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What sports matches have you watched recently?
I'm making this post because I haven't been able to find decent (English) articles for some of the matches I've watched, so that should probably be the focus of this thread. If you can find good articles for a match you've watched, post them in the group instead.
Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix.
24 Hours of Spa race. Scary crash.
Was going to make a joke about the front falling off of Verstappen's car. Then I saw the Spa clip. Now I'm not so sure. Damn, that looks scary.
Hungarian GP was a blast though, sad to see so many drivers out, but I really like that Hamilton really had to work for his points. Shame that Verstappen didn't get the same opportunity. Great drive from a lot of other drivers, including MSC, Vettel, the Williamses and Alpines. I really want to see more wacky grid orders. I'd much prefer starting the race in reverse championship order (possibly modulated somewhat by qualifying position). Or heck, go completely random order. Be weird. The sprint race last time out was alright, but we can do better.
For me, the matches I've watched were (all in the Olympics):
Argentina VS Brazil (Men's Volleyball, as for all the others here except Brazil vs Kenya)
This was a 3-2 match by sets. The Argentinian won the first 2 sets, but they were pretty closely fought being 19-25 and 21-25 points respectively. The third set was much better for Brazil being a 25-16 victory for Brazil, an 8-point margin they gained early and kept for most of the set IIRC. The fourth set was again pretty closely fought at 25-21 for Brazil. The last set was 16-14 for Brazil, a quite close victory and quite the turnaround. It should be mentioned the Argentinian committed 12 more service faults than Brazil, at 32 faults (1.3 sets' worth!) to Brazil's 20, and this would have been a massively more difficult game if Argentina committed less faults, especially as the last of these errors was the second-to-last point in the game, and thus the one followed by victory for Brazil, although there was plenty error in both sides. From my Brazilian POV, the narrator of Globo said it well: Vencer é bom, mas vencer da Argentina é melhor. (Winning is good, but beating Argentina is better.)
Brazil vs the R-O-C (Russian Olympic Committee)
This was a relatively closely fought game with the 3 sets being 25-22, 25-20 and 25-20 but ultimately it ended up being a show of Russian strength at 3-0 sets, especially given the 10 extra points Brazil received due to Russian errors, at 25-15 errors.
Brazil vs France
This was as closely fought as Brazil vs Argentina and by far the hardest fought game I've watched. The first set was already fairly close at 25-22 for Brazil but the second set was 37-39 for France and at 51 minutes, nearly 20 of which were just Brazil and France being neck and neck with eachother and failing to finish the set from both the other team's strength and service & attack failures on both sides, which is IIRC the longest in the Tokyo 2020(1) Olympics so far. The next set was a strong recovery for Brazil at 25-17, but the following set was a win for France at 21-25 for the French. Save for the third set, these were all closely fought sets and a lot of the game was just wanting Brazil to get it over with soon and failing to do so. The fifth/tiebreaker set was very much this, with Brazil getting a 4-0 margin right off the bat and me wanting this to be a set to end with a quick victory for Brazil and after 4 consecutive scores by France taking the score from 12-9 to 12-13 giving them the final lead, I was going to be denied that again. After 12 more sets of the 2 teams failing to break the tie, the final set ended with the French accidentally sending the ball to the Brazilian side of the field, allowing them to score the final set and claim victory, and for me watching at 2 AM to go to sleep.
The final game I will talk about is Brazil vs Kenya (Women's volleyball), which was an easy win for Brazil. The score for the 3 sets were 25-10, 25-16 and 25-8 for Brazil. The narrator talked about how there was limited Kenyan entry to Volleyball so even their best aren't that great.
Men's Olympic Sevens Final. New Zealand vs Fiji
New Zealand is a small country (under 5 million population) that completely dominates traditional test match Rugby. The All Blacks win three out of every four international test matches. The All Blacks are the team that all other countries train to beat.
Rugby sevens condenses a 90 minute test match with 15 players down to two seven minute halves with seven players on each side. This is the game played in the Olympics.
Fiji is even smaller than New Zealand (under 1 million population) but they kick some serious ass in rugby sevens.
I don't want to spoil it in case anyone ends up watching it, but the game was unbelievable. You have to perhaps have watched a few of the lead up games to get a sense how good both teams really were.