Last week the Euro 2016 a.k.a. European football championships drew to a close in France with an excruciatingly boring win. European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam were far more interesting.

Is anybody following Tour de France? Anything going on on some other continent (besides the upcoming Olympics in Rio)?


PS As a random reference, we have an utterly specialised thread for football (soccer). But nobody in this forum has admitted to doing any real sports. Just saying.

Is anybody following Tour de France?

I'm watching it here, we only get two and a half hours of live racing a day though, I'd rather they showed it from start to finish each day but they don't for some reason. It can't be that there's something more important to fill the air time. 

I don't watch sports. What doing real sports is I don't know; I don't think my musculature or stamina are much worse than back when I rowed. I think it's much better for your health if your physical condition doesn't depend upon a concept like real sports.

Course I'm following Le Tour. It's an epic race.

I don't watch sports. What doing real sports is I don't know; I don't think my musculature or stamina are much worse than back when I rowed. I think it's much better for your health if your physical condition doesn't depend upon a concept like real sports.

For most people their condition directly depends on how they spent their day/week/month/year, whether sleeping or sitting or walking or running. Maybe not for you.

By real sports I meant as opposed to following broadcasts on TV/radio/internet. For somebody else it may mean performing close to the world record or thereabouts. Both are legitimate interpretations for discussion.

For most people their condition directly depends on how they spent their day/week/month/year, whether sleeping or sitting or walking or running. Maybe not for you.

I didn't say I'm physically inactive. I said I don't do "real sports". Just walk around, perform the occasional sprint (one of the best exercises there is^[1]), carry your basket at the grocery store instead of dragging it on the floor, do "squats" while putting things away in your kitchen -- inefficiently, one plate or pan at a time -- and you've got your basic movement covered better than most.

In the morning you'll want to consider doing some warmup stretches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXSCzguSkM

Also consider physical meditation (but not to excess; that'd be like that "running" thing).

That's your basic flexibility and such. Add in a couple of high intensity exercises (e.g. the aforementioned sprints, jumps at full strength, one-legged squats, a couple of clap push-ups, and of course pull-ups) and you've got your bone density covered as well. Oh yeah, and mix it up with stuff like pushing against the wall and yourself to mix it up (like this).

Real sports? Just go for physical living. Walking is the most underrated exercise.


Anyway, back on topic. I don't watch real sports either, but I definitely prefer it over TV.

¹ NB A sprint is high intensity, short duration. I don't mean that "running" thing people do.↵

This pre-fight analysis of McGregor and Nurmagomedov is detail-perfect all the way, including the prediction, so much so that it makes me think the whole sport is entirely rigged. At least it's way too predictable.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/martin-rogers/2018/10/05/ufc-229-conor-mcgregor-talks-tough-khabib-nurmagomedov-dominant-fighter/1537521002/

In the actual fight, Nurmagomedov dominated every aspect, injured McGregor's eye by repeated hits while standing (standing fight was supposed to be McGregor's forte). McGregor was completely helpless every time when pressed against the net or on the mat. As USA Today predicted, McGregor tapped out in the fourth round.

Immediately after this, Nurmagomedov flung himself out of the ring to attack McGregor's camp. He was fetched back by the security. There was no announcement of the winner after the fight and no handshake.

Of course the attack on the opponent camp was very unsportsmanlike. It was also completely out of Nurmagomedov's character. An explanation that I have seen floating around on the internet is that McGregor made a sucker punch through the ring net at Nurmagomedov's brother, followed up with an assault by representatives of McGregor's camp. Both should be punished, but Nurmagomedov legitimately won the fight and deserves the prize.

Dana White compared the incident with Tyson biting Holyfield's ear. It is not comparable. Tyson did it in the middle of the fight and thereby earned instant disqualification, while Nurmagomedov had secured his victory seconds ago.

Olympics 2020 opening now in 2021. Don't miss it.

This year things as skateboarding, sport climbing or cycling BMX were promoted to the category of Olympic Sports. What will be next? arm wrestling?

Arm wrestling is straightforwardly a sport, because it does not involve any suspicious style points.

At first, in Pierre de Coubertin's mind, olympics had to be for earnest amateurs rather than professionals. That's why Jim Thorpe was controversially stripped of his pentathlon and decathlon medals after it was discovered that he had received some money for playing baseball. They did not even allow at the time that those were different sports.^[1] After WWII, Soviet Union, DDR, and other Warsaw bloc countries developed the concept of "full-time amateur athlete" to such extremes that Coubertin's aims disintegrated and by now professionals are uncontroversial at the Olympics.

Many countries/teams also made a science out of doping. On the surface, doping is still condemned and there are controls in place to counter it but under the surface it is omnipresent. It is not so easy to distinguish under legitimate medication that athletes need to take to stay healthy and doping. There's also doping that athletes put into each others' meals and water for sabotage.

Then there are also femininity controls or sex verification. Doping and "full-time amateur athlete" concept combined, some Warsaw bloc female athletes did not look female at all, which caused an uproar and resulted in sex verification procedures introduced after Tokyo 1964 Olympics.

So, earlier there was a big push to make sports fairer for amateurs and for women by excluding professionals from the amateur category and hermaphrodites, intersex, hyperandrogenous etc. from women's category, but now there's a big push for inclusivity, nevermind how fair the result will be.^[2] By now everybody knows how ineffective and potentially inaccurate doping controls are, so should these be dropped too?

¹ In 1983, after thinking about it over half a century, Intl Olympics Committee restored Jim Thorpe's medals. Way too late.↵

² Within the sports community of Soviet Union itself, there was general scorn against some such athletes. After several intra-USSR victories of Tamara Press (shot put and discus), other competitors, in protest, did not show up to the medals ceremony. Aleksandra Chudina was a heavy drunkard and smoker with unmistakeable male voice, but competed in women's category towering over everybody else both literally and figuratively despite of glaring flaws in her/his technique. When she/he occasionally dropped the bar in high jump, the co-competitors said "Good jump, but her balls were a bit in the way." Her/his prime continued long after medal-worthy results in Helsinki 1952 Olympics in javelin, high jump and long jump, but she/he was kept out of international competitions because she/he was controversial enough within USSR. Another example, sprinter Maria Itkina reportedly never showered together with her/his team mates. ↵