Olympics, Day 10
Aug. 23rd, 2004 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smofbabeCheers to the U.S. women's softball team, which won the gold today after outscoring opponents throughout the tournament 51-1 -- and that one run scored in their last game in the sixth inning. Can you say "dominating"?
Back to gymnastics, where I remain creeped out by the Romanian gymnasts' bizarre style of excessively arching their backs so that their chests stick way out, ruining for me an otherwise impressive gold-medal-winning balance beam performance by Catalina Ponor. If there was an award for least-Barbielike leotard, she would have won that, too. See whether you agree (although the photo doesn't show that the dark material also sparkled).
Still more judging controversy erupted on the men's gymnastics front, this time in the individual events. The crowd was so upset about the score for the high bar routine by popular Russian Alexei Nemov that they booed and catcalled for over 5 minutes. Amazingly, this prompted a judges conference and the Malaysian and Canadian judges actually changed their originally way-too-low score, but the crowd was not appeased. They only calmed down a bit when Nemov himself got up and motioned them quiet several times.
Guess who was next up and had to follow this chaos? Poor U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm, who's already had controversies enough at this Olympics to last a lifetime. As in the all-around, though, he came through with an impressive performance despite the pressure. For even more fun, Italy's Igor Cassina, who came afterward, tied Hamm's score but won the gold on a tiebreaker. Hamm's brother Morgan, also in the competition, finished out of the medals thanks to... a tiebreaker for third. Nemov, despite the changed scores, came in fifth.
The men's all-around gymnastics controversy also continues: to recap, the Koreans are claiming that Yang Tae Young's parallel bar routine was given a start value that was .1 too low. Had his score been adjusted to reflect that value, he would have won the gold over Paul Hamm. However, the Koreans did not make the protest on the floor as required so although everyone agrees that a mistake was made, they're not obligated to do anything about it. The solution being bandied about unofficially is to award a second gold.
I agreed with commentator Tim Daggett the other night when he said that changing marks after the fact could lead down a very slippery slope. Sure enough, Hamm's coach reviewed the tape of Yang's routine, which shows (as explained in play-by-play by Daggett during the coverage tonight) that the Korean had four holds on the bars, exceeding the maximum of three, which is a mandatory .2 deduction that would have put him in third anyway.
Speaking of the TV coverage, I really wish NBC did not feel obligated to show us the complete medal ceremonies for the American winners. They could probably show highlights from another sport or two during the time it takes to play the national anthems. I can understand a brief shot of an athlete wiping away tears or blowing the words or something, but the entire ceremony?
Back to gymnastics, where I remain creeped out by the Romanian gymnasts' bizarre style of excessively arching their backs so that their chests stick way out, ruining for me an otherwise impressive gold-medal-winning balance beam performance by Catalina Ponor. If there was an award for least-Barbielike leotard, she would have won that, too. See whether you agree (although the photo doesn't show that the dark material also sparkled).
Still more judging controversy erupted on the men's gymnastics front, this time in the individual events. The crowd was so upset about the score for the high bar routine by popular Russian Alexei Nemov that they booed and catcalled for over 5 minutes. Amazingly, this prompted a judges conference and the Malaysian and Canadian judges actually changed their originally way-too-low score, but the crowd was not appeased. They only calmed down a bit when Nemov himself got up and motioned them quiet several times.
Guess who was next up and had to follow this chaos? Poor U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm, who's already had controversies enough at this Olympics to last a lifetime. As in the all-around, though, he came through with an impressive performance despite the pressure. For even more fun, Italy's Igor Cassina, who came afterward, tied Hamm's score but won the gold on a tiebreaker. Hamm's brother Morgan, also in the competition, finished out of the medals thanks to... a tiebreaker for third. Nemov, despite the changed scores, came in fifth.
The men's all-around gymnastics controversy also continues: to recap, the Koreans are claiming that Yang Tae Young's parallel bar routine was given a start value that was .1 too low. Had his score been adjusted to reflect that value, he would have won the gold over Paul Hamm. However, the Koreans did not make the protest on the floor as required so although everyone agrees that a mistake was made, they're not obligated to do anything about it. The solution being bandied about unofficially is to award a second gold.
I agreed with commentator Tim Daggett the other night when he said that changing marks after the fact could lead down a very slippery slope. Sure enough, Hamm's coach reviewed the tape of Yang's routine, which shows (as explained in play-by-play by Daggett during the coverage tonight) that the Korean had four holds on the bars, exceeding the maximum of three, which is a mandatory .2 deduction that would have put him in third anyway.
Speaking of the TV coverage, I really wish NBC did not feel obligated to show us the complete medal ceremonies for the American winners. They could probably show highlights from another sport or two during the time it takes to play the national anthems. I can understand a brief shot of an athlete wiping away tears or blowing the words or something, but the entire ceremony?
