Olympics 2008

[The Ozzman]

It's only against the rules to share a medal in gymnastics, which is completely ludicrous

 

[Caecius]

Interesting article about the judges sucking and why China has such a huge gold medal lead.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/be...t/The-REAL-Olympic-medal-count?urn=oly,101537

Look, I don't know much about gymnastics, but I do know that landing a vault on two feet is better than landing one on two knees. Olympic gymnastics judges evidently disagree with me, as they awarded China's Cheng Fei a bronze medal yesterday even after she fell on her vault landing. American Alicia Sacramone finished fourth despite, you know, not falling.

And today, 12-year old 16-year old Chinese gymnast He Kexin won gold over Nastia Liukin based on an obscure tiebreaking rule. The two received the same score from the judges, but He won a tiebreak because an Australian judge apparently was watching a different competition.

Every judging break seems to have gone China's way during these Olympics. I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, I just think that judges are humans who are influenced by big names, fans and other external factors. Oh, and they're also terrible. Judged events will always be viewed with skepticism by those who lose for this reason, particularly those who lose to a member of the home delegation. (Think Roy Jones Jr. at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.)

It is because of this skewed inconsistency that Fourth-Place Medal introduces The Real 2008 Medal Count. Our medal count will tally medals won in sports decided on the field of play, not by a judge in a teal blazer.

The judged Olympic events we will ignore for our tally are: boxing, diving, equestrian, gymnastics, judo, taekwondo, trampoline and wrestling. We debated whether to include boxing, wrestling and the martial arts in the list, as they can be decided by competitors. However, because the judging is prone to error and shenaningans, we will include it.

The Real 2008 Medal Count

China: 22 gold; 11 silver; 11 bronze

United States: 21 gold; 19 silver; 21 bronze

As you can see, in the events where medals are determined by competitors rather than judges, the gold medal gap between China and the U.S. is greatly narrowed, and the total medal count is an American runaway. Counting the judged events, China has a commanding lead in golds. Hmmm... Nope, nothing fishy about that!

 

[rms]

that article is way to opinionated and just flawed =/

 

[Caecius]

Yeah, Beijing is gay this Olympics. If this was anywhere else, this wouldn't have happened. Not only that, the judges are from countries where gymnastics isn't that popular, which is a problem because that's not the case with other sports in the Olympics (I don't think)

Which is all judged events. And its interesting to see the medal count without the judged events.

 

[MasterOLightning]

It's an opinion piece.

The way the tiebreaker was done was stupid. I believe the first tiebreak is to drop the high and low score. That makes sense somewhat. Then the next tiebreak was to drop the next lowest score from each person. So it essentially rewards the player who had lower scores by taking them away.

 

[Caecius]

I didn't say it wasn't opinion based...I was just saying it was an interesting article.

 

[The Ozzman]

They should have just had them do another routine

 

[rms]

not everyone prepares for 2 routines and thats rather unfair

 

[The Ozzman]

Or do the same routine over again

 

[Valerie]

They have ties for every other sport, why can't they do it in gymnastics?

 

[The Ozzman]

The International Gymnastics Federation is full of gays

 

[grimmy82]

Didn't it come out that China was lying about the ages of their team members?

 

[The Ozzman]

Didn't it come out that China was lying about the ages of their team members?

I think it did, but it was retracted for obvious reasons

 

[grimmy82]

I think it did, but it was retracted for obvious reasons

There is no way that Gold medalist is 16. She looks 12, maybe even 10!

 

[The Ozzman]

10 is a stretch. I would say 12-13

 

[grimmy82]

I read in an article that her age "was verified with a passport"
Yeah like you totally can't get a fake passport

 

[MasterOLightning]

They have ties for every other sport, why can't they do it in gymnastics?

Ties are only in timed or measured sports apparently. Judged sports have tiebreakers. Some make more sense than others. In the men's vault there was a tie, but since they do two trials, they picked the guy with the best trial. That seemed much less arbitrary.

 

[sevag00]

I'm fuckin proud for Matthias Steiner, he lifted 258 kg, also proud for Yelena Isinbaeva, she beat her own record

 

[tagradh]

I haven't really paid any attention to the Olympics but... we seem to be doing okay this year, wtf?

I just looked at a chart and overall we have the 4th most medals. Seeing as we only have 65mil people and the US has 250mil odd, China 1bil and something and Russia 150mil. This has to be the best we've ever done haha.

 

[Alongside Death]

I did not read the thread but this years olympics aren't important for me, I mean Phelps has more medals than the whole fucking Polish team. China leads in medals but I find it shit after I heard about the new possibility of genetic boost which is nearly impossible to detect.