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.

[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

[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.