XXXth Olympiad - London
- Thread starter MacLeod
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Yeah, it was the 70-odd score on the 4th round dive that effectively put them out of contention. Still, there's always the Men's gymnastics team.
EDIT: Incredible scenes at the Dome: Team GB's men's gymnasts finished in second place behind China and ahead of Ukraine and Japan, but Japan have won an appeal over the points scoring of the flawed dismount in their final routine - and have leapt to silver, relegating GB to bronze, and Ukraine losing out.
EDIT: Incredible scenes at the Dome: Team GB's men's gymnasts finished in second place behind China and ahead of Ukraine and Japan, but Japan have won an appeal over the points scoring of the flawed dismount in their final routine - and have leapt to silver, relegating GB to bronze, and Ukraine losing out.
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I was going to post the results of mens gymnastics in spoiler code, but the cat's out of the bag. After qualifying first, the US men's team flopped big time in the finals. 3 falls. With a 3 up, 3 scores count finals format, that's insurmountable. Team China completely reversed its fortunes after having a shitty qualifying round. The three top American guys, Mikulak, Orozco, and Leyva all messed up. So much for all that promise. Congrats to Great Britain on their achievement. They must be losing their minds in London over that. Most unexpected but welcome surprise for them, I'm sure. Sounds like they earned it.
Jordyn Wieber will have some company in her misery, only she didn't fall or mess up, only a step out of bounds on floor exercise that doomed her by a tenth and two wobbles on the beam. She just had the misfortune of having 2 teammates score slightly higher than her to boot her from the AA competition by the absurd 2 athlete per country rule. The US men....they just blew it. No way around it. Oh well. Those are the breaks.
Wow.....the judges reversed the final score of the final Japanese gymnast and booted Ukraine off the podium????
Oh, they'll be livid over that decision. When do gymnastic judges ever listen to an appeal about scoring and reverse themselves? They wouldn't even give Andrea Raducan her gold AA medal back from Sydney when her doctor gave her that cold medicine pill with a formerly banned substance in it after her appeal. The substance was unbanned because they determined it did nothing to enhance performance and that the doctor had made an honest mistake--but they still had to follow rules and screwed the poor girl out of her medal. Now they cave to Japan? Oh, the drama....
Jordyn Wieber will have some company in her misery, only she didn't fall or mess up, only a step out of bounds on floor exercise that doomed her by a tenth and two wobbles on the beam. She just had the misfortune of having 2 teammates score slightly higher than her to boot her from the AA competition by the absurd 2 athlete per country rule. The US men....they just blew it. No way around it. Oh well. Those are the breaks.
Wow.....the judges reversed the final score of the final Japanese gymnast and booted Ukraine off the podium????
Oh, they'll be livid over that decision. When do gymnastic judges ever listen to an appeal about scoring and reverse themselves? They wouldn't even give Andrea Raducan her gold AA medal back from Sydney when her doctor gave her that cold medicine pill with a formerly banned substance in it after her appeal. The substance was unbanned because they determined it did nothing to enhance performance and that the doctor had made an honest mistake--but they still had to follow rules and screwed the poor girl out of her medal. Now they cave to Japan? Oh, the drama.... 
Well, this morning I looked to see what was on via the Red Button options on BBC... "Beach Volleyball?" Could be men's or women's, the A-Z didn't say, but I selected it, to find it had finished early and we were watching the audience buggering off.
Arse.
Back to the A-Z... Fencing, women's individual epee. Right, on to that... and it's an empty darkened stage, with muted murmuring from the audience.
Gave up then, and watched some Pawn Stars reruns instead...
Arse.
Back to the A-Z... Fencing, women's individual epee. Right, on to that... and it's an empty darkened stage, with muted murmuring from the audience.
Gave up then, and watched some Pawn Stars reruns instead...
Well, bronze is still an amazing result for the team competition, considering GB haven't medalled in it for 100 years! I can't feel disappointed about that. In a way, the Ukranians had it a lot tougher.
WTF was going on in the women's fencing though? I was out and about this evening, periodically checking various results on my phone but from what I gather, a South Korean competitor just sat there in protest for an hour after she lost? You'd think they'd say, come on, enough's enough now, and escort her firmly off the stage!
Interesting turn of events in the swimming pool today. Lochte doesn't medal while three Americans--Grievers and Thoman, Missy Franklin--all get medals in the 100-meter backstroke competitions (gold and silver in men's and one gold in women's, respectively).
Looks like my gymnastics boys didn't score a victory in the team finals, either. China dominates again!
Looks like my gymnastics boys didn't score a victory in the team finals, either. China dominates again!
Ugh, the agony of defeat. When I saw her last night, she was utterly devastated that she couldn't talk for an interview for like 10 minutes. Has it always been this way, or is the two-per-country rule introduced only this year?
London gave me something I've never seen before: beach volleyball in long sleeved shirts and pants!
never mind, 'twas meant to be a bad joke, didn't work so well...
never mind, 'twas meant to be a bad joke, didn't work so well...
Did you see the process? You have to pay cash to get them to even consider the appeal and if they go forward with it you get your cash back and if not they keep it! Very Olympic!
For gymnastics, the rule was introduced after the 2000 Olympics when the Romanian gymnasts swept the podium in womens gymnastics. Other countries (the US, too) grumbled a bit (as most countries will when their athletes are shut out) about it, so the IOC decided to modify the rule, which was previously a "3 athlete per country rule." They lessened it to 2 athletes per country in the AA and in event finals for individual appartus as well. No one asked them to do it. The coaches of other countries bitch about something every Olympics concerning scoring, equipment, et al. It was nothing new.
The problem is, no one envisioned it would ever happen again that one team would be so deep that three of their athletes would score in the top five of all athletes in the qualifying round and have a top five finisher get shut out--much less the defending world AA champion. In 2008, Russia had 3 athletes score in the top 24 of qualifying, but the third was further down towards the bottom and hadn't been expected to medal anyway. There were some condolences, but not much anger. Jordyn Wieber is the 2011 World All Around Champion, and she--on an off day for her no less--placed fourth out of all athletes competing. The rule wasn't intended for that, but here we are. Jordyn learned a hard lesson. Life isn't fair.
The athlete with the 25th highest score will compete. The athlete with the 4th highest score will not. Life sucks, kid. That's the way it goes.
Yeah, what a shame for Jordyn. As for the American guys, whoa, watching them in the team final was painful.
Quite the controversy in the men's gym team final. For a moment there, Great Britain had the silver medal. It would appear that Japan contested the results, so they ended up with silver, pushing the UK team down to settle for the bronze.
Seems like there is always controversy in the popular sports, be it Gymnastics in Summer or Figure Skating in Winter.
They just cant let this Chinese girl be, cant they:
One can see even hint of sexism in all of this, not to mention jealousy. Plus it is also because she is Chinese. If she would be American or European, there would be not fuzz like this.
Lets face it..she swam better than everyone else and won and it is not the first time than an athlete is much better than everyone else( just look at 100 meters and other running event, for instance..)
I do agree that China has had history with doping..but it does not always mean that when someone is excellent in sports, that he or she is automatically a drug/doping user.
One can see even hint of sexism in all of this, not to mention jealousy. Plus it is also because she is Chinese. If she would be American or European, there would be not fuzz like this.
Lets face it..she swam better than everyone else and won and it is not the first time than an athlete is much better than everyone else( just look at 100 meters and other running event, for instance..)
I do agree that China has had history with doping..but it does not always mean that when someone is excellent in sports, that he or she is automatically a drug/doping user.
Yeah it is a bit sad, though I guess when someone is suddenly 5 seconds faster than their best ever time you can see why some people might wonder. Is this the one that Clare Balding made some offhand comment about "How did she go that fast?" the other day?
All medal winners are automatically tested, and I'm guessing they know the results pretty quick which would suggest she passed the test with flying colours.
I'm more concerned about what kind of training regieme these Chinese kids may be being put through back home to be honest.
All medal winners are automatically tested, and I'm guessing they know the results pretty quick which would suggest she passed the test with flying colours.
I'm more concerned about what kind of training regieme these Chinese kids may be being put through back home to be honest.
That doesn't mean anything.
Firstly in-competition-controls only manage to catch the most stupid dopers, the real stuff happens in training.
Secondly, passing doping controls only is significant if you assume testing can actually identify doping, which is a conclusion that looks obvious on the surface, but is really not, since there are many drugs that either cannot be detected at all or or can only be detected for a very short period in the human body (hours), but still have positive effects on performance for weeks, months or even longer.
Among other things, doping during training means you can train harder, recover faster and then train even harder, which obviously has a massive effect on peak performance when it counts even if you're nominally "clean" on the day of competition.
Passing tests means nothing, unfortunately. That said, of course we have no choice but to accept an athlete's innocence until it's proven otherwise, and I have no reason to believe American, French and German swimmers use any less or different drugs than this girl.
TBH, sounds more to me like a betting scam (or at least making her a ringer for tactical reasons), holding back a little so the odds on her winning will be higher...
I see there was another clusterfuck with the fencing yesterday...
