(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

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

It was very sad--I was watching women's gymnastics, an archery match, and a fencing match all at the same time, and all 3 U.S. competitors lost.

Is it just me, or does the new gymnastics scoring system seem a lot more boring? There's not as much tension; China and the U.S. would be trouncing their competition simply by making it through their planned routines. I think I'd prefer a multiplier system to factor in degree of difficulty, similar to diving.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a lot less exciting when you have a set point value going in. There's no room for pleasant surprises, just unpleasant ones.

I'm not sure who I like watching better - Johnson or Liukin. Liukin's got those impossibly long legs that she places so elegantly, but I really loved the solidity of Johnson's landings on the beam. No wobble, just bam! pose. I've liked previous years' floor exercises better - the Americans were so rattled. I remember some where the girls were smiling and actually having fun out there.

I have trouble feeling sad for the Americans overall - the men's swimming has been that disgusting. Is it the suits? Everyone seems to be shattering way too many world records this year. We won the relay by a margin that was almost insulting to everyone else.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The scoring is problematic on all fronts. It's apparently supposed to make sure that nothing like Athens happens again, but instead it's just a pain in the ass. And it takes FOREVER.

It's funny that I felt bad for the USA ladies getting the silver but great for the guys getting the bronze. Difference is in the expectation, I suspect.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I like Johnson better as a performer, but Liukin is just so visually great to watch. She has a dancer's poise. Johnson is the superior gymnast, but Liukin is the artist.

The floor made me cringe all over. It just didn't seem like out-of-control boundary-breaking. It seemed like they all took a step for no reason. Poor Alicia Sacramone--first beam, then floor. Ouch. I wonder what's happened to the ladies' program that they're so vulnerable now? Possibly it's the injuries--losing one literally right before the qualification round was especially bad.

Yeah, no one is pitying Team USA after that 4x200M last night. Michael Phelps shouldn't be allowed to come back next Olympics because that's just mean. Even if he's 27 at that point. (OMG SOOOOO OLD!!! /sarcasm) He should, like Lance Armstrong, realize that he's broken the record, take that, and bow out gracefully. Because it's ridiculous how good a swimmer he is. And yes, the record-breaking swim was amazingly crazy. At least it was a true break of the record, not just some new tech making them outswim the record by 1/100 second. FIVE SECONDS!?! That's not just the suits...

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

OK, yeah, that one race has nothing to do with the suits. The announcers were hysterical ("The camera has to pan back just to get the rest of the swimmers in the frame!"). But from what I've seen (and I haven't seen all the swimming matches), the gold medalist in practically every race has broken the world record. In some cases, all three of the top people have broken the record. It's weird when they don't break the record. Maybe it's selective memory, but I feel like in some previous Olympics, way fewer of the races have involved breaking records, and a lot of them were Olympic records, not world records. People tend to freak out a little more about the Olympics, and I'd thought that it was not uncommon for the Olympic record to be worse than the absolute world record.

As for the women's gymnastic team - I think it was nerves. They were rock solid through the vault and the uneven bars. Then Sacramone flubbed the beginning of her routine (maybe after watching each of the Chinese gymnasts wobble all over the place?), and it just shook them all. Liukun and Johnson got through their beam routines, but Sacramone was right on the edge of tears going into the floor. She freaked, tensed up, and blew that landing. And then they were all convinced they couldn't recover, and let their nerves get to them.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think the rampant record-breaking is, in fact, due to the suits this time for the most part. They've had something similar in the past, but what most of the teams have now is a new and different version. New and improved, even. Most of the record-breaking that I saw was very slight, usually not more than half a second. (Except in Michael Phelps' case; he's broken at least two by more than a second.) No idea if that explains all of it, but it does explain some. At least two olympics back, Ian Thorpe wore a speed suit, but it was just this year that someone was complaining about the edge the new fast suits gave people. I assume that means the edge is more than just imagined.

And it's too bad about the gymnasts, but I don't think they should beat themselves up too much. With the new scoring rubric, it was nearly impossible that they would win without a major F-up by the Chinese anyway, since they did just about everything with more difficulty than the Americans.

[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.