Olympic thread

No part of that article says the organisers were intending to depict the Last Supper, and the director has said he wasn't intending to do so. The apology is essentially "I'm sorry you feel that way".

 

I do think its pretty obvious though mate. They've even got a depicted halo around the young lasses head in the middle

 

I mean. It only vaguely looks like either. But depicting a greek festival at the Olympics makes way more sense than a Christian one. Not that it means much in an opening ceremony that weird.

Maybe if they'd rehearsed it someone would have spotted the similarity and suggested they clarify or amend it?

 

I've been mulling this one over and trying to look at it as objectively as possible rather than with Daily Wail style hysteria. I'm a firm believer that people who've committed crimes should be given the opportunity to draw a line under it and rebuild their lives once their sentence is served, provided they are no longer deemed a risk to society. The fact that his sentence appeared unduly lenient and that he only served a quarter of it is hardly Van de Velde's fault.

But, and there is a massive "BUT" here - as far as I'm aware, people who've committed sexual offences against minors stay on the sex offenders register for life. That precludes them from doing certain jobs for life, such as anything where they might have contact with children. This would seem logical, for the good of all concerned. There are plenty of Olympic athletes who are well under the age of 16, and many more that are under 18. Even if it's been found by experts that he doesn't pose a risk to these young athletes, the very fact that he's allowed to be around them, presumably unsupervised, is quite unnerving. Even if he's never showed any signs of reoffending, he would never be able to work in a school for example, and rightly so.

Although he's served his custodial sentence,Steven Van de Velde will be stigmatised for the rest of his life for something he did when he was 19. That's something that must be very hard to deal with, and something that he will have to live with. But what he did was extremely serious, not to mention absolutely unfathomable unless he genuinely does have sexual desires towards children. Having served his sentence doesn't just wipe out what he did. It still happened, and there are still consequences which won't just go away because he's now out of prison.

At best, the Dutch selecting him would seem very ill-judged. As an Olympic athlete, you're a role model. Should Steven Van de Velde be given the opportunity to rebuild his life, get a job, make a living etc? Absolutely. Should he be put in a position where he's representing his nation on a world level, with all the adulation and glory that comes with that? To me that seems extremely distasteful.

 

I also believe in rehabilitation and second chances. I never factored being an Olympian into that mind set though. I didn’t think I had to.

Yes, live a life, and hopefully a good one, do good things, make up for the wrong that you did, make other people's lives better. Get a job, raise a family, look after your mum as she gets older, enjoy a beer at the pub, watch your local team. But you don't get to be an Olympian, surely. That's like the one thing that what you did still excludes you from. Maybe you don't get to be president either.

 

futsal would work - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futsal

 

A first gold Medal in the team Equestrian for GB

 

Equestrian eventing is way different to how I remember it

 

Watching the Mountain Bike race, brought back memories of bombing rarnd Willowbank an Notton wood as a kid, great times, remember going to Cawthorne Park on bikes an mates had 2 stolen while we were in Cannon Hall had to gi one a backie reight back to Barnsley.

 

Tom Pidcock is incredible. If he somehow wins this it’s got to go down as one of our greatest gold medals ever.

He was leading & had a flat tire. He ended up about 40 seconds back in 8th.

He’s now back up to 2nd about 15 seconds off the lead.

 

Pidcock what a foookin WIN, Fantastic

 

Well done Tom Pidcock. That was a proper performance.

I’m still expecting VAR/a stewards enquiry to give gold to the Frenchman,

 

Pidcock, Gold. great overtake.

 

Unless someone wins multiple gold medals I can’t imagine any gold medal performance will top that in this Olympics. Amazing

 

Special ride from Tom Pidcock - pure amazing.

 

WOW!!!!
Pidcock - incredible performance.
Gold for Yorkshire!
GTFI

 

Brilliant performance by Pidcock -

and well done Tom Daley - represented his country in five Olympics and medalled in four of them.

The guy's a star - World Champion 15 years ago and still at the top of his game - Knighthood beckons!

 

Unbelievable gold for Pidcock. What a race from him.

 

Well played Team GB in the Rugby 7s too. It’s been a cracking day of sport.

 

French booing Pidcock getting his Gold. He even made comment about it in his interview.

Not very sporting from our French neighbours, set of pricks.