Phelps is the best of all-time and the US women's gymnastics team pissed the gold medal down their leg. Sheesh.
Shawn Johnson is from West Des Moines IA which is a suburb of where I live so I've been watching this one very closely. It's been nothing but Shawn-mania here. Pretty freaking cool. I hope she does better in the all-around than the team did tonight.
Pretty impressive, especially considering all that baby fat he's got giggling around on him.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759
It was explained many times that they are simply inexperienced. Since the panel can't have judges from the countries of the competitors, the judges tend to come from countries that don't have good programs and therefore aren't as good at scoring and catching everything, etc.
The commentators spent days and days trying to insinuate something, when in the end they said it really was just that they believed that the judges were inexperienced.
As it is, the commentators were snide, condescending, and tended to "miss" some mistakes the american girls made, while greatly exaggerating others mistakes and downplaying any nice moves from the non-americans. "Well, Nastia has something similar in HER routine," etc.
The only real advantage the "home team" received was a morale one.
The only real advantage the "home team" received was a morale one.
And passports with a conveniently advanced age. Seriously, some of those Chinese girls don't even look twelve, let alone sixteen.
I agree that the commentary has been very biased, but that hasn't changed from year to year. There's been times they practically whoop and high-five when one of the competitors makes an unexpected mistake.
__________________ The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. -- Carlos Castaneda
other than the "lying about their ages" thing and the "the rules say minimum of turning 16 in the Olympic year" - what's the big deal about 14 year olds competing in gymnastics? Is lying the same as cheating - because to me cheating implies gaining or attempting to gain an advantage of some sort.
I agree that ethically the younger Chinese girls (if they are in fact younger) should not have competed. However, can someone tell me how being younger is some sort of competetive advangate? I played a lot of sports growing up, and at those ages, 2-3 years is a mountain of experience/growth/maturity. Are the older athletes (16-17 year olds) just more likely to break down or lose their flexibility/bounce/athleticism after a lifetime of gymnastics?
I think it has to deal with willingness to go after a routine that may hold more difficulty and more chance of getting hurt. I know when I was younger I'd take on the double black diamonds when we went skiing, now I'm so petrified of breaking something that I don't even go near black diamonds at all. They're also MUCH more limber - it's not healthy to train for certain events at younger ages, as china forces their kids to. In ballet we weren't allowed to go up on Pointe until you were at least 10, for fear of injuring developing muscles/bones etc. The same goes for gymnastics.
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