Olympics 2021 err 2020

[Newportnobby]

Woke at 04.30 this morning so turned on the telly and watched Team GB's Sky Brown gain a bronze medal in the skateboarding at the tender age of 13. 13!!
Why wasn't she up a chimney somewhere?
And there were some younger than she was!
At least they didn't have mobile phones in their hands whilst competing and there seemed to be great camaraderie between them all.

Track cycling is the usual medalfest although many countries have advanced more than Team GB it seems to me. The new style bike used in the men's pursuit has to be available to the public as from Jan 1st 2021 so if you have a spare £27000 and are prepared to wait you too can have one.
(It will probably still be quicker to arrive than a Farish/Dapol release, mind)

[chrism]

Yes, Russia were banned from international competition for 4 years (later reduced to 2) for their systemic, state-endorsed doping programs. Russian athletes not implicated are allowed to compete as 'neutrals' under the ROC banner. There's no Russian flag, no team Russia, no national anthem. However their uniforms scream which country they're from, and they have a bigger delegation than at Rio. It makes an absolute mockery of any sort of ban.

Indeed - they shouldn't be allowed to enter at all while their country is banned.

Still, at least little old UK is ahead of them in the table at present 

[chrism]

Woke at 04.30 this morning so turned on the telly and watched Team GB's Sky Brown gain a bronze medal in the skateboarding at the tender age of 13. 13!!

She did well, although she was better in her heat round - although even her best score then wouldn't have taken her above bronze. She could probably have done better in the final if she hadn't fallen in her first two runs so couldn't take any risks in the third - well, no more than she was doing anyway with some of those jumps.
When I was her age I had enough trouble staying on one of those things on the flat, let alone trying any acrobatics.

[Newportnobby]

When I was her age skateboards didn't even exist. We either had roller skates or a soapbox (embarrassingly I can't remember the English word for the latter )

[TrevL]

When I was her age skateboards didn't even exist. We either had roller skates or a soapbox (embarrassingly I can't remember the English word for the latter )

In Hull, we called them bogeys, usually made from an old ironing board, and the wheels off a silver cross pram.

[chrism]

When I was her age skateboards didn't even exist. We either had roller skates or a soapbox (embarrassingly I can't remember the English word for the latter )

In Hull, we called them bogeys,

In Southampton we called them go-carts.

usually made from an old ironing board, and the wheels off a silver cross pram.

There's posh, we had to make do with three planks to sit on the pram wheels 

[joe cassidy]

Woke at 04.30 this morning

the Newport Nobby blues?

[Newportnobby]

Woke at 04.30 this morning

the Newport Nobby blues?

Nightmares about model railway wiring
Waking up is a Brucie Bonus, anyway.

[Webbo]

When I was her age skateboards didn't even exist. We either had roller skates or a soapbox (embarrassingly I can't remember the English word for the latter )

When I was a kid, we called them billy carts. Yes, three planks of wood, a wooden box, pram wheels, a piece of rope for steering, and a wooden stick for a brake. Not sure if this is an Australian or a Canadian term as I was a boy in both countries.

Webbo

[LASteve]

When I was a kid, we called them billy carts. Yes, three planks of wood, a wooden box, pram wheels, a piece of rope for steering, and a wooden stick for a brake. Not sure if this is an Australian or a Canadian term as I was a boy in both countries.

Webbo

One of the funniest things I ever read was in the first volume of Clive James' autobiography where he describes a bunch of kids in Sydney lashing their carts together into a train and descending a hill in his neighborhood. I'll try and find it.

[LASteve]

"Billycart Hill", excerpt from Clive James' Biography "Unreliable Memoirs"

"For example, I could not build billycarts very well. Other children, most of them admittedly older than I, but some of them infuriatingly not, constructed billycarts of advanced design, with skeletal hard-wood frames and steel-jacketed ball-race wheels that screamed on the concrete footpaths like a diving Stuka. The best I could manage was a sawn-off fruit box mounted on a fence-paling spine frame, with drearily silent rubber wheels taken off an old pram. In such a creation I could go at a reasonable clip down our street and twice as fast down Sunbeam Avenue, which was much steeper at the top. But even going down Sunbeam my billycart was no great thrill compared with the ball-race models, which having a ground-clearance of about half an inch and being almost frictionless were able to attain tremendous velocities at low profile, so that to the onlooker their riders seemed to be travelling downhill sitting magically just above the ground, while to the riders themselves the sense of speed was breathtaking.

  After school and at weekends boys came from all over the district to race on the Sunbeam Avenue footpaths. There would be twenty or thirty carts, two-thirds of them with ball-races. The noise was indescribable. It sounded like the Battle of Britain going on in somebody's bathroom. There would be about half an hour's racing before the police came. Residents often took the law into their own hands, hosing the grim-faced riders as they went shrieking by. Sunbeam Avenue ran parallel to Margaret Street but it started higher and lasted longer. Carts racing down the footpath on the far side had a straight run of about a quarter of a mile all the way to the park. Emitting Shockwaves of sound, the ball-race carts would attain such speeds that it was impossible for the rider to get off. All he could do was to crash reasonably gently when he got to the end. Carts racing down the footpath on the near side could go only half as far, although very nearly as fast, before being faced with a right-angle turn into Irene Street. Here a pram-wheeled cart like mine could demonstrate its sole advantage. The traction of the rubber tyres made it possible to negotiate the corner in some style. I developed a histrionic lean-over of the body and slide of the back wheels which got me around the corner unscathed, leaving black smoking trails of burnt rubber. Mastery of this trick saved me from being relegated to the ranks of the little kids, than which there was no worse fate. I had come to depend on being thought of as a big kid. Luckily only the outstanding ball-race drivers could match my fancy turn into Irene Street. Others slid straight on with a yelp of metal and a shower of sparks, braining themselves on the asphalt road. One driver scalped himself under a bread van.

  The Irene Street corner was made doubly perilous by Mrs Branthwaite's poppies. Mrs Branthwaite inhabited the house on the corner. She was a known witch whom we often persecuted after dark by throwing gravel on her roof. It was widely believed she poisoned cats. Certainly she was a great ringer-up of the police. In retrospect I can see that she could hardly be blamed for this, but her behaviour seemed at the time like irrational hatred of children. She was a renowned gardener. Her front yard was like the cover of a seed catalogue. Extending her empire, she had flower beds even on her two front strips, one on the Sunbeam Avenue side and the other on the Irene Street side – i.e., on both outside edges of the famous corner. The flower beds held the area's best collection of poppies. She had been known to phone the police if even one of these was illicitly picked.

  At the time I am talking about, Mrs Branthwaite's poppies were all in bloom. It was essential to make the turn without hurting a single hair of a poppy's head, otherwise the old lady would probably drop the telephone and come out shooting. Usually, when the poppies were in bloom, nobody dared make the turn. I did – not out of courage, but because in my ponderous cart there was no real danger of going wrong. The daredevil leanings-over and the dramatic skids were just icing on the cake.

  I should have left it at that, but got ambitious. One Saturday afternoon when there was a particularly large turnout, I got sick of watching the ball-race carts howling to glory down the far side. I organized the slower carts like my own into a train. Every cart except mine was deprived of its front axle and loosely bolted to the cart in front. The whole assembly was about a dozen carts long, with a big box cart at the back. This back cart I dubbed the chuck wagon, using terminology I had picked up from the Hopalong Cassidy serial at the pictures. I was the only one alone on his cart. Behind me there were two or even three to every cart until you got to the chuck wagon, which was crammed full of little kids, some of them so small that they were holding toy koalas and sucking dummies.

  From its very first run down the far side, my super-cart was a triumph. Even the adults who had been hosing us called their families out to marvel as we went steaming by. On the super-cart's next run there was still more to admire, since even the top-flight ball-race riders had demanded to have their vehicles built into it, thereby heightening its tone, swelling its passenger list and multiplying its already impressive output of decibels. Once again I should have left well alone. The thing was already famous. It had everything but a dining car. Why did I ever suggest that we should transfer it to the near side and try the Irene Street turn?

  With so much inertia the super-cart started slowly, but it accelerated like a piano falling out of a window. Long before we reached the turn I realized that there had been a serious miscalculation. The miscalculation was all mine, of course. Sir Isaac Newton would have got it right. It was too late to do anything except pray. Leaning into the turn, I skidded my own cart safely around in the usual way. The next few segments followed me, but with each segment describing an arc of slightly larger radius than the one in front. First gradually, then with stunning finality, the monster lashed its enormous tail.

  The air was full of flying ball-bearings, bits of wood, big kids, little kids, koalas and dummies. Most disastrously of all, it was also full of poppy petals. Not a bloom escaped the scythe. Those of us who could still run scattered to the winds, dragging our wounded with us. The police spent hours visiting all the parents in the district, warning them that the billycart era was definitely over. It was a police car that took Mrs Branthwaite away. There was no point waiting for the ambulance. She could walk all right. It was just that she couldn't talk. She stared straight ahead, her mouth slightly open."

Retrieved from www.freereadnovel.com, 2021

[Bealman]

Yeah, I watched the skateboarding live yesterday (Tokyo and Sydney being only an hour apart time wise).

I said to Mrs Bealman, "She's only a kid!" Mrs Bealman replied very much in terms of the schoolteacher she is, "Yeah, wonder if she's got any medals at school"

I simply said that she doesn't need em... she'll be pro soon and making a fortune from the likes of Red Bull.

Regarding bogeys, (yeah, we called them that in the NE too), I had the fastest in our neighbourhood. It didn't have sides, I didn't sit on it, I kneeled. That way, I didn't have to get off it to go up hills - I scooted up them. It was my transportation. No brake, either - that was me foot dragging along the ground.

I painted "Tempus Fugit" on it. 

I put drawing pins in the rubber wheels, and when other kids asked how my bogey was fast, I'd point to the drawing pins and say, "Magnetic motors"

I was bogey king of the Burnside Estate 

Kneeling on it played hell with my shins, though. I still carry those marks today.

[chrism]

Yeah, I watched the skateboarding live yesterday (Tokyo and Sydney being only an hour apart time wise).

I said to Mrs Bealman, "She's only a kid!" Mrs Bealman replied very much in terms of the schoolteacher she is, "Yeah, wonder if she's got any medals at school"

I simply said that she doesn't need em... she'll be pro soon and making a fortune from the likes of Red Bull.

If you mean Sky Brown, she turned professional when she was 10 !!!

She's considering trying for a place in the surfing category at the next Olympics as well as skateboarding.

Her father, Stu, revealed he dissuaded his daughter from trying to compete in surfing as well as skateboarding in Tokyo, but admits he may be powerless to stop her again.

"It'll be up to her by then. She'll be 16, and it's hard enough now," he joked.

There could be one issue making it challenging for Sky to realise her ambition - the surfing is due to be held in Tahiti, nearly 10,000 miles from the French capital where the skateboarding will take place.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/58084934

[Bealman]

Yes, the 10000 mile diff could put a spanner in the works

[chrism]

Yes, the 10000 mile diff could put a spanner in the works

Yeah, that is a bit of a long paddle to find the right wave