Olympic Games Event - Tabard & Pet !

[Riddlerr]

Every two years the Spirits of Competition grow especially fervent... and now is that time! Both Alliance and Horde wear this tabard into the Battlegrounds to honor the spirits, seekign to defeat all enemies and earn their favor.


To get the new tabard, you only have to play one battleground. Winning or losing doesn't matter, if you stay for the duration of the battle you will be mailed a Competitor's Tabard.
To get the new pet, you must defeat your rivals in any of the Battlegrounds. With every victory, there is a chance that a Gold Medallion will be mailed to you.

As far as it looks, the tabards are permanent and it might be your only chance to get one ... before the next Olympic Games in 2 years. This event goes live August 8th at midnight server time and lasts until the 25th.

[fiere redfern]

Oh man... do want! And lookie, incentive for me to grind out the honor I need for my pvp gear! >.>

[JohnnieRat]

So the alliance get to stage protests as well while Horde find cloth wearing alliance and beat them?

I mean seriously, this Olympics is going to be an abomination of sport. Who decided to give the games to one of the top 5 least deserving nations. Olympics 2010 will be under Sharia law in Saudi Arabia (Winter of course), making the events with women rather difficult to host and 2012 will be in in North Korea???

[un4]

Olympics 2010 will be under Sharia law in Saudi Arabia (Winter of course), making the events with women rather difficult to host and 2012 will be in in North Korea???

Win.

[Grendeel]

I mean seriously, this Olympics is going to be an abomination of sport. Who decided to give the games to one of the top 5 least deserving nations. Olympics 2010 will be under Sharia law in Saudi Arabia (Winter of course), making the events with women rather difficult to host and 2012 will be in in North Korea???

Careful here, one shouldnt be casting stones.  While i strongly disagree with Chinas politcal situaton,  the Olympics should remain free of politics.  If it wasnt, then many would call for countries that torture human beings, or countries that sponsor state sanctioned murders, or countries that discriminate based on relgion,  to be banned from holding the Olympics.

The olympics should remain politically free, otherwise it wont be the olympics.

[JohnnieRat]

I never said politics should be included in choosing the Olympic host nation. I am only inquiring as to how in the Hell they were chosen. However, saying the Olympics shouldn't be political is looking beyond the way it really is. It is one of the most political events that occurs world-wide. Why is nearly every nation's leader of every (legitimate) nation in attendance tonight for the opening ceremonies? Although it's probably one of the most dangerous places to be in the world right now, even with all that security.
It's essentially enemy nations waging warfare on each other without the use of guns. You think China isn't going to attempt every underhanded tactic to try to gain an advantage while we monkey stomp them into the ground in nearly event?

[Grendeel]

The ideal of the Olympics is to have the best from around the world compete to prove who is the worlds best.  The ideal is nothing more.   Will and are people going to use the Olympics for political gain?  Of course they are.  It has and will always continue to happen.  What i was saying was, once u start basing things like who hosts the Olympics, on moral standing in the world, then the Olympics have lost there ideal and arent the Olympics anymore.  Instead it becomes a "boys club" of who aligns with your politcial viewpoints.

[Lynette]

A few months back, Time magazine did a piece on China and the Olympics.  To summarize...

A decade ago, China decided to improve its image to the world by winning the most gold medals at the Summer Olympics.  So for years, they have been exploring its villages in search of children who met certain physical parameters.  If a child with the right dimensions were found, they were pulled from their homes and placed in schools where they spend most of their day learning how to compete in a certain sport.  

An example of one such school was archery.  For an entire year, students practice how to pull the bow string back.  That's it.  There are a few academics added into their day, but their life's focus is how to compete in archery.  Other sports have similar schools.  It all sounded so sad for these kids.

My guess is that, eventually, China will become the gold medal leader in Summer Olympic games - probably for decades.  But to yank a child from their home to do it?  I don't really see how they are improving their world image, if you ask me.

As for world politics, I believe they were introduced to the games back in 1936 when Hitler attended the Berlin games - games that were dominated by Jesse Owens, much to the chagrin of Herr Hitler himself.  They've been present ever since, unfortunately .

[JohnnieRat]

My prediction is that China will become embarrassed as a nation beyond recover due a combination of them getting their faces handed to them by (not only since other nations have have stellar athletes) us and also just since they are rather sketchy in policy and may very well have a few "incidents" to explain for during the games.

[Tyban]

This is part of an article written by Janet Evans for Yahoo Sports.  Janet Evans for those who don't know is a gold medal winning swimmer for the US, who now is retired but still hold the world record for 800 meter. 

"Live in New York, It’s the Beijing Olympics!

As you watch the swimming finals live, you can thank NBC for some last-minute maneuvering to broadcast the races in real time. But the swimmers certainly won’t be thanking NBC. Because of the network’s desire for live broadcasting and the IOC’s desire to keep it happy, all preliminaries will be held in the evening and finals in the morning â€" the opposite of the schedule that swimmers train for and compete with their entire careers.

As an athlete, I am trained to be at my best in the evening. The thought of racing for a gold medal at 10 a.m. â€" as the swimmers will do in Beijing â€" is beyond comprehension. My training was geared around morning preliminaries and evening finals; my morning workouts focused on long, stretched-out swims, and my evening workouts focused on speed. At the Olympics, my races mirrored my training: preliminary swims were long and smooth, while evening finals were swum with 100 percent effort.

There are others besides the swimmers who are unhappy with the swimming schedule in Beijing. Broadcasters from different parts of the world â€" namely Asian and Australian networks â€" viewed the Beijing Games as their chance to broadcast live to their respective audiences. But in the end, money won out. NBC pays more to the International Olympic Committee for broadcast rights than the other broadcasters put together, and with NBC’s ratings slipping due to up-to-the-minute results on the Internet, broadcasting live to the American audience will be a key way for NBC to buoy ratings. The net result: happy NBC executives and swimmers who have changed their life-long routines in order to become champions."

Forget Olympic ideals...it's all about ratings and money.  Who paid the most which in this case is NBC and its parent company GE, who happens to be a major sponsor of these Olympics.  Billions of Dollars spent on broadcasting rights in the US will now change how the rest of the world watches the 2008 Olympic Games. 

[Grendeel]

Lol   Now that is some major whining imo by the swimmers.  Maybe from a physcological point of view it might have an effect but physically speaking i find that hard to believe.  Chinas time is what 12 hours ahead/behind eastern standard time?  In reality night over there is actually daytime here.  So from a persons body perspective the move is keeping them on there practice regiment.

Besides that the ideal is to gather all the best altheletes in the world to compete to see who is best.  Not matter what decisions of that nature are made, some athelete is going to complain.   The key point about the ideal is that all athletes get to compete still.  It hasnt been compromised.

[un4]

Lol   Now that is some major whining imo by the swimmers.  Maybe from a physcological point of view it might have an effect but physically speaking i find that hard to believe.  Chinas time is what 12 hours ahead/behind eastern standard time?  In reality night over there is actually daytime here.  So from a persons body perspective the move is keeping them on there practice regiment.

Until you're on China time.

Professional singers have trained their bodies and voices to respond properly.  They do not perform before noon because the body is not yet ready for it; I imagine swimmers who have been practicing their sport their entire lives could be dependant on timing.

[Grendeel]

Your body doesnt change with time zone changes.  If your are conditioned to be at peak at 10 am est. Then your body would be trained to be at peak at 10 am est time no matter where u are in the world.   The body isnt trained to be at peak at 10 am of the particular time zone u are in.  The mind may be but not the body.  It doesnt know what a time zone is.

[fiere redfern]

The point though is that once you've become acclimated to your current time zone, what used to be 10am to your body becomes 10pm (or whatever local time is) because of how your routine changes to fit the new location. This can be offset by keeping your original schedule, but even that isn't failsafe, especially with the length of time the athletes will be in China.  There have been studies that have shown that people who run on reverse schedules actually perform worse than people whose bodies are on the regular day/night regime, so the athletes wouldn't be doing themselves any favors by trying to stick to their home times. Also, speaking from personal experience, much as I love coming home from work at 5am with nobody on the roads, it does a noticable number on my body that I don't miss when I go back to my regular routine.

[Grendeel]

Agreed Fie.  I have first hand experience going out west for our Canadian volleyball championships and our team as whole, had the worst 2 days ever playing.  After 2 days we got adjusted and did just fine.   This however is a time zone thing (and jet lag), not a rescheduling of the finals from the pm to the am.  The body has to adjust to the new enivronment.  Which makes my original point about them changing the finals from the am to pm in China true imo........They are major whiners .

The change of the finals from the pm to the am would be a valid complaint if the Olympics had been in New York.