2008 Beijing Olympics

[scooter1369]

Anyone else notice NBC's ridiculous commentating during the events last night?

Seems like every Chinese routine was scored 'much too high,' while every US routine was scored 'much too low.'

I can already tell the announcers are disappointed with all the age controversy... But there's no need to make it unprofessional and be so obviously biased.

Call it what you want, they were pretty accurate. No deductions for balance checks on the beem? none? wow.

 

[fourteenandoh]

did you watch it, or just listen to it? it was pretty obvious something was going on.

 

[Bucklion]

Mr. Choke whining about his oppoent.

Blake rips foe after Olympic tennis loss - Olympics - Yahoo! Sports

It's an unwritten rule, especially in doubles, to call yourself if the ball ticks your racket. That said, this wasn't doubles, and you stop calling your own matches in high school. There are already about 10 too many people around the court for a professional match as it is, so if no one picked up on it, then they didn't, and the point goes to Gonzo. It wasn't match point. I agree, the bitterness is starting to look silly.

 

[PlanetFrnd]

I thought that the announcers were correct about Liukin's strangely low score on the vault and Johnson's on the bars (IIRC)

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

Call it what you want, they were pretty accurate. No deductions for balance checks on the beem? none? wow.

did you watch it, or just listen to it? it was pretty obvious something was going on.

The problem being that how many viewers REALLY know enough about the nuances of scoring to be able to state unequivocally that a score is too low or too high? Or do most of us just trust the announcers to provide unbiased commentary and base our perspective off of that?

It's easy to see balance checks and steps/hops on the landings, but what about all the other, more subtle, nuances that result in the rest of the deductions?

I'm not saying the scoring was or was not biased, just that the people telling us it IS biased may have a very skewed perception. And even if it is their opinion, harping on it constantly is NOT the commentary I'm interested in hearing.

Besides, the Americans won anyways, so any alleged bias sure wasn't very effective. These folks allegedly trying to fix the results suck as it. :p


On a side note, it would be fantastic if the judges had to itemize their deductions. Then you can really see what the deductions were and objectively compare what you think should be a deduction versus what was taken as a deduction. I would be very interested in seeing that.

 

[OCBucksFan]

The problem being that how many viewers REALLY know enough about the nuances of scoring to be able to state unequivocally that a score is too low or too high? Or do most of us just trust the announcers to provide unbiased commentary and base our perspective off of that?

Aaah damnit, I am actually going to agree with Bucky Katt on this one. I am not a gymnast, and I can't really say what's correct and what's not, also, for me to make an unbiased opinion is tough as well. I thought the american girls looked better doing their routines, but that's because they weren't dressed in those horrible Chinese outfits, or maybe it could be because the tiny Chinese girls kinda creeped me out. Who knows.

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

Aaah damnit, I am actually going to agree with Bucky Katt on this one. I am not a gymnast, and I can't really say what's correct and what's not, also, for me to make an unbiased opinion is tough as well. I thought the american girls looked better doing their routines, but that's because they weren't dressed in those horrible Chinese outfits, or maybe it could be because the tiny Chinese girls kinda creeped me out. Who knows.

OCBF agreeing with me in one thread and OCBW agreeing with me in another?

God help me if my opinions are falling in line with the opinions of these lunatics.

 

[BayBuck]

I don't really see a couple isolated incidents of complaining as part of a larger trend of bitterness or poor sportsmanship, as some seem to be suggesting they are, especially since in each case there is generally something to those complaints. The Chinese gymnasts probably are too young, the scoring does seem to be uneven at times, and the ball did appear to hit Gonzalez's racket. These people are frustrated and constantly have microphones in their faces, things get said in the heat of the moment, I'm for one am not holding it against them.

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

I don't really see a couple isolated incidents of complaining as part of a larger trend of bitterness or poor sportsmanship, as some seem to be suggesting they are, especially since in each case there is generally something to those complaints. The Chinese gymnasts probably are too young, the scoring does seem to be uneven at times, and the ball did appear to hit Gonzalez's racket. These people are frustrated and constantly have microphones in their faces, things get said in the heat of the moment, I'm for one am not holding it against them.

I'm not suggesting it was some sort of trend that all of the Americans are whiners or anything like that. It was just frustrating to me that the announcers last night harped on the scores seemingly constantly, only taking a break when they would throw it back to the studio so that Bela Karolyi could harp on it, too.

To me, it really took away from just how well the girls performed last night. They were tremendous, but the announcers spent more time talking about how low their scores were and how high the Chinese scores were than they did talking about the actual routines.

 

[BayBuck]

I'm not suggesting it was some sort of trend that all of the Americans are whiners or anything like that. It was just frustrating to me that the announcers last night harped on the scores seemingly constantly, only taking a break when they would throw it back to the studio so that Bela Karolyi could harp on it, too.

To me, it really took away from just how well the girls performed last night. They were tremendous, but the announcers spent more time talking about how low their scores were and how high the Chinese scores were than they did talking about the actual routines.

Well, I will agree the announcers can get pretty annoying about it--the scoring can be pretty screwy, but they really don't need to be advocating for the American athletes from their TV booth.

 

[OCBucksFan]

I don't really see a couple isolated incidents of complaining as part of a larger trend of bitterness or poor sportsmanship, as some seem to be suggesting they are, especially since in each case there is generally something to those complaints. The Chinese gymnasts probably are too young, the scoring does seem to be uneven at times, and the ball did appear to hit Gonzalez's racket. These people are frustrated and constantly have microphones in their faces, things get said in the heat of the moment, I'm for one am not holding it against them.

If bitching and whining about losing is wrong, I don't wanna be right. Oh yeah, MRoss, fuck you for winning the trivia contest, you're never gonna make my friends list if you beat me by like 50+ questions.

 

[BB73]

In the gymnastics, I thought some of the early scores were questionable, but I think some of that was missed because live swimming was being shown, so it was tough to get a feel for the scoring in an entire rotation. The scoring in the last two rotations seemed fine to me, and not just because the US finished 1-2 and the announcers stopped bitching (I'm no expert, but I come up with a score in my head before seeing what the judges do, and in the last two rounds most scores were close to what I thought they should get).

Overall, I think the judges are still getting used to the separate difficulty and execution scores. If a routine's execution is a 9.0, the person doing the tougher routine might have a 7.0 instead of a 6.0 on the difficulty. So that score is whole point higher, which is a helluva lot. But it seems to me that the judges give less deductions in the execution score for the tougher routines, giving the harder routines a double bump.

I think that's generally been true for both the men and the women, regardless of country.

In the tennis, I'm assuming Blake wasn;t allowed to ask for a review? I didn't see the match, just a replay of the highlights. Things like double bounces and deflections off the racket/player should simply be added to the replay challenge system. It could have been corrected on the spot if Blake saw/heard it live and asked for a review (I thought the deflection was clearly visible on the replay).

 

[Bucklion]

I don't really see a couple isolated incidents of complaining as part of a larger trend of bitterness or poor sportsmanship, as some seem to be suggesting they are, especially since in each case there is generally something to those complaints. The Chinese gymnasts probably are too young, the scoring does seem to be uneven at times, and the ball did appear to hit Gonzalez's racket. These people are frustrated and constantly have microphones in their faces, things get said in the heat of the moment, I'm for one am not holding it against them.

My point about Blake is that it was one point. an important on yes, but one point. I played competative tennis for a lot of years, and I got really pissed every time I lost. There's a difference between saying "I think I got hosed on that call" and saying things like "He's a great player who mostly plays by the rules". One is frustration, the other is questioning the integrity of your opponent, which is a more serious thing to do. Now, maybe the guy is a scumbag who knew the ball hit is racket, but unless that is obvious, you come off looking like not only a whiner, but someone who is impuning the integrity of a competitor just because you lost. That looks bad, and is bad.

As for the gymnastics, 5:30 comes really early, so I didn't get to watch last night. I do know that what I heard from Bella and Mrs. Bella the other night after the team comptition sounded like, well, whining, and being a sore loser. She didn't hit a perfect routine and get hosed...she fell...twice. Period. End of story. The fact you can bouce a few times and still take a silver says something about how good you still are, so leave it at that. Everyone is frustrated when they lose...but just like Frenchy Le-Dickwad before the relay, it's best to keep your mouth shut about it, before or afterwards.

 

[Bucklion]

In the gymnastics, I thought some of the early scores were questionable, but I think some of that was missed because live swimming was being shown, so it was tough to get a feel for the scoring in an entire rotation. The scoring in the last two rotations seemed fine to me, and not just because the US finished 1-2 and the announcers stopped bitching (I'm no expert, but I come up with a score in my head before seeing what the judges do, and in the last two rounds most scores were close to what I thought they should get).

Overall, I think the judges are still getting used to the separate difficulty and execution scores. If a routine's execution is a 9.0, the person doing the tougher routine might have a 7.0 instead of a 6.0 on the difficulty. So that score is whole point higher, which is a helluva lot. But it seems to me that the judges give less deductions in the execution score for the tougher routines, giving the harder routines a double bump.

I think that's generally been true for both the men and the women, regardless of country.

In the tennis, I'm assuming Blake wasn;t allowed to ask for a review? I didn't see the match, just a replay of the highlights. Things like double bounces and deflections off the racket/player should simply be added to the replay challenge system. It could have been corrected on the spot if Blake saw/heard it live and asked for a review (I thought the deflection was clearly visible on the replay).

I don't know how they'd review that...if it was a "tick" as we used to call it, there'd be no way to tell for sure.

 

[jlb1705]

I do think that the broadcast last night featured a little too much hand-wringing about the scoring.

As somebody who only knows as much about gymnastics as you can learn from watching once every four years, it seems to me that when one routine gets a "low" score with very few errors that are visible to the untrained eye, while another routine that includes plainly visible errors gets a higher score, it raises issues about irregularities.

I don't think there was any bias at play, but in a sport that relies on judging, at an event that has been marred in the past by inconsistent or unscrupulous judging in various sports including boxing and figure skating. I think more transparency is called for. Maybe these questions would diminish if people knew where the deductions come from and how that is applied to the scoring in each routine instead of leaving it to hack commentators to try to interpret it for us. Who knows, it may lend the perception of a little more integrity to their sport, and maybe an increased understanding an level of engagement among spectators.

For all their efforts to improve things, I think scoring is even less transparent now than it used to be. At least in the past you know what scores were coming from what judges, and that athletes from Western countries were gonna get crappy scores from Eastern bloc judges, and vice versa.