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XXXth Olympiad - London

To get a silver medal when you fall on a vault is unheard of.
Indeed. Let's just say the judges were quite a bit... generous with her.

Unfortunately, medaling with a fall is all too common in the new Code. Since the open-ended Code was introduced in 2006, major athletes like Mustafina, Ferrari, Cheng, Bross, and Maroney have all medaled at a Worlds or Olympic Games counting a fall. This is a disconcerting figure. Also, it's easier to medal with a fall on vault because of the wildly-disparate start values and the fact that you average two routines together, not one, so a fall can be mitigated by a good first vault.

Re: Mustafina vs. Tweddle, Tweddle was the favorite if she hit, but she gave it up. I have to give it to Mustafina: she's made a lot of progress on bars and both routines are just flat-out fun because of how much flight they employ. It could have gone either way, and I'm sad Beth didn't win at home, but Mustafina just kept improving on bars as the Games went on. UB was a much better final than VT, which was a joke. I would have taken Maroney and Paseka off the vault podium.

Maroney's been vaulting on a broken toe and a sprained ankle, and who knows what else Marta Karolyi and Galina Marinova did to her leading up to London. Both certainly have a historic knack of utterly breaking their athletes come crunch time.

ETA: just have to throw this in:

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Brilliant from the Brownlees in the Triathalon. I'm in awe of that as a discipline. Unbelievable stuff!
 
Blimey, our local council aren't hanging around;

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Have they said yet how long they're going to be kept gold? I love the idea; it's a pretty cool thing to have come up with.

Brilliant from the Brownlees in the Triathalon. I'm in awe of that as a discipline. Unbelievable stuff!

A friend of mine competed (competes? haven't spoken to her in ages) at a pretty high level in triathlon and her stories of it were exhausting in themselves! It's a pretty insane sport. Ironman even more so. Kudos to the Brownlees for the win!
 
Yeah, I can't believe the bullshit that went on about Gabby Douglas' hair. And it came from black women. That tweet....:scream:...I know black woman were thinking everywhere, what about that hair????? How shallow and image conscious is our culture? She won the AA but the first thing, another woman attacks her hair. This is why women are neurotic, gentlemen. You can win a world championship, and people still bitch about you not being pretty enough. A lifetime of hard work--but you weren't pretty enough. I hate that shit! :censored: And what the hell was wrong with it anyway? She's African American. They have kinky hair. So what? What's so awful about her natural hair?
 
We haven't heard anything about that. One of the cycling gold medal women's sprint team has no hair at all. She's had alopecia since she was a child. Nobody even mentioned it.
 
Not a peep here, too. What's wrong about her hair? :confused:

A medical condition, like Deckerd mentioned. I made a quite unfortunate comment about her looks on another forum where I was then informed about it. I thought she had her hair cut off in a prank or something.
Basically she looks like someone in the middle of intense cancer treatment, she has almost no hair on her head, not even eyebrows.

eta: ah, you were talking about the American - apparently someone thought it's not stylish enough or whatever.
 
There was a huge thing on Twitter the night she won the AA. A bunch of women, self identified as black women, basically said that she should have thought ahead and styled her hair. The tweet I mentioned was the first one that appeared--saying that she was sure the "first thought" of African American women everywhere was why Gabby didn't do something with her hair. Very presumptious. It was a big brouhaha. Gabby puts a lots of clips in it and pulls it back, nothing fancy. When black women perspire, their hair will start to kink back out if there's too much perspiration. A lot of work has to go into keeping it straight, apparently. The tweets were all going on the basic assumption that it's too "ghetto" or somehow not classy enough if a young black women doesn't straighten her hair. Gabby's hair was frizzing out a bit, but that's her hair. My thought is, "So what?"

Other African American women got online to defend Gabby (as if having natural hair needs defending) and taking the others to task, that their first tweets should have been tweets of congratulations. It was a big enough deal that Douglas heard about it and felt the need to respond. Really very shallow and very sad.
 
Today's the first time I've properly watched some dressage; perhaps I should do so more often, if it means GB will always win. My God, it's amazing how well those horses have been trained. :eek:

On the other hand, I always try to catch the Olympic womens floor routines; it's perenially entertaining. The young Raisman girl put it in such a powerful & precise performance. I'll be surprised if anyone beats that but we'll see. Some of those tumbles were eye-poppingly perfect. :D
 
That woman is a fanstastic marvel but I don't think her presence does not mean 20 is *starting* to get old for a gymnast.

Only 2 of the top 8 vaulters (finals) are over 20, and even overall only 7 of 18 vaulters are older than 20.

In the all-around only 5 of 32 are older than 20, the three medalists were under 18. The oldest in the all-around is 26.

The British bronze medallist yesterday in the uneven bars is 27.

*sigh* yes, that totally negates what I was trying to say... I just don't have the fight in me I will just concede.
 
On the other hand, I always try to catch the Olympic womens floor routines; it's perenially entertaining. The young Raisman girl put it in such a powerful & precise performance. I'll be surprised if anyone beats that but we'll see. Some of those tumbles were eye-poppingly perfect. :D

We just have seen. She won, and quite deservedly so. Great routine! Anyone else see it?
 
Have they said yet how long they're going to be kept gold? I love the idea; it's a pretty cool thing to have come up with.

Don't think they've said anything about that at all. I'd imagine it'll be for a good while. Better be anyway! :techman:

A friend of mine competed (competes? haven't spoken to her in ages) at a pretty high level in triathlon and her stories of it were exhausting in themselves! It's a pretty insane sport. Ironman even more so. Kudos to the Brownlees for the win!

I'm in awe of any form of the sport to that degree of endurance. It's phenomenal that the Human body is capable of such feats.

Today's the first time I've properly watched some dressage; perhaps I should do so more often, if it means GB will always win. My God, it's amazing how well those horses have been trained. :eek:

I switched over halfway through Hester's routine, and not having seen Dressage before, wondered what the fcuk was going on when my eyes were confronted by what appeared to be a dancing horse?! WTF?! :lol:
 
Yeah, insane. Almost a clean sweep of the gold medals so far. Clancy was good as well, but Omnium is kind of a crapshoot. If more than one starter by nation had been allowed, GB would have had a better shot there.

Pendleton's relegation was pretty clear in my opinion though, but she still has a chance.

And Hoy has got to be the overwhelming favourite for gold later on today, especially with the Frenchman out.
 
Yeah - unrealistic to think that we can win every time, and we've done 'alright' in the velodrome, so no real complaints whether Penbo wins or loses now. Besides, she's already got one gold in this games! :lol:

From what I saw of the heats, the closest challenge to Hoy could come from the Kiwi, he was right on his heels in their first heat.
 
I think the Australian is the second favourite, Awang looked dangerous too, but it would be a big surprise either way imo.
 
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