2008 Olympic Games

[firepokemon]

Kristy Coventry will get her 4th medal in the 200m Backstroke, I'm quite comfortable that she will win that race and likely get the world record as well. And Phelps looks good in the 100m Butterfly but I don't think its a certainty that he is going to win that one. Yeah he most likely will, but I think it will be very close.

The Australian female swimmers have been interesting. Three women with three world records, one in the 100m Freestyle, one in 200m Butterfly and the other in 200m Breastroke all beaten, with two of those being beaten with world records attached. They looked strong at the start but some of them have been struggling. And yet on the other hand, the female swimmers were impressive in the 4X 200m Freestyle relay and of course Stephanie Rice very impressive in her two medley events.

I see Canada is still without a medal like New Zealand is.

Our medal chances should look better on Saturday with five rowers/rowing teams I think we have a chance to medal in all. But to be honest we should have had two more teams in the finals and a few of those teams really should have gotten golds. I suspect we'll get one Gold, but our rowers aren't looking as strong as they have in world cups and world championships.

[Jeff]

I was just watching ESPN, and it looks like Phelps' biggest competition won't come from another country, but from another American swimmer. This guy (forgot the name already), is intent on snatching away Phelps' 7th gold. He said that "sports is all about derailing someone else's dream". I guess that's somewhat true, just ask the New York Giants

[MToolen]

Tennis has been quite the roller coaster; first Federer, then Blake and now Djokovic are all out. In the good news, though, I'm glad to be a Rafa fan.

[mr_pikachu]

I watched the U.S.-Canada match in women's football this morning. (Funny; I didn't expect American star-turned-announcer Brandi Chastain to call it "soccer," but hey!) Really fun match to watch, especially when Canada threatened multiple times in the final minutes of the extra session.

Have to give a lot of credit to our back four for stopping several scary drives late in the match. There were numerous runs short-circuited by timely blocks. Solo deserves kudos as well for a couple of big saves, one to preserve the tie in regulation and another to hold that lead in the end.

We did miss some golden opportunities at various points... lots of near-misses on excellent chances. The rain delay also didn't help, especially since Canada's keeper was kind of reeling from a bad fall while failing to block our first goal. It could have easily been a blowout. Hopefully we can improve on our capitalization in the semis against Japan.

[Roy Karrde]

HOLY SHIT! PHILLPS DOES IT!

1/100th of a SECOND!

[mr_pikachu]

HOLY SHIT! PHILLPS DOES IT!

1/100th of a SECOND!

Ditto. Just... wow.

Phelps has seven. If the U.S. team claims victory in the 4x100 medley relay tomorrow, Michael Phelps will be the most dominant Olympian of all time.

[Roy Karrde]

So is there even a camera out there that would be able to capture the 1/100th of a second difference between the two? or would they have been running too slow

[mr_pikachu]

So is there even a camera out there that would be able to capture the 1/100th of a second difference between the two? or would they have been running too slow

I-Movix readies 8,000 fps slow-motion camera for Beijing Olympics

[mr_pikachu]

Another "one one-hundredth of a second" finish that, this time, costs an American the gold. Nonetheless, Dana Torres' improbable run to the silver in the 50m freestyle is certainly worthy of applause.


EDIT: Hell of a race in the women's medley, too. Both the Aussies and the Americans utterly destroyed the world record... but the middle legs cost the U.S., so they'll take silver in that showdown. Barring a false start, at least. They're holding back the official results... this could be interesting.


EDIT2: The Swedes had the false start, but they fell short of the medal stand anyway. What a performance by Torres, the U.S., and the Australians!

U.S. WINS! THE U.S. WINS! WORLD RECORD! 8 GOLD MEDALS FOR PHELPS!

MICHAEL PHELPS IS NOW THE GREATEST OLYMPIAN OF ALL TIME!

GOLD MEDAL COUNT
28 - China
17 - United States of America
9 - Germany
8 - Michael Phelps
8 - Australia
8 - Great Britain
7 - South Korea
7 - Japan
6 - Italy
5 - Russia
5 - Ukraine
3 - France
3 - Romania
3 - Slovakia
2 - Switzerland
2 - New Zealand
2 - Czech Republic
2 - Spain
2 - Georgia
1 - Cuba
1 - Netherlands
1 - North Korea
1 - Brazil
1 - Azerbaijan
1 - Canada
1 - Norway
1 - Indonesia
1 - Zimbabwe
1 - Bulgaria
1 - Poland
1 - Finland
1 - Mongolia
1 - Thailand
1 - Tunisia
1 - Ethiopia
1 - India
1 - Jamaica

[Heald]

Team GB has just blitzed into 3rd place with 11 golds and 23 in total. Considering the absolute minuscule size of our population against the likes of the USA and China, when you normalise the stats, that shows that GB is doing incredibly well. So much for all that nay-saying that Britain can't win anything any more.

I just hope we beat Australia, since apparently that's our goal for the Olympics and there is some bet between the Aussie and Brit Sports Ministers.

[firepokemon]

Team GB has just blitzed into 3rd place with 11 golds and 23 in total. Considering the absolute minuscule size of our population against the likes of the USA and China, when you normalise the stats, that shows that GB is doing incredibly well. So much for all that nay-saying that Britain can't win anything any more.

I just hope we beat Australia, since apparently that's our goal for the Olympics and there is some bet between the Aussie and Brit Sports Ministers.

Hmm Great Britain should I think beat Australia. Since you have an absolutely awesome track cycling team that looks set to demolish and take pretty much most of the golds and pick up other medals as well. You guys are looking good in yaching as well so besides your shitty Marathon runner who is a bitch, you look good.

[mr_pikachu]

I've been wondering for awhile whether people will keep watching the Olympics now that Phelps has won his eight; that's undoubtedly the high point of the Games for the U.S., after all. Apparently others are wondering the same thing.


EDIT: In what may be the moment of the Olympics, Bob Costas just advocated drug use. ^_^;;

[Roy Karrde]

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/bei...urn=oly,101537

Its a interesting Yahoo Blog in which a person puts together "The Real Medal count" in other words taking out the judging events. After the blatent poor judging on the vault, and the stupidity of the tie breaker. I'm really starting to wonder if the IOC should start taking a long look at the Judging. Infact I would say with China under this age scandal, and the realisation back in 03 that Iraq was torturing their athletes that under performed at the Olympics. If it isn't time for the entire thing to be called off after this one, and completely restructured from the ground up as to which countries get in, and the monitoring and rules that are in place.

[mistysakura]

Sigh... prejudice against judged sports... (Not you, Roy, the blogger.) I don't know; on the one hand I support judging being more stringent, but at the same time judges should be able to judge as they see fit, without feeling the pressure to keep their scores in line with other judges. The tiebreaker stupidity wasn't due to the judges though, just stupid tiebreaking rules. Grr. With current technology, it's possible to judge routines 'objectively', with the judges reaching a consensus over video replays. It's an interesting concept, if a little... inhuman...

Re: age rules, they've been broken by various countries over the ages; I think the main problem isn't the countries that are allowed in the Olympics, but that an age rule is unenforcable. Drugs have drug tests, genders have gender tests, but if someone is suspected to be underage and the country pulls out official-looking proof, what can you do?

[Roy Karrde]

Thats true on the age rule, as for the judging, I don't think its a matter of objectivety, but more of inexperienced judges. The IOC is putting very inexperienced Judges on there who's country has no connection with the contestant's country. At that point, getting qualified judges is less important than finding judges that could be impartial.

Of course also being in China, with a home crowd, the energy in the stadium toward the Chinese Contestants, as well as favortism toward the "Stars" should also be calculated in. I mean I know most of us don't follow the Gymnastics world, but I would bet that some of these contestants are such stars in countries like China, like say Kobe or MJ is here, that you cant help but vote with the star power, even if they deserve a lesser score. Ala the Chinese Girl that f'ed up horribly on Vault and still won Bronze.

[ssj4supernerd]

Thanks a lot Nigeria, now we get to play against Brazil for Bronze, so if we lose no medal. Stupid Nigeria...=(

[firepokemon]

Gymnastics is no longer about perfection as it once was. It is judged on the difficulty a gymnast is able to acquire within a program. So while other gymnasts may appear to be better, more likely it is that they don't have as much difficultly. Thus gymnasts with high difficulty even with mistakes can still be judged higher than other gymnasts with arguably a cleaner program but less difficulty. I think personally you're biased against anyone non-US. Sorry but its true.

New Zealand now has three golds, one silver and six bronzes. I think we could have done better in several areas and we still have chances in canoeing/kyaking and BMX racing. But it looks to be our best performance since 1984 where we won eight golds. I must say been enjoying the BMX racing, I think it has a bright future in the sports and hopefully we can medal in it.

[mr_pikachu]

fp: I'll admit I'm a little biased toward U.S. athletes, and I'm aware of it. However, I don't think that a vaulter who falls to her knees should trump one who merely takes a small hop afterwards. (Yes, I'm also aware that two vaults are averaged together to get the total score, but I maintain my point.) These were both legitimate vaults. Even if Cheng (the Chinese athlete in question) attempted one a bit more difficult, she botched it. A 1.45-point deduction seems very insufficient for what was essentially a failed attempt.

Perhaps the judges scored it correctly according to the rules. I'm not an expert, so I don't know. If that was deemed appropriate, however, then the system needs to be re-examined. This is the Olympics. It's the ultimate stage of competition. An athlete who falls over during an artistic event should not medal. Regardless of any biases, I find that point difficult to question.

EDIT: This is particularly true in the vault. I could understand a deduction of this size in something like the parallel bars or the rings. Most of those events are spent doing the exercises, and there's just one landing at the end to accentuate the acrobatics. The vault, however, is incredibly brief; as such, the landing is pretty much half the battle. If you outright fail half the event, you ought to lose more than 8.5% of the maximum score.


Blogging Article: Yeah, I read that one earlier. I don't think that's an accurate representation of the judging situation, however. As we've seen throughout the games, the Chinese specialize in judged sports like gymnastics and diving.

Saying that "Oh, they wouldn't have won many medals if judged events hadn't counted, so the judges must be biased" is like claiming that a star baseball player who can't win a boxing match must be cheating.

[mistysakura]

Well, I actually do follow gymnastics very closely, so... The judges were judging completely correctly in the vault. A fall is only an 0.8 deduction. So it's possible for someone to fall and still score higher in execution than someone who had really, really bad form, for example. When difficulty is taken into account, it's even easier to medal with a fall. The thing is, the situation just looks worse on vault because there's only two vaults to perform. Say, on beam, you have to do ten skills. So if you fall on one of them, take an 0.8 deduction and still medal, it doesn't look half as bad. On vault, when you've literally messed up half of what you're doing...

Yeah, difficulty is taken into account a lot now. I actually agree with this, because in the old 10.0 scoring system, there was no incentive for gymnasts to be more daring and go beyond what would get them a 10.0 starting value. Now we see people doing many more impressive skills. However, execution must remain an important part of gymnastics. The FIG is revising the Code of Points to reflect this. Starting next year, difficulty will be lowered (only eight skills counting in a routine), and a fall will be a 1.00 deduction. Hopefully things will change for the better.

Cheng has been the world champion for years. She has led the gymnastics world in innovation on vault. When she hits, she's way ahead of her field. It's not about reputation or favoritism; she's just so good that she can win bronze with a fall.

[Roy Karrde]

Well we all saw this coming.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/spo...cle4583174.ece

The IOC is now investigating He's age, I mean maybe the missing tooth was a bit of a tip off for them.

[Crystal Mew]

Can't say I'm surprised at all, everytime I turn into watch the olympics it always seems like they're cheating somehow.

I knew some of those gymnastic girls didn't look 16!

[mr_pikachu]

Oh, it's on.

IOC asks for investigation of China’s gymnasts

Dun-dun-dunnnn!

[Roy Karrde]

Only about 7 hours too late Mr. Pika!

Apparently a Brit was hacking Chinese Govt Computers and found a spreadsheet that showed that China had 2 kids under the age.

God Bless You Brits!

[Ultimate Charizard]

bout time we got some smegging gratitude

[mr_pikachu]

Only about 7 hours too late Mr. Pika!

Not quite. The update was that the IOC is pursuing it further than just a half-assed "investigation" to satiate the masses. They're asking the gymnastics federation, which is likely closer to He and would have more information (and perhaps jurisdiction), to take the case to the next level.

Apparently a Brit was hacking Chinese Govt Computers and found a spreadsheet that showed that China had 2 kids under the age.

God Bless You Brits!

Don't forget to thank the hackers!

[mistysakura]

Go Brits! Unfortunately, the International Gymnastics Federation launched an investigation into this months ago, and since the Chinese brought out passports with 'legitimate' ages, they couldn't do anything... I'd be surprised if they manage to prove anything this time round. Oh well, we can all hope (although it would be awesome if it were proved conclusively that she was of age).

You can't judge by the looks though; when I was seventeen people thought I was in primary school

[Heald]

Just saw them in half and count the rings. That's what my great uncle used to do at those internment camps anyway.

[ssj4supernerd]

YES BELGIUM FINALLY GOT A MEDAL SILVER YEAH WOOHOO YEAH WOOT AWESOME


Oh and I'm dissapointed in our soccer club, I had hoped we could buttkick Brazil and get a bronze medal but ohwell. =(

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Our medals have been just blind luck. I mean they have come from sports Finns aren't believed to be good at, we have failed in what Finns are believed to be good at. We should be happy with the current medal count, or not, because like I said, it was luck. But what many of us are proud about is that we are ahead Sweden which hasn't got a single gold medal! Wow.

Now we are looking forward to the javeling throw finals today. That's where we believe we're good at.

[ssj4supernerd]

BELGIUM
HAS
OBTAINED
GGGGGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD



So happy right now.

[mr_pikachu]

Cuban taekwondo athlete banned after kicking ref

This actually makes me wonder how the guy became a black belt. No self-respecting martial arts expert would ever attack a referee. If you can't control your emotions, you don't deserve that honorable title.

[Heald]

Heh, even if he didn't win a medal, that picture has win plastered all over it.

[mistysakura]

Mm, wtf? How did he get to this level with that lack of discipline? You'd think he would've gotten into trouble long before this.

Mitcham takes gold in 10m platform! And I was resigned to the Chinese sweeping all the diving medals. Nice work.

[mr_pikachu]

Mm, wtf? How did he get to this level with that lack of discipline? You'd think he would've gotten into trouble long before this.

I was wondering that, myself. It's astonishing that someone with so little self-control could actually make it to the Olympics, much less compete for a medal.

Not that it really matters, but this wasn't even a controversial call. Athletes get one minute to recover from an injury (if they take longer, it's assumed that they cannot continue). Matos took longer than a minute and was disqualified. Simple as that. But he decided to haul off and assault the referee.

I've been trying to locate information on Matos' past performances, but everything I've found so far has to do with the Olympics. (Lots of videos, let me tell you.) It'd be interesting if this was a trend with him; might prompt countries to take a closer look at their martial artists before putting them on the world stage.

Sad. Suffice to say, Angel Matos is a disgrace to martial artists everywhere.

[Ultimate Charizard]

There was controversy in the Womens event too.
The Judges completely failed to award the GBR competitor any points for a clean kick direct to the head. Her opponent went on to win by 1 point. Where was her opponent from.....China of course.

The decision was the 'reviewed' and overturned but apparently it left the British competitor without the proper time to prepare (she had already warmed down etc and lost the focus since she had 'lost') so she was pretty much owned in the Semi's and had to settle for Bronze.

[Blademaster]

Fix'd.

[mr_pikachu]

What, you thought we were done with this topic? No, no, no. *wags finger* We haven't finished the discussion just yet.

Chinese gymnasts deemed of age, inquiry over

...But wait, there's more!

Documents confirm all six members of China's gold medal team at the Beijing Games were old enough to compete, the International Gymnastics Federation said on Wednesday. But it wants more answers from two members of China's 2000 squad - Dong Fangxiao and Yang Yun - saying it "does not consider the explanations and evidence provided to date in regards to these athletes as satisfactory."

[...]

Dong's official birthdate is listed as Jan. 20, 1983. But her accreditation information for the Beijing Olympics, where she worked as a national technical official, lists her birthdate as Jan. 23, 1986, said Andre Gueisbuhler, the FIG's secretary general.

[...]

In addition to Dong's Beijing accreditation, her blog says she was born in the Year of the Ox in the Chinese zodiac, which dated from Feb. 20, 1985, to Feb. 8, 1986. Dong has not denied that, but she refused last week to answer any questions about her age.

Yang, who also won a bronze medal on the uneven bars in 2000, said in a June 2007 interview that aired on state broadcaster China Central Television that she was 14 in Sydney. Yang, who is engaged to Beijing men's all-around champion Yang Wei, told the AP last week that she had misspoken, declining further comment.

Apparently this isn't the first time China's done shady things in regard to ages. Just adds to the skepticism. If Fangxiao and Yun were, in fact, under the minimum age limit, it could have huge ramifications for Chinese gymnastics.

The drama never ends!

[RedStarWarrior]

I don't put it past China, a very controlling government, to forge documentation and whatnot. It's a damn shame, but people will always find a way to cheat.