(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

It's a shame about the ladies gymnastics. It is, but they should know that it wasn't mistakes on their part. The Chinese outclassed and out-competed them, fair and square. Even without the major deductions on beam and floor, they had the USA beat by well over a point. Way to go, China! Seriously, they have awesome gymnasts. I still think the men did better, overall, but the ladies held their own and made it their own.

I look forward to the individual event competitions and the all-around individual final. Shawn Johnson seems poised for more greatness, but I'm especially keen to see Nastia Liukin on beam again. She is so fluid. Her limbs have no bones, I swear. Shawn has her beat on balance and sticking her landings, but Nastia looks better in motion.

Oh, and Michael Phelps is going to break his neck carrying his medals around, but we knew that.

Comments

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

...what happened in Athens?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Ooh, boy, you missed that too, mm? I read a recap of it on Wikipedia, which vaguely called up the memories of the controversy. It lasted well into fall. Basically, the men's all-around final was wicked close, as in less than 0.1 difference between gold and bronze. (Compare to the women's all-around final this Olympics, where the same margin was 0.6. That may not seem huge, but when every 0.01 counts, that's almost orders of magnitude of difference.) The gold medal went to Paul Hamm, an American, and the bronze to South Korean (whose name escapes me at present, pardon my American ignorance).

However, the South Koreans contended after the match (yes, the timing is important) that their athlete had not been given his proper starting score of difficulty. The difference between what he should have started with and what he had led to a score that was, oh, say, about 0.1 point off? He would have been the gold medalist if not for the problem. The committee that oversees gymnastics (FIG) has a rule that any scoring disagreements must be made during the match. Yes, the scoring was proven to be wrong, but it was too late. If they'd had a problem, they needed to voice it immediately. FIG said it was sorry but that the standings would not change.

All throughout, Paul Hamm said he would give up his medal if the FIG asked. They did not reverse the standings, so he was not required to. Yet they sent a letter to Hamm via the US Olympic Committee basically asking him to do it. "Yeah, we're not making you give up the medal we have re-confirmed belongs to you, but it sure would be sporting if you could." They wanted him to make up for what they didn't have the guts to do themselves. The USOC balked and never delivered the letter. End of that drama.

So, back then gymnastics used to score higher difficulties with higher values--mess up something easy and you get penalized for it more than someone who messes up something harder. I'm presuming that this means the South Korean was unfairly penalized for missing something "easy" when it was, in fact, "hard." As a result, his score was lower than it ought to have been.

The changed system now gives a rigid start value which changes not based on execution but only if you do all the elements or not. So if you have twice as many hard stunts and a bunch of acrobatic twists and what not, you get a higher difficulty value from the get go. The only thing the judges will then watch is your execution, unless you don't complete a stunt or fail to connect one (doing two immediately in a row raises difficulty value). In which case they will dock a regulated amount for that stunt only from the starting difficulty value. That value, the fixed difficulty one, is added to the subjective execution one, and the total is your score on that particular routine.

And I figured that all out solely from the inane commentary. Ta-da!!!

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

...wow. That's the sort of thing that makes me think the "Is this SPORT?" discussion should be longer and more fraught than the "Is this ART?" one.

At least with a race you know who actually won.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Unless someone is doping...

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Well, you don't know that they won fairly. But at least you don't have to set up a point system to figure out who crossed the line first, nor start adding or removing seconds to times based on extra-difficult ways of tying your shoelaces.