers use their own arrows or are arrows provided so everyone has the same ones? I assume it's their own bows since they'll be personalised to each person's body and size but I've been wondering about the arrows if they're allowed to be different.

Ok.

So does anyone know which countries had the heads up, and the money, to bring air con for their athletes?

and does this correlate with performance?

I hear the French athletes all have air-con . . .

Arrows are also fitted to body size. Essentially, longer arms, have longer draw length and need longer arrows.

I imagine, that like cycling, you use your own equipment, but it must fall within specified criteria.

Yes I can understand the canoes and kayaks, I've seen people have those at airports. But the sailing boats, they're huge!!! Maybe we'll never know 😂

Thanks @IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads - I don't believe I didn't think of the different lengths being needed in that way.

Why do some gymnasts (well, one that I have noticed) wear leggings/long leg skinsuits, but the majority have bare legs.

Why is Simone Biles' leotard different to the rest of the US gymnasts's leotards?

Yes stroke counting.

Even as a basic county swimmer, I knew exactly how many strokes I did at "race speed" down a 50m pool.

Elite athletes will know exactly how many they are doing. They time their turns and finish so precisely.

Of course shot put, discus and hammer are done outside the Olympics!! How do you think athletes get to qualify for the Olympics?? By throwing the required distance in qualifying comps in towns around the world...

That was a daft statement.

@TheTripThatWasnt the red 15 m marker is the point at which they need to break the surface AFTER their turn. If their face isn't above the water by then, they can be disqualified (as happened to a British swimmer already in these Olympics who had actually won his heat then was disqualified).

Why was pop music being played during the shooting the other day? Was it to drown out the sound of the shots for the spectators?

How many swim hats do you think each competitor gets? They have both the relevant flag and the name on so it's not as if you can borrow your mates if you forget yours or lose it at the last minute.
Or what if it splits? (Swim hat issues seemed to be a major theme of my DC's swim lessons)

@IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads I think they get to choose for themselves if they have full bodysuits or no leg covering. I know there was an argument as they weren't allowed because it stopped judges seeing 'form'. But it was pointed out the men wear long trousers often and it doesn't affect the judging.

I looked up the outfits the other day and it did say about some competitions where some of them are competing solo and some are in the group so the solo competitor will have a different outfit. I don't know if that's the same for the Olympics though.

Me and my sister were puzzling over the same with the swimming. In the group relays when they were all coming out some teams were all wearing different patterned outfits that didn't match but I couldn't find out why. Wasn't sure if it was a sponsorship thing or not.

Why bother coming on an Olympics thread if you're not interested in sport?

Given how many brand new never worn ones they donate for swimming club raffles afterwards I think the answer is a lot.