A fall on the entry!

Another disaster. She cost them .8 of a point on the balance beam and now she fell on the mat. They're already 1 point behind so it's pretty much over.

Sucks for her and the team. I do admire her for refusing to cry. At one point she saw the camera in her face just waiting for her to break down and you could see her steel herself again and refuse to give them what they wanted.

IMO, that's pretty tough for a 20-year-old woman that just went through what she went through in the last 30 minutes.

dola -

And right as I post that she starts to tear up. Still busting her ass to maintain composure, though.

Its not like she really cost them the gold... yet.

Yeah, NBC and their hyper-drama queen announcers love the cry. Love it when a gymnast won't give it to 'em, although I'd rate our overall team body language as "suicidal" at the moment.

Does our team practice on mats that are larger than this? Nobody can keep themselves in bounds.

I can't imagine the pressure they're under. China faltered too on the beam, but their higher difficulty allowed them to keep the one point lead. I do feel bad for her and she's holding it together as best she can.

Incidentally, not to take away from the other events -- but is it just me or is the balance beam 20x harder than anything else they do? I'm completely blown away that any human being can stay on that thing, even a tiny one.

That's the glory and the hell that is the new finals scoring system. before it, was 5 up, throw out your lowest score, top 4 score. Now, with the 3 up, 3 count system, one bad routine at a key moment is IT.

And China's first two mat performances were excellent so the gold is theirs. Can anyone understand what Bela Lugosi is saying? I think he was accusing half of the Chinese team of being under age, but I'm not sure.

This Chinese U12 team is pretty good. When does the varsity team go? ;)

SI

They just interviewed Sacramone and she held it together again when asked question after question about her mistakes. Then they interviewed the team and the reporter kept harping on her falls and Sacramone rolled her eyes. Just give it a rest already!

Michael "Secretariat" Phelps

Currently watching the live online coverage of Canada vs. China in baseball.
The commentator had me lol'ing with this after a Rheal Cormier strikeout: "I have to think it's been an awfully long time since someone fell down swinging at a Rheal Cormier pitch. Has to make the old guy feel pretty good."

My sister was in gymnastics for a few years (12-14, around those ages). One of the things that made her stop was that she was too scared to do the balance beam. They start them off with the board basically on the ground or an inch or two off the mat, but she just couldn't get over her fear of falling off it even with the beam on the ground.

It tickles me to remember that the Reds are still paying him. :banghead:

Someone needs to tell China that you don't get more points for losing 1-0 as opposed to 3-0. They're just sitting back and letting the action come to them against Brazil with no sense of urgency despite being down 1-0 with about 20 mins to go.

SI

Remind me again the reason for the 16 year age minimum?

I don't know if there's a good reason, but it's the rule. Who's to say other countries don't have kickass 12-year-old gymnasts? Breaking the rules is cheating, even if it's a stupid rule.

And I'm officially an Alicia Sacramone fan. She basically gave the bird to the jackass NBC coverage. Very nice. And very American. ;)

I think it's time to take Brian McBride out behind the shed and put him out of our misery

i love how people are saying "the Chinese gymnasts were able to produce passports that proved they weren't younger than 16". the same passports that very well were fabricated by a Chinese government bent on ensuring their best gymnasts that gave them the best odds of gold (regardless of age) went to the Olympics. as if a government itself can't fabricate something like this. most of those girls were not any older than 13. at 1st my wife and i were making fun of their badly overapplied makeup as not being fashion savvy enough, but now it's apparent it was a ruse to try to get the girls to look somewhat older.

i'll be really happy when these girls are stripped of their gold medals years from now when the truth comes out. the chinese are a farce. make believe child opening-ceremony singer. make believe opening-ceremony fireworks. make believe 16 year olds. a farce of a country.

I think we are a week into the Olympics now and Canada still has zero medals. Countries I've never even heard of (Tajikstan?) have won at least a solitary bronze. The other night CBC's announcers were trying to hype the fact that one of the American swimmers, who won a silver, has a parent who was born in the Maritime's. Kind of depressing, hopefully things pick up for us in the next few days.

It's not only "kind of" depressing, it is very depressing. To watch poor Brent Hayden bring the relay team from 5th or 6th to second place in his 200m only to see our fourth swimmer slide back down to 5th place was extremely sad... :(

FM

Hopefully one day Devoe Joseph can do good things for Canadian basketball.

I wonder what the point spread is on Michael Phelps vs Canada? And I'm not talking Gold's (he's gonna smoke us), but in total medals? I think we might be hard pressed to come away in double digits this year.

Not sure if you were serious but just in case, here is my guess.

I think the "official" reason seems to be the desire to keep gymnasts in the sport for a longer period of time. I mean it is called the woman's gymnastics team. It would probably be nice to have women on the team as opposed to girls. YMMV on what age they become women.

I think there are many more unofficial reasons though.

I was being serious. Thanks for the response. All I've heard is that they aren't 16, and that's the rule, but nothing about why that rule exists.

Is there an advantage to having under 16 athletes? Other than the fact that someone might have had a great competitor under 16 at home, do younger gymnasts have some advantage. All I've seen is this (on CNNSI), which sounds like a load of crap to me:

i'm not sure how much of an advantage it is, but the rules are the rules, and just b/c China is China doesn't mean they should be excepted from them

hopefully the chinese get stripped at some point in the future and the US girls get the gold

i assumed the advantage to having younger girls is that they're lighter (in theory) than older girls, being able to do flips and whatnot more easily than someone more "developed" (ie, more developed breasts, more muscle mass, etc). one article made a point of showing how one of the chinese girls weighs less than 80 lbs, it might've even said she was about 70 lbs. i took that to mean weight, or lack thereof, is a key element to success.

Better to send younger girls than the old-fashion way of just drugging them to delay puberty.

Well this may be a slippery path to go down but what the hell. There are certain things a 14 year old female body can do that a 17,18,19,20 year old female body can not. I can't speak from experience but I assume it is easier to control a 68 pound body while flipping through the air than a 100 pound body.

Is that rule new though? I don't follow gymnastics but watch it at the Olympics, and I thought that typically there were 12-14 year olds competing in the events. When did they institute the age limit?

And yes, I agree, I think the sport emphasizes young girls because they're lighter and more flexible. It's a sport that maturing doesn't really help in.

I believe ligaments are generally looser in younger girls as well, so it's easier to contort the body. That's why in a Chinese acrobatic show the most difficult tricks were done by pre-teen or early-teen girls.

The rule, though, is really more like a child labor law and I don't think the Chinese are following the intent of the law whether or not pre-sixteen girls are competing.

Source

Shows you how long it's been since I've paid attention, eh? Actually since I've had television reception.

this must be more rampant than we think it is.

here's a blurb about one of the chinese gymnasts, named He:

In the last day I have read in some places from females that were gymnasts that puberty threw their balance way out of whack. Not surprising, and that makes using underage gymnasts a huge advantage.

I mean, let's be completely honest and try not to be pervs. One can easily imagine that it is much easier to keep the first example below balanced on a 4" wide beam than the second example:

the one on the top looks exactly like what a tweener (too old to be a child, too young to be a teen, think the 10-13 age range) looks like when they put on too much makeup to look older.

i hope someone blows up China's spot. this is just atrocious.

No way that that Chinese gymnast is 16.

By the way, Alicia is pretty attractive in that picture. Attractive in a completely heterosexual way of course. :)

Is the age limit rule for all gymnasts or just the females? Also is gymnastics the only sport where there is such an age limit?

I know there were some 14 or 15 year old divers the other night.

For those that think weightlifting is a glamorous sport...........

I'd rather Peter Nowak, Bob Bradley and 90% of the US Soccer braintrust is leading the way to the firing line.

shawn johnson, alicia sacramone, samantha peszak, and even nastia liukin all have the potential to grow up to be beautiful young women (in a few years)

then again, alicia is already what...20? so she is a beautiful young woman already - when she's done stunting her body via training i think that will be even more apparent

and Phelps was 15 in Australia 8 years ago... It might be a gymnastics things.

FM

she was born in December 1987 (per wikipedia) so yeah, 20. And I agree, she is very nice to look at.

FM

Anyone inspired to up their work out routine after watching the Olympics?

I've got to admit, after hearing that Michael Phelps trains for 5 hours a day, I decided that I'm going to try to work out for 2 hours a day.

When someone pays me to work out that much, I'll work out that much. I don't have a 2 hour block to workout in between work, kids, eating, and sleeping.