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2008 Beijing Olympics

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Buckeyeskickbuttocks;1233829; said:
I must say.... they're gonna drop Softball and yet they are willing to have table tennis and trampoline as Olympic events? Odd.

I won't pretend to know the first thing about gymnastics or diving, but I can say that the once every 4 years that I watch these events, gymnastics credibility gets worse and worse. Diving tends to stay the same, credibility wise. Each dive pretty much looks the same to me, and the chick announcer drives me crazy, but it seems pretty reasonably judged. Gymnastics, on the other hand, seems more and more bizarre. For me, when one chick falls on her face and one chick does not, and the one that did wins a medal and the one that did not does not, there's a problem with the scoring. And the tie break is ridiculous. First, there's no real reason to not issue two golds, especially when you issue two silvers or bronzes. Other sports have no issues giving the same medal in a dead heat, nor should they. Second, in a judged event, the very notion that you can refine the score somehow is absurd. If they're tied, and you'll not accept ties, you should send em out for another go at it. Or... jello wrestling... if it's not too "perpy"
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Any athletic event where there are judges does not qualify as a "sport" in my humble opinion.
 
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Thump;1233889; said:
Any athletic event where there are judges does not qualify as a "sport" in my humble opinion.
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So... any athletic contest where there isn't a score doesn't count? Let's remove Diving, Ice Skating, Skating, Skateboarding, Snowboarding, several types of Gymnastics, and tons of other sports from any type of contest. Why? Because there's no judge needed for groundhog killing!

Ok, sarcasm aside. Thump, these accomplishments require so much body control and so much training that it wouldn't be fair to take them away. I did diving in High School, and I know only the slightest percentage of the training these guys go through and it was tough. These are tougher sports than many that people root for... who suffers more training and needs better endurance, a baseball player or a gymnast?

By your statement, the fat guy on the mound is competing in a sport, and the guy who's committed his entire life to gymnastics has wasted it.

Sorry, I disagree, maybe you should have done a "judged sport" in your life and you would understand that you don't know what your competition is, you do know that you need to be perfect. Every team in sports sees who they need to beat, those in judged sports just know they need to be unbeatable.
 
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billmac91;1233882; said:
ya it was close....i don't think he expected to be there, and he was a douchebag last week.

Anything close between China and another country automatically went to China in gymnastics this year. Kind of takes the excitement out when you know if China performs well, it's over.
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Fuckin' commie bastards.
 
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Thump;1233892; said:
ESPN - Opening Ceremony performers faced harsh conditions - Olympics
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Never will I be a Chinese apologist, but come on, this article's pretty ridiculous...

If they're happy to do it, they're happy to do it. End of story. They weren't handcuffed and shipped by the train load to an unknown camp. They are volunteers.

I do speak mandarin, and I know that it is very very easy to translate mandarin into english and have it sound harsh and cruel by American standards.

I tire of this type of journalism, I really do. It's the same as watching FOX for our "War in Iraq" coverage.

Then again, it is ESPN - what else can you expect.
 
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Buckeyeskickbuttocks;1233829; said:
...

First, there's no real reason to not issue two golds, especially when you issue two silvers or bronzes. Other sports have no issues giving the same medal in a dead heat, nor should they. Second, in a judged event, the very notion that you can refine the score somehow is absurd. If they're tied, and you'll not accept ties, you should send em out for another go at it. Or... jello wrestling... if it's not too "perpy"
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Fully agree. A great example is the women's 100m finals. If the IOC is willing to call a dead heat and award two silver medals when a fully automated timing system that measures times to the 1/1000 of a second can't separate a close call then judging events should be willing to do the same... especially since there is much larger room for error.
 
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Oneshot;1233945; said:
Then again, it is ESPN - what else can you expect.
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From a sister company of ABC, who probably stands to gain millions of dollars in prime time viewing revenue if some negative reporting about the Olympics dampens enough opinions about the Olympics to affect how many viewers are watching?

If anybody thinks that ESPN's focusing on the negative aspects of the Olympics isn't part of some Disney/ABC/ESPN corporate strategy to impact NBC's Olympic ratings, I'm selling some bridges.

I've watched very little ESPN the last week and a half, but I saw that their ticker was always stating the exact start times for all of Phelps's races - the intent being for people to only have to watch NBC for a couple of minutes in order to watch Phelps.
 
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20track2-600.jpg

Bolt Breaks World Record and Wins Gold Again



Starting in Lane 5, Bolt took the lead in the first 50 meters and won in devastating fashion, pulling away from the field and winning by several meters in a time of 19.30. Michael Johnson had held the record of 19.32, set in 1996 at the Atlanta Games.
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It appears there were a bunch of disqualifications in that race. Here was the original order of finish:
1 - Usain Bolt - JAM - 19.30
2 - Churandy Martina - Netherlands Antilles - 19.82
3 - Wallace Spearmon - USA - 19.95
4 - Shawn Crawford - USA - 19.96
5 - Walter Dix - USA - 19.98

Wallace Spearmon was first DQ'd for running on his inside lane line most of the curve and stepping out of his lane towards the end of the curve. This moved Crawford up to the bronze medal. About half an hour later it was announced Martina also ran out of his lane on the curve and was DQ'd. Crawford ends up with the silver and Dix ends up with the bronze.

As for Bolt... absolute domination. The first athlete to win the 100-200 double since Carl Lewis in '84 and did both in world record time. It's hard to imagine what he can accomplish in the coming years... amazing!
 
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bkochmc;1234163; said:
It appears there were a bunch of disqualifications in that race. Here was the original order of finish:
1 - Usain Bolt - JAM - 19.30
2 - Churandy Martina - Netherlands Antilles - 19.82
3 - Wallace Spearmon - USA - 19.95
4 - Shawn Crawford - USA - 19.96
5 - Walter Dix - USA - 19.98

Wallace Spearmon was first DQ'd for running on his inside lane line most of the curve and stepping out of his lane towards the end of the curve. This moved Crawford up to the bronze medal. About half an hour later it was announced Martina also ran out of his lane on the curve and was DQ'd. Crawford ends up with the silver and Dix ends up with the bronze.

As for Bolt... absolute domination. The first athlete to win the 100-200 double since Carl Lewis in '84 and did both in world record time. It's hard to imagine what he can accomplish in the coming years... amazing!
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Can he play Cornerback?
 
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Any athletic event where there are judges does not qualify as a "sport" in my humble opinion.
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Few sports are more subject to the whims of the "judges" than football. (Thate was a fumble in the Illinois game, wasn't it?)

For my money objective and fair judging is a better way to select the "best" team or individual in most sports - including football, basketball, etc.

I know that sounds completely socialist, but give it a chance. How many football games have been played where the winner does so by a fluke. An unforced fumble. A bad refs call. If you could have objective judging (avoiding bias is the real problem) why not put in their hands who the best team really was? It only sounds crazy because we have accepted another system. We are conditioned to celebrate the "winner" - not the better team.

What I can't understand in regards to diving, gymnastics, etc. is that with today's technology why can't they let the judges watch a slow mo replay and judge that? It would slow down the process, but if you can be fair to an athlete who has worked for four years isn't it worth it?
 
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