Discussion: Trimtex at the Olympics

Anyone else get a kick out of seeing Trimtex's influential gold medal presence at the Olympics?

I assume this is a reference to the Norwegian triathlon uniforms? (which the Australian TV commentators seemed less than impressed by).

I *just* went down a rabbit-hole while watching the triathlon, trying to figure out what was going on with those uniforms. And then saw they were from Trimtex! Blummenfelt spoke a little bit about the research that went into them in his post-race interview.

Blair, I'm guessing the Australian TV commentators were even less impressed by the Pomme (sp?) and Kiwi in the Silver and Bronze positions.

Uhh, wow.

It's basically a very sheer white suit (for optimum heat dissipation) over the equivalent of an oldskool Speedo swimsuit.

Oh geez, I'm glad to learn there was a reason for that! I called it "Superman doing a triathlon" but hey, I can't argue with gold.

And there are those who still think old school orienteering "pyjamas" looked weird??

Be grateful he's wearing something under that white suit.

I'm very curious to see the women's version...

Lol, turns out I wasn't the only one who thought of Superman although I prefer someone else's tag line, "Inspired by Captain Underpants".
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article...

Our friend Barrie Shepley was one of the CBC commentators. When he said, "It isn't pretty" about Blummenfelt's final sprint, we were thinking he meant his running form but we'll have to ask him what he really meant! :)

To be clear, I'm pretty sure the speedo part is sewn into the outer garment.

He definitely didn't have the smooth running form of the other medalists, by comparison, he was flailing. Be he sure was fast, through brute force.

Exactly. He wasn't moving as efficiently as they were but he was so strong and so motivated that it didn't matter.

... and he managed a really high quality scandi-flop at the finish.
@EricW. : 'pomme' is spelt "Englishman"

I think pomme is an apple.

oldskool Speedo swimsuit

Those are called budgie smugglers in Australian.

I'd heard the term before, but it appears to have more of a backstory than I realized. Pom is short for "pommy", that much is clear. It's likely to be related to "pomegranate", possibly because those arriving from England had red cheeks from sun exposure, or maybe through rhyming slang to Pummy Grant/Jimmy Grant/immigrant. Another theory cites the supposed acronym Prisoner Of Mother England. Most sources say the origin is unclear.

"Pomme" is definitely "apple" in French.

POME is supposedly an acronym for Prisoner of Mother England - ie a pejorative term for new convict arrivals.

these days the spelling is usually "pommy" I think, but most Australians would not say pommy - it is generally shortened to just "pom".

On further investigation it seems the Prisoner of Mother England theory is BS (although it is a widely believed theory - the only I had ever heard until today) .

The Australian National University linguistics dept says it comes from pomegranate

https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/centres/andc/meanings...

...and here I thought "Englishman" was spelled something like b-l-o-o...

We need a definitive answer from djalkiri.

And here I thought that English (the country) people were known as limeys, a term earned for their habit of putting lime juice in their beer when in very hot climates.
Pommeys/ Pommies, that's a new one for me.

On long sea voyages, British sailors ran out of fresh fruits and vegetables. This lack of vitamin C could cause scurvy. Carrying lime juice aboard ship kept them healthy.

"I'm very curious to see the women's version"

Not long to wait if any women are wearing it because the start is at 5:30 pm EST.

Carrying lime juice aboard ship kept them healthy
apple juice and pomegranate juice too?
Anyway, the word you're after is sassanach. Possibly beginning with b-l-o-o-...

@jj I can’t do better than the ANDC, though jimmygrant doesn’t fit the regular pattern of rhyming slang (the “rhyme” part is too long, it should be just the ant bit, not grant); and I’d want independent evidence for the pronunciation of pomegranate as “pommygrant”.

'owyergoin' mate - orright? Wouldyer like a pommygrant? They're a bugger to spit the seeds out though if yer got a thirst drier than a Pommy's bath towel :)

though jimmygrant doesn’t fit the regular pattern of rhyming slang

You can be pretty sure the Australian born people who came up with 'jimmygrant' were not too worried about the exact rules of rhyming slang.

I read a Norwegian interview with Kristian B after the event where he stated that (after having won and lost a few sprint finishes in world cup events over the last couple of years) he knew that both Alex Yee and Hayden Wilde had better running form and would outsprint him, so instead he had to try to pull away with one loop to go, and at that point neither of them dared/managed to follow him.
Looking at the finish video it seems obvious that the main difference, beside that running form, was that Kristian has that Petter Northug style ability to go absolutely all in, just collapsing over the finish line while the other two medalists seemed like they had more in the tank.

BTW, just after I posted my previous message my son came into my (home) office and told me that he ran with Kristian on one of his 10 k training runs while he lived in Bergen. The key point was that KB is an almost pure training talent, i.e. he can tolerate enormous loads without breaking down with injuries.
He used to be a swimmer who would train as as many hours as the swimming team was allowed to be in the pool, then when that wasn't enough for him he would run as well to put in more hours. With that background switching to tri wasn't that big a step, except basically nobody did tri in Norway at the time.

The reporting here said that his training volume is way more than anyone else's. That's how you get to the top!

@jjcote: Yeah, he has been at 1400 hours/year for quite a while now, this is what I meant by having the talent to handle those volumes without breakage/injuries.
This is 300+ hours more than the Norwegian xc team puts in...

Just adopt his training regimen. You'll either win, or (more likely) die.

Orienteer from Finland Topi Raitanen was 8-th in steeplechase
https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic-games/en/r...

Nice! I think this is him on WOO. Raced at WOC 2016 + 2017.

His sister was an exchange student hosted by DVOA's Mark and Mary Frank.
See http://www.dvoa.org/people/eboard2/index.php.
Thanks for posting, I hadn't come across the results yet.

Oh, I remember her - a visiting junior. That was some time ago. Looks like Topi is her "little" brother :) Saw the race on NBC's US national broadcast coverage late last night but didn't make the connection.

Reminds me of Anders Garderud and Kjell Erik Stahl, greaat crossover athletes from Sweden and from another century.
Garderud , a favorite in that year's steeplechase, pretty well single handedly caused several hundred Swedish orienteers to come to a Canadian multi-day orienteering event back in 1976.

Were they following?

I have long wondered whether Marcel Tschopp is the only person to run at WOC and at the Olympics in the same year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Tschopp

I've watched the Olympics whilst at a WMTBOC. Does that count?

Of course, such a combination wouldn't have been possible from 1980 to 2000 inclusive as WOC did not take place in Olympic years during that period. If I recall correctly, Carsten Jorgensen (who was a regular Danish WOC runner at the time) qualified for the 10000m for the 2000 Olympics but missed out because of injury.

You'd hope the athletics singlets weren't made by Trimtex.

He's got a puma on is shirt and a tiger in his... uhm...

I find the safety pins and numbers for the athletes quite bizarre, surely there is a more elegant system for identifying the athletes

At least their bibs are unlikely to get snagged on branches, trees, etc. Perhaps that's why orienteering will never be an Olympic sport.