Olympic Games Laser Sailing

Just to clarify, we're in the US on an antenna, no cable, FIOS, etc. We downloaded the Expat Shield application which assigned us a UK IP address and now we can get whatever they can get in the UK, which I believe includes full replays of all sailing ... in addition to the live sailing coverage.
 
Here in Australia we are truly blessed with full coverage and even replays of the Laser, Finn, 49er and some of the Star on Fox. Unfortunately, no match racing coverage where our team of Olivia Price, Nina Curtis and Lucinda Whitty is unbeaten so far.

I am intrigued by both full and radial sails being used. They look so much better than any new sail I've ever had!

Alt_Laser%20fleet%20in%20Weymouth1.jpg
 
NBColympics has their replay video really goofed up for Men's Laser.
When you click on a link for Men's Laser it only shows Women's Radial.
I loved watching the Women's but now I want to watch Men's races 3 & 4 !!
 
Just had a chance to watch Race 3 of the Radials.

Definitely some very interesting windward mark roundings. ISR didn't pick a very good time to tack during the first upwind, and ITA sure can scream loudly. At least ISR didn't get caught up in the mess created by GRE during the second upwind. I guess I wasn't expecting bumper boats at this level of sailing.

I was noticing they don't play the mainsheet very much upwind. They seem to react to the puffs with their body, and sheet out only if they have to. I do the complete opposite, working the sheet all the time.

They were also working each and every wave downwind. I don't think the boats were going in a straight line for more than a few seconds. You could probably say that each wave missed is a place lost.

Annalise is definitely running away with this regatta.
 
One thing I have noticed is that the full rig sails all have nasty creases fro the clew, running under the bottom batten then across the sail to the mast....(was very evident in the upwind videos i saw yesterday).

Anyone else seen this?
 
One thing I have noticed is that the full rig sails all have nasty creases fro the clew, running under the bottom batten then across the sail to the mast....(was very evident in the upwind videos i saw yesterday).

Anyone else seen this?

combo of softer bottom sections (more mast bend down low) and cloth on the firmer side of the specs (less stretch on the bias)..
 
This seems to be the linky for todays' race on BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/live-video/p00w2xt4 I'm watching it now, hours after it was actually broadcast live..
With Expat Shield running, one can also watch Olympic sailing and other sports on Eurovisionsports. Right now (Aug 2), the 470 men is on (live). The sound is very weak, but that's fine with me.

Tomorrow there should be Laser and 49er races, live (starting at 11 GMT).

http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/london2012/index.html
 
Today (Friday, Aug 3) BBC Sport is showing Laser races 7 and 8 for the guys. Other sailing as well, the total program is about 6.5 hours...

Fantastic conditions BTW and an interesting 'fight' between Pavlos K and Tom S.
 
agreed, but would have been nice to see at least a bit of Finn/Star/Radial racing ( I was watching the NBC feed) Oh well.. better then nothing, and with the real time updating of mark rounding on the Olympic site, we're not totally in the dark...

Hope they only show the medal races from Sunday on... Finn medal race this time should be as good as the 2000 Laser final between BA and RS
 
agreed, but would have been nice to see at least a bit of Finn/Star/Radial racing ( I was watching the NBC feed) Oh well.. better then nothing, and with the real time updating of mark rounding on the Olympic site, we're not totally in the dark...

Hope they only show the medal races from Sunday on... Finn medal race this time should be as good as the 2000 Laser final between BA and RS

I hate to keep on about the BBC coverage but I've just had a great afternoon watching the dedicated Sailing stream in HD. Intelligent live switching between Finn, Laser and 49's races with filling highlights from the Star and Radials. Commentry by olympic gold medalists. The stream is reviewable (ie I can rewind at any point) and the whole thing is still on the website if I fancy watching it again.
To cap it all I have tickets for the Finn and Star Medal races on Sunday at Weymouth.....Never been looking forward to watching a race so much. :)
 
So why did they drop windsurfing from the Olympics in 2016 again? They say they needed an exciting spectator sports?

qYAD4.St.138.jpeg


????

Probably so they could add something that isn't very exciting that they can speculate on for hours on end
 
No ,that's the name panel.

Once this is over, we might be able to buy spares.

The wind here is stronger than we would expect for Summer days, but then it hasn't been much of a Summer.
 
I have to say I'm seriously dissapointed in NBC's "coverage" of the games that they are covering on TV, one of the announcers commented that Phelps was "doggin it" and then he proceeded to win a gold medal! They covered China vs China ping pong finals and not that the players are not good at ping pong but, it is kinda boring to watch the same team play each other. It did at least help me fall asleep, so thanks for that NBC.

If you want to get around the "type in your subscriber password/login info" you just need to type in an email, I have no idea what my direct tv login is and I'm not going to call direct tv in order to watch youtube!

The recorded video's say "Laser, Finn ect" but they don't show any laser racing, I'd seriously like to watch all of the sailing, the womens match racing that I watched online was great, they are crazy not to air it on TV, not even a single highlight of sailing,

My cousins have ATT and they have an "on demand" olympic channel, it lists all the olympic games but, just says not available for many of them including sailing. How can they say "on demand", take the time to program sailing in the list, then not show any of it?
 
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When you do finally get signed on, the race coverage has been far better than anything I might have expected. The camera angles, deck cameras, superimposed start finish and lay lines, distance to marks, and aerial shots are all fabulous. The coverage of today's Laser medal race was terrific (though some of the racing strategy employed might have been controversial or at least discouraging to some of us viewers) but the hours spent on initial set-up were well worth it. The best Olympic sailing coverage ever in the US.

The trick was getting the right help with set-up. In my case it involved a trip to the nearest Apple store where the self-described geniuses set it all up on the IPad. Got to watch live track also.

My main complaint is that they don't label the re-run videos, so finding an earlier event is really tough.
 
sorry 'bout that minifish2, I didn't see your post before I posted. I think you were a split second before mine.
Didn't mean to sound like I was "dissing" you.
 
Well, fortunately for some of you, you were able to see some video of the races. Here in the Great White North of Canada, I was only able to see the real-time postings around the markers on the official Web site. Our TV rights went to one of our private stations and we require Microsoft Silverlight. All that to say, hopefully, somewhere, there's someone who will post the full races!
 
Re the prior post:
Using Expat Shield and connecting to the BBC Olympic programming should work for you (in Canada) as well, I imagine. See 49208's earlier post for instructions, as well as mine.
It really is worth it!

Today, Tom Slingsby gave a clinic on covering a competitor (Pavlos Kontides) in the Laser Medal Race and the Ladies race was exciting as well, with four potential gold medal winners fighting it out.
 
Well shoot, I AM eating crow right now. Just saw recorded video of women's radial medal race
on NBC Olympics website and it was FABULOUS ! Hope they'll have the Men's Laser video out
soon.
 
I haven't watched the NBC version of the Lasers medal race, but did watch the BBC version for Stars/Finns and both Laser medal races. Except for the over use of those two words,"BEN AINSLIE" the commentary was great on BBC, even with the obvious British POV. The footage was excellent, highly recommend anyone slightly interested in racing watch any/all of them
 
Today, Tom Slingsby gave a clinic on covering a competitor (Pavlos Kontides) in the Laser Medal Race and the Ladies race was exciting as well, with four potential gold medal winners fighting it out.

I know this is the worst possible venue to raise this issue -- there's precedence, of course -- and among all sailing classes this sort of strategy is most likely to be applauded in this one. From the perspective of a minority of probably one, though, match racing in a fleet competition - taking your closest competitor (and yourself) completely out of the final race of a regatta if you have enough margin to trash it for both of you, is... is not good. It still doesn't set right, no matter who does it and how much we might otherwise admire the competitors who pull it off.

Of course, the sailing gods disagree with me on this. I figured they'd eventually punish this kind of thing, but we've seen that they don't. On the contrary. So I'm probably wrong on this, and wrong to hold on to these kinds of quaint notions. But I still don't like it. Then again, I'll never be an Olympic sailor anyway.

The good news is Pavlos Kontides, at 22, hopefully will be back for another shot in four years. Maybe next time he'll get his full week of heavy air.
 
Yeah, Slingsby definitely got the better Kontides. He seemed to give up on the second upwind leg. The cameras were focused on those two when I think there was a much better match race going on between SWE and CRO. Did someone forget to tell GUA stay out of other people's match races?

I was rooting for Annalise, but her downwind speed just didn't seem to match her upwind speed. I'll say this for Xu Lijia. She's a very fast - and very shrewd - sailor. She pulled that luff off at just the right time.

I'm certainly not a fan of the medal race concept. However, I think ten boats made for better racing and better TV coverage. Maybe they should run a series of heats, then narrow down the number of competitors for more than just one race?
 
Sorry to keep bumping this, but I'm kind of excited about watching some of the racing.

It doesn't appear that NBC is going to let just anyone watch the streaming video. You need to be a subscriber to a cable or satellite service which provides CNBC and MSNBC. I actually had to go through Time-Warner (my provider) to set up an account and password.

If you don't have cable or satellite, you may be SOL. I suppose there may be feed from the BBC or another country you could try to access, but I bet they block it.

I have the impression that the coverage/broadcast of the events is a bit of a mess - driven by commercial interests rather than allowing people to view the events that they want to watch. For example, the BBC stream radio over the internet (e.g. to allow expats to listen to the news programs). However, when the Olympics started the BBC had to withdraw their streamed news coverage of all news (not just Olympics) as they did not have adequate agreements with the IOC. There was a bit of UK reporting of this and I believe the IOC quickly relented - so at least expats to listen to regular news (i.e. all news not just Olympics news).

A classic example is the hand driers (and at some venue the soap dispensers) in the public toilets. It seems that the manufacturers of these devices were not Olympics commercial sponsors. Thus, to protect the interests of the genuine commercial sponsors, the brand names on these devices have been taped-over - to ensure that no non-sponsors gain commercial benefits from the event !!

It was encouraging to see the crowds on the beaches at Weymouth watching the sailing events. The hope is that this will inspire the UK population to take up sports and become more active. There seems a lot of effort being put into increasing public participation is sport (though it looks like tis is not to be backed-up with money). Many are worried about what (in the UK) is called "The Wimbledon Effect" - where every year after Wimbledon Tennis Championship half the population gets out their Tennis racquets and two weeks later put them away; basically a short-lived interest that dies once the TV coverage drops below 90% air-time.

But as somebody living in the UK I now consider that the Olympics is not what it should be. It seems to have evolved way beyond a sporting competition to being a exhibition of national pride that has ever less and less to do with the sports. For example, what has the "Opening Ceremony" got to do with sports. In what way does the song and dance routine got to do with any of the sporting competitions ? In the UK we had months of the Olympic flame being carried round the country (with 8000 torch carriers, each getting their torch which cost £200 each!). The "flame from Greece" was actually started to add a bit of spectacle to the 1936 Nazi Olympics in Berlin - so what has this to do with a sporting competition ? In the Laser class it seems likely that a few races held every 4 years are restricting the availability/development of a new sail - something many believe is a major impact on the class (e.g. through driving people to 3rd party sails or giving the boat a "reputation" ...).

I have found is surprising when some competitor appears on TV completely dejected because they missed a medal only coming 4th. I consider that being 4th in the world pretty good and that this medal/non-medal threshold seems totally daft and has little to do with achievement. And when countries have medal targets and tallies, rankings by country/per head of population/by country GDP/etc..

So I do question whether the Olympics actually helps or hinders sporting overall.

Ian
 
I love reading this forum !!! You get every possible angle at your finger tips. Great learning/very educational !
 
After the fantastic coverage of the America's Cup, I was really hoping for that quality of coverage for the Olympics. I don't have Foxtel, the local pub has it but is shut at 11om when the sailing starts. The only race screened free-to-air in Aus so far has been the Laser medal race. Why aren't replays provided online, & can't the tracking can't be streamed live? Seems like corporate $ have completely ruined the event by blocking proper coverage. Frustrating to trying to follow races by reading lines of text on the internet. Let's hope there's a DVD of it all to watch later.

Best sites to follow the Olympic sailing action:
- commentary stream at: http://live.2012.sailing.org/Event/I...c_Sailing_Blog
- live order and timing of boats rounding buoys and finishing, click "LIVE" in middle of screen: http://www.london2012.com/sailing/
- a live picture every few minutes at http://new.livestream.com/yachtingwo...c-sailing-2012

HUGE thanks to Finn Murphy, posting under @Annalise_Murphy on Twitter; brilliant commentary during the Laser Radials heats.
 
After the fantastic coverage of the America's Cup, I was really hoping for that quality of coverage for the Olympics. I don't have Foxtel, the local pub has it but is shut at 11om when the sailing starts. The only race screened free-to-air in Aus so far has been the Laser medal race. Why aren't replays provided online, & can't the tracking can't be streamed live? Seems like corporate $ have completely ruined the event by blocking proper coverage. Frustrating to trying to follow races by reading lines of text on the internet. Let's hope there's a DVD of it all to watch later.

Best sites to follow the Olympic sailing action:
- commentary stream at: http://live.2012.sailing.org/Event/I...c_Sailing_Blog
- live order and timing of boats rounding buoys and finishing, click "LIVE" in middle of screen: http://www.london2012.com/sailing/
- a live picture every few minutes at http://new.livestream.com/yachtingwo...c-sailing-2012

HUGE thanks to Finn Murphy, posting under @Annalise_Murphy on Twitter; brilliant commentary during the Laser Radials heats.


I just looked at some of the still photos of the Laser competition and I have a few questions. What are the white things mounted on the deck in front of the mast on most or all of the boats? And what are all those things that are attached to the front of the mast below the sail? They look like hand held radios which I thought were illegal in the Laser class.
 
The white boxes on the deck were the cameras. The items mounted on the mast were the GPS trackers also used in the coverage.
 

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