Will the Canadian women’s soccer team win gold? Will our athletes surpass their Beijing haul of 18 medals? Time will tell, but there is an app that you can download to follow the Olympic action as it happens.
The London 2012 results app, available for free for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, covers both Olympic and Paralympic games. With this app, you can track Canadian athletes as they perform and bring home medals from Olympic competition.
The results app is very simple in its appearance. From the home screen, users have six options that lead to more in-depth information.
Users can see a list of events happening each day, follow specific countries, sports and athletes, see medal standings and results, and use the My Games section to tailor coverage based on your preferences.
All of these options allow you to set alerts and save sports and teams as favourites by tapping on the little alarm clock or star icon beside each entry.
In addition, each section allows for a bit more in-depth coverage as you use the app. For example, when searching for various sports, you can see the venues hosting each event and learn more about them, view photos from the Beijing Olympics and various qualifying events in the lead-up to the games, read a brief explanation of the event and watch related videos of the sport — great when you want to find new sports to watch during the games.
Where I find the app a bit lacking is that I am unable to see the full complement of athletes for all countries a few days before the games start. It would be great to have this information available now to learn more about various Canadian athletes to organize and set alerts and favourites before the Games start.
In addition, it would be great to follow other athletes like Guor Mariol, who is a refugee from South Sudan running under the Olympic flag, or Oscar Pistorius the South African double amputee runner dubbed “Blade Runner’ who will be competing for the first time. The idea of the Olympics is about people like this, and countless others who worked hard to represent their countries, their stories should be told, or at least found on this app leading up to the games.
As the Summer Olympics approach there is also a lack of news on this app leading up to the start of the games. Most of the news featured, until a new update is released, is quite old. Once the games start I’m sure daily news updates will be available.
Once the 2012 London Olympics are underway, use this free app to follow our athletes as they compete in the games and bring home (hopefully) a record medal haul. Go Canada Go!
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Rob Kirsic writes the App of the Week column for Toronto Standard. Follow him @robertkirsic.
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