2024 Summer Olympics

[The Chronicler]

It's that time once more for the next running of the Olympic Games, this time hosted in Paris, France.

I watched the opening ceremony yesterday, and it truly was unlike anything ever seen before. Rather than take place mostly within a specific stadium as we've seen in previous Olympics, this one occurred along the length of the Seine River through the middle of the city, with the athletes riding in a series of boats from the Pont d'Austerlitz bridge, past landmarks like Notre Dame and the Louvre, and finishing near the Eiffel Tower to gather at a temporary seating area in the Trocadéro park on the opposite side of the river from that iconic landmark. The Olympic torch was carried along the same route throughout the various acts of the ceremony, then carried back up the river towards the Louvre, where the cauldron was lit and revealed to resemble the first ever hot air balloon that first flew from those grounds back in 1783, actually floating up into the air.

That was definitely a very special opening ceremony, despite the rainfall (apparently the first time since 1952 there had been rain during an Olympic opening ceremony). Did anyone here happen to see it? What did you think of it? I thought it was pretty awesome for making use of such a unique setting that allowed us to experience many of the famous sights around the iconic city.

And now that the games are underway, what are you looking forward to watching?

[ImpracticalDino]

Mo-o-o-o wasn't gonna look forward to watch the Olympics, or any sports on television in general, however my dad told me about the finals of the archery competition today, which piqued my interest. It involved an intense competition in archery between China, a 4 silver medal country, and South Korea, a country that has had 9 Olympic gold medals in a row for archery. That quite amazed the fishy, so Mo-o-o had to stare at the TV and be memorized by the beauty of the woman and the precision that the archers needed to get into the middle bullseye circle, which was worth 10 points. Out of that is 9 points, and like into the red/orange zone (forgot which it was), 8 points, and so on.

If I recall correctly, they got into a tie at the end of their normal archery rounds, which prompted the people there to force them to go into a "shootout", a sort of death-match final where each of them shoot like 3 more arrows towards the bullseye, and the one with the most points there would win the entire archery matchup for their country. Personally, Mo-o-o was rooting for South Korea to get their 10th gold medal in a row! And they did! It was such a nail-biter! Since some of SK's arrows landed right on the line between a 9 and 10, they had to use a magnifying glass to determine whether or not they scored 9 or 10 points. Both countries were tired with 27 points in the final shootout, so that magnifying glass determined the winning fate of South Korea after all.
 
Congratulations to South Korea on an epic 10th gold medal archery victory!

Edit: They were tied in set points, 4-4 near the end. Not a death match shootout, but just a tie-breaker at the end. It made it all the more satisfying, that it came down to a single point or not on whether South Korea secured their 10th gold medal or not. Awesome job to China on their performance in this archery competition this Olympic year, they probably made the Koreans sweat a little bit at the end there.

[ImpracticalDino]

Oh dang, I'm kinda sad to hear that during the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, the French hosts in Paris introduced South Korea as the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", which is actually referring to North Korea instead. South Korea is actually named the "Republic of Korea" if that's what they wanted to refer to. I do understand the confusion a little bit, but they should've just not bothered with that kind of formality and introduced them straight-up as "South Korea" instead.

There's some other controversial things with the opening ceremony as well, apparently. I won't dive or look into those since I won't watch the Olympics any further than the South Korean archery victory yesterday, but they're free to search up if anyone's curious.