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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: More Olympic Snippets

Late Night Open Thread: More Olympic Snippets

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I hope the artist held onto his masterpiece… resculpt the head a bit (use *all* the orange tinter), and he can sell it to the RNC as an official entry test for their next convention. Nobody who won’t enthusiastically kiss the horse-scaring end gets a slot!

*Not* a Monty Python sketch…


(TL, DR: They’re doing it as a fundraiser for the Motor Neuron Disease Foundation, which provided ‘invaluable support’ to his brother, ‘a massive Olympics fan’.)

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  2. 2.

    Jerzy Russian

    Is the brother a massive person, or his fandom massive?

    Also, I did not know that statues of sumo wrestlers existed, although upon reflection, I should not be surprised at this. However, why there are such statues in an equestrian ring is still a mystery.

  3. 3.

    smike

    @Jerzy Russian:

    However, why there are such statues in an equestrian ring is still a mystery.

    Yeah, that part is a mystery to me as well. Tried to come up with an angle, got nothing.

  5. 5.

    Another Scott

    Sifan Hassan was astounding. Fell in her 1500 m qualifying heat, won the heat, bronze in the final.

    Won the 5000 m gold.

    Won the 10,000 m gold.

    Just astounding, and her kick at the end of the 10k!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  9. 9.

    Mary G

    That Orlando family lounge looks like a superspreader event every bit as much as a rock concert, etc. I hope everyone was vaxxed and only gets minor breakthrough infections. And it seems a bit parsimonious for the US Olympic committee, Universal, Toyota, and NBC to only give athletes free airline tickets, four nights in the hotel, three days in the amusement park etc. for two people and generously allow them to purchase more. AP doesn’t report the price. I’m sure Caeleb Dressel can afford it, but the fifth grade teacher from Inglewood who brought her teen aged daughter, father and mother, who knows? Might have been a bit nicer to eliminate the full open bar and give more tickets.

  10. 10.

    opiejeanne

    @Jerzy Russian: The sumo statue was one of the Japanese cultural icons at each jump. There was a kimono at one, and I don’t remember the rest. The sumo statue was only visible after a sharp turn, following the previous jump. It’s life-size and in a crouching position, so even from the back it looks like it’s ready to attack.

    The other, very real problem with the horses was that this is a stupid part of the pentathlon. Participants are not allowed to use their own horse, they are assigned a random horse 20 minutes before they have to be in the ring. 20 minutes to get to know this strange horse, and then you expect it to jump. A rider from Germany was set to win gold, until the horse she got refused to jump, even before it knew about the sumo statue. It ran through one gate, and spent a lot of time just backing up around the ring, as the rider struggled to gain control, but all she could do was cry.

  14. 14.

    prostratedragon

    @opiejeanne:  Was that the rider whose coach was DQ’d for punching the horse? Having them use unfamiliar mounts seems unnecessary, since even a cavalry officer in battle would use a familiar one as long as possible.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    @prostratedragon:

    It seems especially strange because I don’t think you get this in other equestrian events, which are understood to be for horse-and-rider teams.

  16. 16.

    prostratedragon

    @Amir Khalid:  Yes, in “Eventing” (formerly “Three-Day Event?”) the riders use their own horses, and ordinarily the same horse for all three phases.

  17. 17.

    Mary G

    This thread by a woman whose grandfather was in the 1936 Olympics says:

    I learned today that the events of the Modern Pentathlon (running, swimming, fencing, pistol, equestrian) were chosen to simulate the feats of a 19th century cavalry solider fighting behind enemy lines.
    — Kate Starbird (@katestarbird) August 8, 2021

    So it makes sense to use a strange horse because behind enemy lines you’d take whichever you could steal. Not sure this qualifies as modern anymore, though, with the fencing and horseriding not much called for as military skills anymore.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    @smike

    Because they belong to stables.

    Every sumo wrestler belongs to a stable, which is where they live while they are young. A stable is managed by a stable master…. Source

    ;)

  19. 19.

    Geminid

    @Mary G: George S. Patton, later to win fame as a general, competed in the “modern” pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Then a Cavalry Lieutenant, Patton could compete because oficers were gentlemen, and therefore considered to be amateurs. Enlisted men were not eligible for the event.

  20. 20.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mary G: Yes, the ‘modern pentathalon’ are rooted in a 19th-century fairy tale, beloved by the founder of today’s Olympics:

    … Coubertin created the contest to simulate the experience of a 19th-century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines: he must ride an unfamiliar horse, fight enemies with pistol and sword, swim, and run to return to his own soldiers. In the 1912 Games as only officers competed, the competitors were permitted to use their own horses. Up to the 1952 Olympics the ordinary cavalry soldier was considered a professional athlete, as he was riding and training horses for a living, while the officer was the amateur. As long as there was no official international federation for Modern Pentathlon an IOC committee was set up for the sport making use of the expertise of IOC members…

    Everyone wants to get rid of it, except for a handful of elderly ‘romantics’.  I kinda doubt it’ll make the cut for 2024…

  21. 21.

    Geminid

    @Anne Laurie: Get rid of the Modern Pentathlon?!   Impossible!

    In the immortal words of U.S. Cavalry General Herr:

    “Not one horse I will give up for a tank!”

    General John Herr,1940.

  22. 22.

    Miss Bianca

    @smike: Show jumping course designers come up with all kinds of weird shit to put near the jumps. I think it’s supposed to be a test of how under control the rider has their horse. Jumps are almost always decorated in some manner or other – artificial flowers, little windmill things…

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