[Cougar]

Hoosier, the basic point without going into too much detail is that as I said before whilst the Chinese performances were not executed as well as the US ones, the specific example would be the mens high bar, the Chinese racked up the difficulty level by putting in lots of things that are technically difficult but don't look either hard or impressive. In the mens high bar the American guy looked amazing whipped around the bar like a chimp and hit the twists and dismounts with height and agility, but most of his contact with the bar was in conventional grip, where as the Chinese guy looked less impressive he did lots of reverse grips and dislocates etc which rack up the difficulty score which then informs the execution score. So a difficult average execution would almost certainly beat a relatively straighforward well executed routine.

[HoosierDaddy]

I was including the difficulty factor Cougar. That was in the mens side as well, which I said was pretty fairly judged in my eyes.

But my own two eyes saw differently in the women's Team competition. Look at the Beam routines, and tell me that China didn't make out better than they should have with all the balance checks that weren't counted. When the two difficulties are even, or are higher, like for the Americans on Beam, it doesn't make sense. Just watch the beam routines, and the individual vault. Tell me something isn't wrong there.

But, likely nothing I say will convince you what I saw, and nothing you say will convince me of what I didn't see.

Agree to disagree, I guess?

[Cougar]

I watched the beam routines, once it had been explained to me I was OK with the result, aparently some of the Americans weren't completing the compulsory sevtions properly, even though their tumbling and stuff was fists class.

To our uneducated eyes the USA looked better but I think it was pretty even and maybe a tiny bit of home bias came into it, but that tiny advantage is natural.

The fighting sports seem to exagerate the reations of the home crowd. I'm not even certain the judges realise they are biasing the result.

[caladanbrood]

With regards to what we were trying to work out earlier... http://news.bbc.co.u.../uk/7576446.stm

Quote

TOTAL MEDALS WON
RANK COUNTRY TOTAL
1 United States 100
2 China 83
3 Russia 53
=4 Australia 41
=4 Great Britain 41
=6 France 33
=6 Germany 33
8 South Korea 26
=9 Japan 24
=9 Italy 24



POINTS SCORED (THREE FOR GOLD, TWO FOR SILVER, ONE FOR BRONZE)
RANK COUNTRY TOTAL
1 China 212
2 United States 190
3 Russia 101
4 Great Britain 89
5 Australia 77
6 Germany 67
=7 France 56
=7 South Korea 56
9 Japan 48
10 Italy 45


POPULATION PER MEDAL
RANK COUNTRY TOTAL
1 Bahamas 307,451
2 Jamaica 311,592
3 Slovenia 401,542
4 New Zealand 463,717
5 Australia 502,459
6 Armenia 593,717
7 Belarus 645,717
8 Estonia 653,803
9 Norway 663,499
10 Lithuania 713,041


GDP - BILLION DOLLARS PER MEDAL
RANK COUNTRY TOTAL
1 North Korea 0.36
2 Jamaica 0.53
3 Zimbabwe 0.85
4 Armenia 1.28
5 Georgia 1.29
6 Tajikistan 1.40
7 Krygzstan 1.41
8 Mongolia 1.57
9 Togo 2.21
10 Belarus 2.46


NUMBER OF ATHLETES AT GAMES PER MEDAL WON
RANK COUNTRY TOTAL
1 Uzbekistan 2
2 Jamaica 2.95
3 Panama 3
3 Togo 3
5 Zimbabwe 3.25
6 Afghanistan 4
7 Indonesia 4.8
8 Georgia 5.83
9 US 5.95
10 Tajikistan 6.5

I think the points one is probably the best indication of how well people do.

[Dancer+]

The points score is by far the best judge and should be the international standard. It loses GB a place but at the end of the day, who cares?

[Binder of Demons]

Cult of Dessembrae+;371853 said:

We're (Us English) also notoriously bad at celebrating and dwelling on our victories whereas we'll dwell on our losses for years, generally.

Ahh, since the football/soccer season has kicked off recently, I feel obliged to point out 1966. The amount of crowing that still goes on about that belies your above statement

[Binder of Demons]

Was curious as to what people have made of the olympics coverage. I haven't been on this thread much since the coverage here in New Zealand is pretty shit to be honest.

They don't tell you what sports they are going to show half the time, and then make seemingly arbitrary decisions as to what to show. I thought it was an unwritten rule that the track takes precedence over the silly sports (unless your home nation is involved.. I can understand that). A couple of nights ago they showed the womens water polo between the USA and the Netherlands instead of the Womens 200m final!!!! And then showed us that recorded. Now they'll claim that you could have watched it online but that forgets the useless broadband supply here.

Also I wish we could have had the BBC athletics commentators, since they at least know their stuff (or the Eurosport guys if they are allowed to do the olympics). THe Irish broadcaster RTE was always pretty good too so maybe I've just been spoiled over the years. I was appalled by the ineptitude of the New Zealand guys. I mean, I haven't followed athletics since i came down to NZ, but i seemed to have more knowledge than these guys. And it's not my job. It really pisses me off when they don't seem to know their stuff for an event that hasn't exactly popped up out of the blue.
As for the sideline interviewer, how about asking the Irish 200m sprinter about how it feels to be the only white guy to make it into the semi-finals!? And following that up with a "how are you able to run so quickly?". In fairness he did well enough with the responses by being dumbfounded by Q No1, and thanking his parents for his genetic make up for Q No.2. But seriously, that woman shouldn't be allowed near a microphone.

So how have things been where you are watching?

[HoosierDaddy]

Binder of Demons;373537 said:

As for the sideline interviewer, how about asking the Irish 200m sprinter about how it feels to be the only white guy to make it into the semi-finals!?
So how have things been where you are watching?

1. Evidently, biased
2. Your question is pretty darn racist.
3. I kind of enjoy just about anything they throw at me, it helps me learn new sports, which I always enjoy.
4. The U.S. has a policy that a medal event takes precedence over a non-medal event.
However, I imagine that in N.Z. you guys are getting your coverage almost live, whereas we have a 12 hour difference here. NBC has a lot more control over what they show, and what they can edit out for brevity, than N.Z. probably has.
5. USA! USA! USA!

[Cougar]

Another bad decision just went to China in the Taekwondo, they have to be taking the piss, the GB girl kicked her in the head which is as clear a score as possible and they didn't give it her, unbelievable.

I listened to a hilarious interview with Will Ferrel the other day on the BBC whenthey asked him about the Olympics he just said we all know China are cheating, giving out new birth certificates to the gymnasts, computer enhancing the opening ceremony. It was done in a funny way but I wondered what people thought.

Are we being predjudiced against the Chinese, do we think they are engaged in wholesale state endorsed cheating. I've heard a few times that the weightlifters for example are being effectively bred on performance enhancing drugs prior to entering competitions and then getting clean before they come to the attention of the IOC and world doping controls.

Is this just sour grapes from the west, we are so used to a virtual clean sweep from White, African and Afro-Caribean/Americans that we can't accept the Chinese can compete in anything except ping pong and badminton. Does the disbelief in China's performances go back to long held predjudices about the physical prowess of Asian races?

I think the answer is 'yes'

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

China's in trouble! That girl is only 14!

[Slum]

Did they prove it, RLY?

[Mentalist]

W00T!!!
Ukraine picked up another 2 golds and is back in top 10!!! (tied for 9th place with Italy in total medas)

now, if we can JUST last there one more day....

Also, we seem to have broken our "23 medals every Summer Olympics" curse, that's been there for 3 consecutive olympics--27 medals right now.
ofc, the quality's down a bit--usually we rack up 9 or 10 golds (Too bad Klochkova retired), but w/e.
Just hope we can last in top 10 one more day... there's virtually 0 events (save the marathon), where UA's athletes will be competing tomorrow...

[caladanbrood]

Cougar;373573 said:

Another bad decision just went to China in the Taekwondo, they have to be taking the piss, the GB girl kicked her in the head which is as clear a score as possible and they didn't give it her, unbelievable.

And instead of moaning about it, Team GB just made a simple appeal about it, and the result was changed, so she won the Bronze. Nice and simple, so if there are obvious errors made, they do correct them

[Cougar]

Well now that they are over did what did y'all think?

I'm with one of my heroes Michael Johnson about the track & field meet, when you take away Bolts antics there wasn't a whole lot to shout about, there was a litany of poor performances from big names and in terms of standard several of the events have not progressed at all in years, thinking of all the jumps (bar the womens pole vault) and some of the long and middle distance events. The relays were laughable as well.

In terms of all round the only thing that I found personally a bit demoralising was the Chinese winning so much; I've nothing against them it's just there is something so soulless about the process of picking the sports you think you can win in and the state pumping cash into them and using any means necessary.

I wonder if they will be as interested in London and whether we'll be saying something similar about the GB team?