halfway through the rotation the American men gymnasts are actually in gold-medal position by .825 points over China.

I wonder if anyone knows the specifics about how available the different suits (and similar things in various sports, shoes for example) are to every team. I don't follow it enough to know, but an article I read in Wired on suits and shoes made it sound as though they were being designed for the American team. If so, it seems like there would be some big differences between what equipment was available to various countries.

jonathan horton is gonna lead the US men to a medal - silver or gold. the kid is sticking EVERYTHING. It's ridiculous.

nah - watch the races - everyone's wearing them

That kid was good. Triple back.

QS - how much does it matter to you that the world record that got "crushed" was, like, 24 hours old? I'd imagine that that record, too, was set with the newer technology, but five teams in the finals beat a record that was presumably set with the same technology, and the Americans and French did so by nearly four seconds.

I think in that context, it absolutely is momentous. The American "B" squad swam an incredible race, and still saw that record bested by five other teams just hours later.

scoring in gymnastics pisses me off - those guys have routines that look pretty damn good and yet they end up with like 15.7's??

and yet the chinese guy on vault steps out of bounds and ends up with a 15.975?

WOW... that Chinese gymnast just did the sickest vault I've ever seen.

Yeah, the penalties for mistakes should be higher if the execution score just gets added to the degree score. In the women's competition the CHinese girl that fell on her head still got a good score.

I agree. It's almost like they're afraid to give a score under say 15 to anyone, and it really shouldn't be that way. If you step out of bounds what is wrong with losing say a full point, instead of 0.3? Really is somebody going to fucking cry? Why not just make a new standard that makes some fucking sense.

Well if you are doing something that is insanely difficult (like say that last Chinese vault), messing up something small shouldn't penalize you that much.

Because that prevents anyone from trying anything risky and makes things more boring.

Sports with subjective scoring are pretty lame.

I know balancing it is difficult, but I think nailing a less difficult routine should be worth as much or more than screwing up a more difficult event.

Feels like in the old days, the Olympics were more...organized? Or maybe the coverage was just different.

I'd rather the scoring promote attempting more difficult routines. It is more entertaining. That's why I'm rooting for the Chinese men here as well, I like teams that take risks.

I agree, Isiddiqui. The Chinese team is just too good. They were favorites to win the gold and they're doing more difficult routines so their mistakes aren't as big when they're taking more risks. The U.S. team should be happy with bronze.

i'm going to call homeland security on your ass because of this post

you unamerican rejects should be ashamed of yourselves

Blind patriotism is a scourge on the land.

I watch the Olympics for the best athletes and the super pro-rah-rah-USA coverage by NBC makes me sick.

The Chinese are clearly the best team. Homerism has nothing to do with it. For my taste the balance between execution and difficulty has swung too far to difficulty. I think a slighly less difficult routine done cleanly should be worth more than a slightly more difficult routine with mistakes.

Viewers outraged as Channel Seven dumps Olympic coverage for AFL match | The Australian

I love it.

I'm gonna look at the online coverage. Badminton ftw.

oops - did I forget the smilies in my posts?? I totally wasn't being serious fyi. figured the idea of me calling homeland security would clue you in to the fact that I was kidding

My only two complaints with the NBC coverage so far has been (1) allowing Matt Lauer in the building for the opening ceremonies -- although at least Katie Curic is at CBS saving us from her blathering on and on; and (2) showing synchronized diving in prime time. Synchronized diving should be on tape delay on Oxygen at 2 in the morning. If there is anything less of a sport than an arbitrarily judged event, it's have two people doing the same arbitrary event at the same time.

Compounding the "synchro diving" issue was that someone apparently died and left Andrea Kramer to be god's gift to synchronized diving. Considering I'm fairly certain she didn't know synchronized diving exited until about half an hour before the telecast, she acted like to was the world's foremost authorities -- although I doubt the Russian time ever works in practice to make their performances more "pretty," the word Andrea kept using in measuring the performances.

The Olympics will be a success for me if I'm able to survive the remaining events without seeing anything else synchronized.

I think the problem with gymnastics coverage is the "difficulty" rating. your average viewer doesn't have any idea of what makes a "difficult" routine -- maybe the networks need to do a better idea of saying "this is what makes a parallel bars routine difficult, these are where you will see deductions" and stuff like that?

because unless the difficulty difference is HUGE how should I as an average viewer be able to tell the difference between a 6.4 and 7 difficulty program?

What's wrong with a little blind patriotism? I'm not saying I can't appreciate another country's accomplishments -- like say appreciating Derek Jeter or A-Rod -- but if they are going up against my team I want them to go down and go down hard. Just like I wouldn't mind seeing every guy on the Yankees pull a hamstring, same thing with the Olympics. It's sports. If I'm watching Latvia versus Argentina in team handball I can enjoy the matchup, but I want the USA to win everything. They're my team.

Pentathlon. Now there's a test.

disaster for the US men on the pommel horse (what a stupid event) and they may need a little help to hold onto the bronze

Glad to see the guys go nuts for their bronze. They were a team that almost didn't have enough guys to do it, with 2 of their best sitting at home with injuries. Great job.

And yeah, I'm gonna root for USA vs anyone, but I still marvel at the skill of the other guys. Of course, I'm also saying as I watch the other team, "Fall off, don't hurt yourself but fall, we need to move up!" Just like rooting for my favorite football or baseball team. I can admire the competition, but I don't want them to win. If USA isn't in it, then I watch for the sport of it.

The US on High Bar/China on Vault rotation where they passed us really stood out for me too because to my untrained eye we had 3 difficult routines and nailed 2.5 of them while the Chinese had 3 very difficult routines and made small mistakes on all of them yet somehow we lost multiple points and 1st place? Looking at the official scoring, I'm even more confused. Take a look at the high bar scores (Name/Difficulty/Avg. of 4 middle judges/Total)

US
Hagerty 6.6-8.95-15.55
Horton 6.4-9.3-15.7
Spring 6.3-9.375-15.675

China
Xiaoping 6.7-8.925-15.725
Qin 6.2-9.05-15.25
Kai 7.0-8.975-15.975

Huh? I watched all 3 of the US ones and NBC showed at least 2 of the 3 China ones. The US team was doing more release moves, better release moves and bigger dismounts and sticking them yet 2 of the 3 Chinese guys get better scores than any of ours? Horton's routine for example he had 2 crazy mid-routine releases and finished it off absolutely nailing a triple twisting backflip dismount, yet he only gets a 6.4 for difficulty and a 9.3 for execution? Where were the .7 in deductions?

Also, Artimov, the US guy that killed it on pommel horse was awarded a 6.1-9.25-15.35. Where were the deductions on that routine? It probably wasn't the best pommel horse routin ever, but it was the best I've seen and a 9.25 average score for execution? Meanwhile, on vault the 3 Chinese (I'll accept that the difficulty scores should be ridiculously high - those were some crazy stunts) got execution scores of 9.55/9.6/9.45 (automatic .1 deduction for the 3rd) despite all taking huge steps on the landings.

Certain events are clearly going to be scored higher - I guess it was vault here with most teams in the 16's (including the 3 highest US scores and the only 2 US 16's), with pommel horse consistently in the 14's/low 15's, (except for one Chinese guy throwing out a 6.4/9.7/16.1 which I would have loved to see if it was that much better than Artimov's) and I understand the desire to have certain routines start out worth more than others, but all I'm asking for is the execution score to A) be possible to get a 10 and B) make sense when comparing two routines. Hypothetically, if someone went out there and did the perfect front handspring off the vault, they'd probably get a 2 for difficulty and rightfully so, but they'd still probably get 9.2's-9.4's for execution.Why not just go all out with decathlon? :D One other random thing I noticed while looking for that - the US has more gold medals (307) and Silver Medals (225) in Track & Field than any country has medals total - next is some combination of USSR/Russia with 214/GBR with 185/GER with 116. Nearly so in Swimming too - 202g 146s for the US while combined Germany hits 184 thanks to the E.German women and Australia has 157. USA! USA! USA! :)

In Athens, Phelps won 6 Golds and 2 Bronze. He has already won the two events where he got the Bronze last time. Now he needs to repeat in everything else.

I HIGHLY recommend watching the China-Spain men basketball game from the last Q. You will enjoy a great end and also will be able to watch the next NBA draft Spanish 19yo wonderkid PG Ricky Rubio showing what he can do, specially on defense and stealing.

It was a horrible collapse by China.

I was actually more impressed by Rudy Fernandex than Rubio.

Yeah, I think he's got the name to be a star, just as a crossover. He's got a really good ability -- I watched his videos on youtube -- to find the open player and his court vision reminds me of Jason Kidd. I think he'll need to bulk up and get quicker for the NBA game. And unlike say, a Tony Parker, he doesn't seem able to create his own shot. Which I think is a weakness of a guy who wants to be a modern point guard.

But that said, I'm sure someone will take him Top 10 in the NBA draft when he's eligible, just on the marketing potential.

BishopMVP had a great post and after watching last night, I had very similar stuff in my head.

I'll say it again- gymnastics is maddening to watch because the scoring is so inconsistent and arbitrary. This goes beyond "Just stick the landing and that's all that matters" and isn't "Hulk no understand, Hulk smash!" I mean, we're all (mostly) pretty intelligent human beings and we get it explained to us over and over again during the night. I'm not going to be able to see every 0.1 deduction and pick out a 9.3 vs a 9.2 but I sure as hell can see what I think is a 9 vs a 9.5 in terms of form and style. Couple that with the fact that we get the difficulty score given to us and I think we can do a decent armchair job.

There was a lot of discussion last night again. It seems they were afraid to give any Chinese or Japanese gymnast anything under a 15, even tho they "were having an awful night" or had multiple falls. But the American has a rough pommel horse and gets a 12?!? I got the impression from watching the two sets of high bar routines that the Americans actually had better ones- we all had 3 significant releases, iirc, while some of the Chinese only had 2 but they got comparable or better scores.

It seems that the scoring favors certain countries- you have a good vault team, you do better than a team with an equally good floor team. There just aren't the points to be had on the floor in terms of difficulty.

Also, I would love to view this through non-US colored glasses as I'm not trying to say we should have done better or worse. Give us the Romanian team to compare with the Chinese or the Russians to compare to the Japanese and I would make the comparisons there. However, I can only compare what was covered last night and it was pretty much the Americans and the Chinese with about 5 minutes of the Japanese and Germans thrown in.

It's like I said the other night- the US girls were having major screw ups all over the place but we still ended up in 2nd. Were the other teams just kissing the floor on every other routine?

And then we're subjected to more of it tonight :(

SI

One step closer to being able to rent my house for a million bucks a day in 2016. :D

I would say more that is was when Spain finally woke up. Spanish players were too relaxed and self confident and allowed a big lead too early. in the 4th Q they finally woke up, specially on defense, and shut down Chinese offense. Pau Gasol forced Ming's 5th personal and it was a key too.

Rudy is already a star in Spain and he should do well this year in Portland.

That's what this scoring DOES. You have an execution and a difficulty score. The execution starts at 10 and goes down for mandatory deductions for things you do poorly. The difficulty score rewards you for a difficult routine.

So if you do something difficult and miss part of it, the difficulty score should make up for a lower execution score. However, if you try something difficult and whiff it, too bad.

Watching the bits and pieces of gymnastics I have so far, I have no clue how they are arriving at their execution scores, because they do seem all over the place. I watch gymnastics hoping for another Kerry Strugg moment, not for who the judges decide is going to win.

Should have read ahead before making the prior post. I'm with these two on my feelings about gymnastics.

Synchronized Diving. I turned this bullshit on the other day and was appalled. I can't believe they wasted the gas to fly competitors over there for the event. May as well have a Streetfighter Turbo tourney for a gold medal.

[quote=Dark Cloud;1807264].... And unlike say, a Tony Parker, he doesn't seem able to create his own shot. Which I think is a weakness of a guy who wants to be a modern point guard. But that said, I'm sure someone will take him Top 10 in the NBA draft when he's eligible, just on the marketing potential.

Have you watched the youtube video in the game vs Russia 2 years ago (under 16yo Euro cup)? He scored 55 points, grabbed 24 rebounds, made 12 assists, and stole the ball 7 times.

Besides that high scoring performance, i must agree with you that he is not the typical NBA scoring PG, but more of an Euro PG, with incredible vision/IQ and who passes first, but Calderon is also the same style of euro PG and he is doing well in Toronto. He can become a top player in assist and steals, as unlike Calderon, Rubio is a top defender. He will need good scorers aronud to receive his passes. His best shooting is at the PT, with 80%. He debuted at 14 years old in the Spanish pro league and was elected 2008 best PG in Spanish pro league being only 18 years old, that set a new record.

He is eligible in the next draft, and already considered a top prospect by some websites (even top 3 pick, but i doubt it).

*cough* these three. Bishop and sterling basically put into more eloquent words what I had been trying to say earlier about how it frustrated me.

After all the years, the fact that he was playing in the pros at 14 is still a shock to my American sensibilities.

With the current scoring there wouldn't be a Strug moment or Mary Lou Retton moment for that matter. Neither would need to stick the landing if the difficulty was high enough and neither would be able to score enough regardless of how well executed if the difficulty wasn't high enough.

"let's award this Chinese Gymnast for her valiant attempt to levitate and do somersaults in thin air, nevermind that she's fallen on her face numerous times trying to pull off this stunt". :)

Well, the last Chinese man on the high bar did a bunch of releases (3, I believe) and some difficult stunts. I don't remember the first Chinese man on the high bar, but I think he may have done 2 releases. There are, of course, difficulty relating to the switches and legs through arms while swinging on the bar, but I don't think the announcers really went into that all too much. And, of course, there is a different group of judges that judges difficulty from the one that judges execution.

Btw, you realize that the 9.3 and 9.375 (of Spring) are the highest execution scores in that group up there.

Also, yes, different events are rated differently. As the announcers pointed out, the pommel horse is ALWAYS scored lower. Where a high 14 is a decent score.

i think the point is just that the execution + difficulty being added straight together is what people feel is messed-up. Maybe if difficulty had a 0.8x multiplier attached to it or something - as it is it seems too easy to make up for decent execution by throwing in a higher difficulty.

I don't want to see difficulty not matter AT ALL so that we just have people walking down the balance beam and doing a handstand say, but I think that the way it is weighted now is just not right. It ought to be possible to do a non-insanely difficult routine and do it with a 9.3 execution and get into the 16's, as opposed to doing a more difficult routine, barely scraping a 9, and getting a 16.

i guess what i really want though is announcers to explain better where all the deductions are - if they would at least tell me why somebody got a lower execution score I could probably live with the difficulty-bs. but it all seems so clandestine right now.

What some people feel is messed up ;). I actually like making difficulty and execution added together. Difficulty will never meet execution (unless someone tries an OMG, WTF routine), but it encourages more risky attempts.

Nope, it's that people have no freakin' clue how one routine earns one execution score while another earns a higher execution score despite having more obvious errors. It may be little things (like the lower score constantly had bad form), but people never know, and that leads to confusion.

I think there are lots of tiny errors, such as how far apart your hands are or other minor things that we don't really see. All of those tiny errors could add up to being more than the one big error in an otherwise flawless routine.

well then the judges should have to note what the errors were that received deductions and provide them to all the tv analysts so they can show us viewers in replay. we have the technology for it - no reason not to

I think that the TV analyists (or NBC) just doesn't care to go into that much detail about things.

Of course, Kerri Strug's moment was a a bit manufactured and unnecessary due to Bela Karolyi being unable to do math and NBC needing some promotion. Her first vault score was good enough to win the gold and her second vault score was virtually identical to her first when she fell on the landing. Go figure.

Yes, it was nice to see the men's team win a bronze without two of their best athletes competiting, but I'm just jingoistic enough to believe that American's should celebrate more for winning a bronze than the team that won gold celebrated. Act lik you've been there before!

Of course, if you win gold, celebrate all you want. My favorite line of the Olympics so far is when one of the guys on the 100 relay team was being interviewed afterward and spoke of the motivation they got from "the Frenchies" shooting their mouth off. That team had an amazing victory in shattering the world record in of the most dramatic races of the Olympics and they still didn't celebrate as much as the gymnastics team.

Indian pride - we finally won a goddamn individual gold medal after 80 years! Boo yeah!


A

Of course, in my new least favorite "sport" synchro diving, there were several dives where scores ranged from 4.5 to 8.5 on a 10 scale. How can two "qualified" judges come to such radical conclusions?

We need the technology to computerize judging Epyx was able to do it in 1984 for Summer Games.

Probably worth noting at this point that none of the members of the U.S. men's gymnastics team had ever been there before.

Freaking awesome. I haven't thought about that game in years. Epyx. I was the king of skeet shooting.

Back to the thread.

I have some questions about the gymnastics. Did any of the U.S. men like that Horton guy qualify for individual gold in gymnastics? And is it an all around competition so one person does all the events shown last night or are there medals awarded for each individual event, like one for the pommel horse, one for the blue mat, etc.

There is an all-around competition that I believe is tomorrow night and then individual event finals later on. All of the scores from last night do not count as those are separate competitions.

Perhaps judge A was judging synchronity and judge B was judging technique? I'm not a syncho expert, but as little as I know, I know they have judges for seperate parts of the dive.

but even within those there can be some wide spreads. i recall one case from synchro last night where one judge had a 4.5 for execution and the others were all 6 or 6.5 -- really if you're that poor a judge that you're that far off everyone else it's kinda ridiculous - and yes i know they get to drop the high and the low but still

The first two judges are execution for one diver. The next two judges are execution for the other diver. The remaining judges are synchronization.

What I don't like about the gymnastics judging is seeing judges talking on phones, talking to each other, and having that red-shirted 'head' judge over their shoulder working on the computer with them. In a subjectively judged sport, I'd vastly prefer the judges to have no communication with anyone until after they've recorded their scores.

Nor were they expected to be even close after losing arguably their top two stars.

Gymnastics scoring seems pretty good to me. Difficulty is already weighted less than execution... i don't think i saw any difficulty score higher than 7.2 while execution goes up to 10.

Really though are people actually arguing that they felt the American team performed better than the Chinese? It didn't even look close to my untrained eyes.

DOLA, although I do think it stinks that they all talk about the scoring before giving their scores and that it takes so long to do the scoring. The extensive use of technology feels wrong too, but it makes a certain amount of sense in a sport so fast.

that to me is what's most amazing. i mean you think in an ideal world you have your top 3 (whose scores are counting on all the rotations) be hamm, hamm, horton -- throw in bavsar or artimov or springs for one rotation each or something. you never see that other guy at all, and this team would have taken silver, if not potentially pushed the chinese for gold.

I think I was watching on NBC when one of the commentators was pissing me off. After one of the Chinese guys screwed something up, he was smiling. And the commentator goes off a bit (didn't sound angry or was yelling, but still) on how he doesn't like athletes smiling away mistakes, making a joking matter out of it, and how he knows this is how some people deal with it but he doesn't think it's right.

Anyone catch that part? Seemed kinda odd to me. I don't see anything wrong with smiling away disappointment. I know I've seen in in many sports, as kind of a "I can't believe that just happened" reaction...

There is a school of thought that you can't be taking the competition seriously if you smile after a mistake. Players get ripped for it all the time. When you make a mistake, you better break something to prove that you are upset about it:rolleyes:

I agree that I like the idea of this system better. I'm glad they award points for better routines. I find it a nice improvement over the past system of "Russians and Americans start with 9.5 and score within 0.5 of that, East Germans 9.2, etc". It does, in theory, award better routines with more points and I'm happy with that.

However, I thought that there were a couple of big arbitrary decisions:

1) Routines of similar elements were given higher difficulty scores to "favored" teams. Now, I realize I'm not a trained eye so maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see. As I said before, I wish I were comparing, say, the Romanians and the Germans- two teams I have no rooting interest for or against. That way there would be no unintentional bias clouding my judgement.

2) Scores need to be balanced across all elements. C'mon- vault is big points because it's basically jump, twist, land. There are only three elements, it last 10 seconds. This isn't to say I could get my ass up on a vault and do what they do. But it's unfair to compare that to a 2 minute long floor or high bar routine unless you give bigger deductions to silly, miniscule things. I wish they were not allowed slow motion instant replay- it's unfair- but if they're going to allow it for one thing- it should be for vault to view how straight a gymnast is, how close their legs are together, etc- give more elements to a simpler aparatus.

3) The biggest- judges seemed to really adjust their execution scores based on who was going. Might as well just use the old system. Taking the college football polls or making the convoluted BCS means nothing if you take the top 2 at the end of the season and play them against each other. You just used a more screwy system to arrive at the same result.

I guess if someone can answer this question for me, this might sit a little better: is difficulty determined ahead of time or at the time of the routine? IIRC, you have to turn in your routine ahead of time so they know if you skip an element (and the announcers seem to know what's coming when). If you know coming in that your routine is a 6 and someone else's is a 7- then it's a fair system, sort of. But if that's determined on the fly, as well, then that's just unfair ("I want to give them a 15, but the execution was bad so I'll just bump up the difficulty score")

SI

Or go yell at the media and tell them how passionate you are. Around here, we call that move "the Jose Guillen"

SI

I'm sure difficulty is determined beforehand.

The difficulty is determined beforehand so you can't change your routine to include more difficulty if you need it? The German guy last night needed a big score to beat the U.S. for bronze, but he couldn't do something more difficult to possibly get a higher score? I guess it would give too big of an advantage to the team going last?

My wife and I heard that and did a doubletake, too. Sounded like stupid announcing to me. Then again, I can't stand the gymnastics announcers- put them together with my already stated feelings about scoring and you find out why it drives me nuts.

The "play-by-play" guy with the deeper voice- he's ok. Again, he's like a decent play-by-play guy in baseball: you don't really notice him but that's not necessarily a bad thing. He does his job and that's that.

Then there's the woman announcer and I think they replaced her back around 2000 with a button board that the "play-by-play" guy just presses from time to time. She/it has the following responses: "Good/bad news for the Americans", "Aw, a little step there- that will be a deduction", and "She/he didn't quite stick the landing there". Basically, she/it's a one trick pony who cheers for the Americans while sounding catty in pointing out everyone's mistakes. I imagine that means she's a former American gymnast.

Then there's the high pitched guy who just talks down to the audience the entire broadcast. He was the one who made the comment above. He vacillates between pedantic and elitist. I'm not sure which is worse.

SI

This is from a story in the NYT, but it's confusing to me when the difficulty is determined. Certainly last night the announcers knew the difficulty of routines as they were happening, but maybe it's possible to add elements. The problem IMO would be whether someone missed an element or changed their routine to purposefully leave it out.

The announcer on CBC explained that it isn't just what elements they do, but in the order as well. For example, on rings he said that going from the move where they stick their legs out straight horizonally behind them, and then upwards into having their body upside down vertically, would get more points than doing the same two moves but the other way around. Harder to go up than down, I guess.

I've been hearing about this guy since that tournament, and the two problems I've heard are that he's not quick enough at this time to be a good NBA point guard (we saw how this killed Sarunas Jasikavecious in the NBA) and also that his contract might not allow him to go NBA next year. The quickness will hopefully come as he grows into his body and trains more, but the latter he might not enter the draft next year and wait until 2010. Two things that could affect it - a huge Olympics could get the hype high enough for an NBA team to pay the buyout, and contrarily if Brandon Jennings succeeds in Europe it could lessen the hype on Rubio.Heh, as KCChief pointed out, the Karolyi's forced her out on a broken ankle even though they mathematically had the competition sewn up, and NBC hyped it incredibly during prime time even though the actual competition took place 8 hours earlier and they clearly knew by that time it hadn't affected the outcome.
I don't think anyone is saying the US deserved Gold over the Chinese, and I have no way of knowing how good Japan was on 5 of the 6 rotations. Our pommel horse and floor routines were pretty poor, and I didn't even see the US on rings (although I don't see how we could come close to China there). Specifically on the high bar I think the US was better than China, and on that one rotation (US high bar/China vault) I didn't see how China was scored so much better they went from a point back to 2 in the lead. To my untrained eye, that was our best event and we nailed our routines, yet we lost ground to the favored team.
I think you turn in a routine, but then they can lower it if you skip an element. I would think you should be able to add in elements, and I agree with Jas_lov - that 3rd German guy should have tried to add some huge elements even if he had virtually no chance of hitting them. Nobody cares if you finish 4th or 8th, go for the bronze.

Oh well, time to watch the judging on reputation favor us (although that Shawn Johnson girl is phenomenal at landings and balance.)

Beijing may be the most unappealing location for the Olympics that I can remember. It's suppose to be a huge marketing tool for these countries and cities, but it isn't working for me.

both shawn johnson and nastia liukin are legit all-around gold-medal contenders - chelsea memmel would have been if she was not injured too

I'm still not quite sure I understand synchronized diving for leading off the primetime show.

SI

I'm still baffled by all this hatred for synch diving. It seems insanely difficult to do this.

Yeah, I don't really understand the hatred, either. I do think the solo diving is more interesting, as you usually see more complex dives, but it still takes a LOT more skill than I'll ever have in my life.


I think they're at the liberty of the Olympic schedule. I guess there isn't anything else going on "at this moment" that's more interesting. If I'm not mistaken, swimming is coming back at around 10 eastern and then it's gymnastics, a little later in the Beijing morning.

/tk

I suspected it was something like that with scheduling. Again, I don't really have anything against synchronized swimming- I just figured it's not really the big draw you want to start off your big show to keep people from changing the channel.

That said, the standard of "it takes a lot of skill" pretty much goes for anything in the Olympics ;)

Without trying to draw too much politics into this, I would figure they WOULDN'T have shown that interview with GWBush fairly early in the programming the other day. ;)

/tk

Touche :p

SI

that interview was fucking painful to watch - the guy is practically a comic character

I think the Aussies got screwed by the judges on the running forward dive. The announcers were saying 9, 9.5, 10 and it was much lower than that... and then the announcers don't even mention it.

And how does any of this affect the fact that a young woman went out there on a broken ankle and stuck the landing? How does any of this affect her courage or her performance under pressure?

Be as ticked off as you want at the coaches and NBC, she still impressed the hell out of me.

I dunno... I could see the guys of the NBA being pretty damn good at volleyball too. Just talking about what was discussed earlier. The USA could be so good at other sports if they weren't so stuck on BASKETBALL. You have the WORST chance at being an NBA basketball player yet the MOST kids with supreme natural talent, want to do that.

What is the Phelps schedule like over the next day or two?

Is he going for gold tonight?

Going for 2 golds.

Who knew James Carville was so good at volleyball?

The fact that everyone is wearing a suit of similar design doesn't say much about the actual suit. My understanding is that there's quite a lot of R&D that goes into tweaking a suit or a shoe, and that a company doesn't necessarily make their new design available to everybody. Certainly, everyone is going to try to copy each ohter but that doesn't mean that they do so successfully. I think there may be a sizable advantage to teams that have access to the top companies' products.

I think races are at 10:21 pm EST and 11:19 pm EST.

At least according to the schedule on ESPN.

Here's something I managed to find about the suits. It seems there is some unfair advantage to new suits, for example, coming out although not as bad as I feared it might be: High-Tech Swimsuits Approved by Olympic Committee Promise to Even the Competition | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

#411 runs kinda funny on the US girls Gymnastics team.

Under 7:00. Wow.

If all these Chinese girls are at least 16 years old then I'm 150 years old.

Well I guess the new lesson for international gymnastics competitions is to go with as high of a difficulty as possible. If you stumble? Who cares, it won't really hurt you anymore. Gymnastics used to be about perfecting above showboating, but not anymore...