[Baggies]

Listening to it on 5 love was the right choice, I love Buncey.

[Baggies]

First medal on the table, a Bronze in Judo

[Baggies]

A first gold slips through our grasp, ends up with another Taekwondo Silver at successive Games.

Being made to work for these medals, not much coming off. A poor first 2 days.

[MarkW]

Team USA throw it away Vs a strong France side inside the last two and half minutes.

[beechyboy90]

Alex yee silver medal team gb in triathlon

[hardtobeat]

A true sporting great wins our first gold medal Take a bow Adam Peaty, unbeaten in 7 years,16 fastest times ever are his in 100 metres breaststroke

[Baggies]

Golds in the diving for Daley and Lee then in the mountains  biking for Pidcock.

Also in a Taekwondo final. A good morning so far.

[ronnie_allen]

Team USA throw it away Vs a strong France side inside the last two and half minutes.

USA wearing blue against a France team in white really confused me every time I flicked on to it.

13 year old Japanese girl wins gold in the skateboarding.

[Baggies]

USA wearing blue against a France team in white really confused me every time I flicked on to it.

13 year old Japanese girl wins gold in the skateboarding.

I had the same problem 🤣.

Reminds you how good France are at team sports though. Produce the deepest talent pool in football, able to mix it with the best in the second biggest world sport Basketball and also produce World class teams in Handball and Rugby Union. A Gold standard.

[Baggies]

Lauren Williams suffers the same plight as Bradly Sinden (and Lutalo Muhammad 5 years ago) with a close loss in the Gold medal Taekwondo match. Three finals, 3 losses, hopefully that Gold will come eventually.

Edit - I am forgetting Jade Jones got gold in 2012 and 2016, just the kast e finals we have lost.

[gazberg]

Just started watching for the first time and i feel a bit bad for these athletes. It's soulless there without crowds. I'm currently watching gymnastics so indoors obviously. Any comment on what it's like in the outdoor sports?

[Baggies]

Just started watching for the first time and i feel a bit bad for these athletes. It's soulless there without crowds. I'm currently watching gymnastics so indoors obviously. Any comment on what it's like in the outdoor sports?

It's been missing something in all of the events, although some of the outdoor events ga e had crowds where the authorities have less control (those with long routes where people aren't paying).

4th place for GB&I in the men's gymnastics, outside the medals but above the US for a 2nd Olympics on the test which is incredible really.

[gazberg]

It's been missing something in all of the events, although some of the outdoor events ga e had crowds where the authorities have less control (those with long routes where people aren't paying).

4th place for GB&I in the men's gymnastics, outside the medals but above the US for a 2nd Olympics on the test which is incredible really.

Yes it looks like we've had a decent day in terms of medals.

I was hoping there were some spectators allowed for the outdoors events at least. It's all a bit too clinically clean for me without crowds.

[Baggies]

I

Yes it looks like we've had a decent day in terms of medals.

I was hoping there were some spectators allowed for the outdoors events at least. It's all a bit too clinically clean for me without crowds.

Hopefully Paris 2024 will be a return to normal. I did see some pictures of crowds for other sports in Japan which I found a bit weird, but could have been typical twitter false information.

[Baggies]

Watching the Olympics always reminds me how many major team sports there are, played by a ton of other nations which we have no participation in. Basketball, Handball, Volleyball and even Beach Volleyball all seem to be fairly major sports. All are played in Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and even Africa and Asia, yet we still stick to a small group of team sports that are usually played with commonwealth nations.

We do have Rugby Sevens and Field Hockey here but in the main there is a shallow pool of competing nations.

The Aussies seem to be able to field a team in every sport, I don't know how they do it, 50% of Aussies must play team sports to make it sustainable.

[MarkW]

Watching the Olympics always reminds me how many major team sports there are, played by a ton of other nations which we have no participation in. Basketball, Handball, Volleyball and even Beach Volleyball all seem to be fairly major sports. All are played in Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and even Africa and Asia, yet we still stick to a small group of team sports that are usually played with commonwealth nations.

We do have Rugby Sevens and Field Hockey here but in the main there is a shallow pool of competing nations.

The Aussies seem to be able to field a team in every sport, I don't know how they do it, 50% of Aussies must play team sports to make it sustainable.

I think it really comes down to culture and availability of facilities.

When I worked at a school in New Zealand, every student would have a winter sport and a summer sport. Even if you were in the U13 D Team for Field Hockey and the same for cricket, you'd be playing matches against other schools and sports are just a big part of the culture.

Australia is an odd one because there is quite a lot of obesity there. I suppose they also have affluent middle classes who can afford to spend money on sports. I daresay the climate also helps.

One final thing relating to facilities - in Auckland they have a huge park which has multiple cricket pitches for schools to play on, and in the winter there's rugby matches. You sometimes get large areas for football but they aren't often dual-purpose, and definitely aren't on the scale of Auckland domain. There was probably 10 cricket pitches in all. Also, in Christchurch, just dozens of netball courts (outdoors) for clubs to play on.

[BaggieBoy04]

Good day for us so far I already ruled us out of getting medals in Skateboarding I think we can do well but it is more of a North American, Aussie and Asian thing than big over here

[Hull Baggie]

Good day for us so far I already ruled us out of getting medals in Skateboarding I think we can do well but it is more of a North American, Aussie and Asian thing than big over here

You are right that it's not as popular over here as it is in North America, but it's pretty big over here and has been for about 20 years or so. Around 50,000 actively take part in skateboarding in the UK.

[gazberg]

Good day for us so far I already ruled us out of getting medals in Skateboarding I think we can do well but it is more of a North American, Aussie and Asian thing than big over here

I always felt skateboarding was fairly popular here, it was when i was a kid certainly. How that translates into 'olympic' level participation i don't know however.

[Baggies]

I think it really comes down to culture and availability of facilities.

When I worked at a school in New Zealand, every student would have a winter sport and a summer sport. Even if you were in the U13 D Team for Field Hockey and the same for cricket, you'd be playing matches against other schools and sports are just a big part of the culture.

Australia is an odd one because there is quite a lot of obesity there. I suppose they also have affluent middle classes who can afford to spend money on sports. I daresay the climate also helps.

One final thing relating to facilities - in Auckland they have a huge park which has multiple cricket pitches for schools to play on, and in the winter there's rugby matches. You sometimes get large areas for football but they aren't often dual-purpose, and definitely aren't on the scale of Auckland domain. There was probably 10 cricket pitches in all. Also, in Christchurch, just dozens of netball courts (outdoors) for clubs to play on.

Do most people play sports outside of school and also into adult life?

I do wish we had similar, team sports lend themselves to mass participation rather than the individual events we get medals in, which seem to all be sponsorship funded and programme driven.

The French highlight that it can be done, Football, Basketball, Rugby, Handball, Volleyball and Beach Volleyball all seeing relatives success, all sports I'd argue that are played by more nations than you get in cricket and rugby. I'd be fascinated to see sports in their school system.

[Hunnington Baggie]

Do most people play sports outside of school and also into adult life?

I do wish we had similar, team sports lend themselves to mass participation rather than the individual events we get medals in, which seem to all be sponsorship funded and programme driven.

The French highlight that it can be done, Football, Basketball, Rugby, Handball, Volleyball and Beach Volleyball all seeing relatives success, all sports I'd argue that are played by more nations than you get in cricket and rugby. I'd be fascinated to see sports in their school system.

from a quick Google, the French school system focuses on Football, Tennis, Cycling, Skiing and Petanque (a form of Boules)

[johnny Cash]

Through work and over the years, I've worked with a number of sporting bodies (FA, PGA, British Gymnastics, LTA, England Lacrosse, England Hockey, plus many more) and a number of them are clients of mine and the company i work for still.

I've therefore spoken to a number of senior people conversationally about all sorts of issues. To pick up on a couple of points briefly, most come back in the main to culture, but in no particular order....

The post 16 drop off in sport is massive in this country, particularly for women, infact for women it starts with puberty. Girls that do dance, gymnastics, athletics get sucked in to wanting to be popular, socialising and 'boys'. The major NGB's are always fighting against this but it seems like they are never winning. The government should do more because the long term effect on health, both mental and physical is well documented. Instead it seems like even standard PE is being reduced in general comprehensives.

Facilities is a problem as pointed out, Lacrosse now use Hockey pitch dimensions (I'm not sure if this is true at the top level) so that facilities can be multi purpose. The bodies try to address issues where they can but its tough and money isn't always forthcoming.   

Mark mentioned 'middle classes' I remember having a conversation about this a number of years ago and it was brought to my attention that most sport is, and always has been middle class.  Football is the big exception.  Historically it was the middle class that had the time, and even now it is quite often the middle class that get the opportunity, not necessarily because it is not available to all, but it is the parents who value it and the parents who put emphasis in to it for their children. 

Better educated kids tend to value it more as adults too, go to any evening netball league. You'll find most females still participating in their 20's are university educated, its not coincidence.

[hardtobeat]

The recent BBC series highlighted many of the problems that have been mentioned here. It was John Major who had the foresight to funnel a great deal of lottery funding into sport in order that we could ultimately launch the bid and have a successful medal haul by 2012. From memory 1996 was the tipping point and the improvement has largely come about since then . IMO two major reasons for our decline up until then were lack of quality facilities, and a drop off in amount of sport that everyday schools did and taught. Both of these in turn can in part be traced back to the harsher economic times of the late 1970s early 80 s where people such as park keepers were done away with and councils were unwilling and / or unable to fund teacher overtime for out of hours sports including the mundane such as driving minibuses etc

[Baggies]

I'm not sure if it has changed much now, but i'm in my early thirties and when I was at secondary/high school we had one session of hockey, 2 of rugby union and a couple of gymnastics sessions in 5 years (there was the tiniest bit of cricket as well but barely worth mentioning). After that it was all athletics and football, with a bit of badminton during bad weather.

That's probably where I'd push that there is a lack of opportunity at working class level. I agree middle class parents are more likely to value sport for their kids but how much of that is down to the kids having had the opportunity in the first place? I can't remember the percentage, but at the last games I'm sure over half of the athletes we sent came from private education, staggering when compared to the national average. Working class kids in the Olympics seem to do Boxing and other combat sports.

Cost is prohibitive as well. I read somewhere that Sandwell has the highest football pitch rental fee in the UK. When I was involved with Sunday league it cost £70 for a pitch, alongside the referee costs. No wonder people.are dropping out of sports post 16.

[Albionic]

i was gobsmacked by the quoted £70 for a pitch, so checked

Outdoor Pitches‐Regular Users (Ex VAT) SANDWELL LEAGUES
Class A ‐ Pitches with changing facilities £72.10
Class A ‐ Junior ‐ Concessionary Charge £46.35
Class C ‐ Pitch no changing facility £46.35
Mini Soccer/7 a Side ‐ Children's football no changing £36.05

A disgrace that is,  £85 incl vat