well, sure. i understand that. but who knows. the judges were sitting right by the vault, so they can see everything. we only get to see it a couple of times. i can't even remember what they did, let alone the details to take points off.
I think you are being too soft here, the real question is why shouldn't the gymnasts do the hardest vaults without falling, while developing cures to cancer, HIV, and a mathematical formalism to exceed the speed of light while they are in the air!!
there are a lot good american players. there was a tourney of like 8 people at my undergrad. mostly asians, this one american dude won. the best didn't come out though.
do you have any explanation for that? what does that even mean? are you saying if gymnast A is better than gymnast B, she won't try to do a harder vault she can complete than gymnast B? she's just going to do the same vault? how do you come to that conclusion. they do harder vaults today than they did in the past, right? why haven't we seen the "same **** over and over again" if what you are saying is true? well consistently giving one country more execution points than they should get is complaining about the judges as well. australia thought there was a .3 difference in favor of He over liukin? really?
I also LOVE how people watch the sport like few days every 4 years and then they talk like an expert to criticize the fairness of judging system, to judge which routine is executed better and to even determine the "objective" of the sports I watch baseball like one match for every year and I can never understand the "striking zone" (I guess same applies to 80% of the world). It's a really "unfair" sport and the umpire is always "biased". It's really "flawed" and they should really "change" the sports to "suit" me (or the rest of the world) !!!!
Time Dagget, he's been doing gymnastics analysis (one of the commentors you'll hear on NBC during the event) during the Olympics for as long as I can remember and is a former Olympic gymnast (if I recall correctly). He noted a number of mistakes on her take-off that weren't deducted from her vault. Basically the US dominates softball and that's bad. A weak argument considering that one, softball hasn't been an Olympic event for very long; give other countries a chance to catch up to their level of play (much like what has happened in basketball). Plus, plenty of other sports have been dominated by other countries and they are not eliminated. Like Cat Osterman said, they are expected to be the best athletes in their sport and to play their best; they shouldn't have to defend that. As for baseball, apparently the IOC wants bigger stars. That seems to go against the spirit of the games; they may not be at the top level of their sport (in some countries at least, maybe not all), but once upon a time the NBA sent college players to the Olympics. Now a few years ago I had read that baseball was being eliminated because it doesn't draw many fans. Maybe that's in combination with the lack of star power I dunno. But that argument holds a little more weight. Still the lack of a following at the Olympics doesn't necessarily correlate with its popularity around the world; plenty of countries play baseball. And I'll agree with cricket; that could be a fun sport to watch in the Olympics and I'm sure enough countries can get teams together.
No it won't. People will try to do the best that they can while still landing on their feet which is what's supposed to happen. The current system will incentivize people to do as many flips as possible even if the landing is ugly because you make up for it on your starting score. What should happen is the gymnasts should all try to do the most they can while landing on their feet. Do olympic divers still win medals if they land in the cannonball position or do a belly-flop? No, because that's not what's supposed to happen. You're supposed to do the craziest thing you can think of in the air and still enter the water straight up and down.
Say there's a sport with 9 events and one country sweeps every medal in 4 events and won silver and bronze the the others while another country with a single athlete won 5 golds but nothing else. The INDIVIDUAL who won 5 golds would certainly be the best athlete in that sport. But the COUNTRY who won managed to win 22 of 27 possible medals would be the most dominant overall. The country the individual represents managed to place ONE athlete above everyone else on 5 occasions. The country that won the 22 medals managed to place THREE athletes above everyone else on 4 occasions. Again, the individual accomplishment is more impressive in the context of individual competition but not in the context of team competition. You can't blindly discount situations where countries put multiple people on the medal stand. There has to be a more evaluative process. If "Country A" won 49 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze and "Country B" won 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 50 Bronze; "Country A" would still have the most dominant performance despite fewer medals. But if "Country A" had 50 Gold, 5 Silver, 1 Bronze and "Country B" has 49 Gold, 50 Silver, 45 Bronze then "Country B" had the better performance overall despite fewer Golds.
i don't think they are going to allow star players from MLB. walking steriods junkie. it's hard to developing nations to start on baseball/softball. not enough room and equipments cost too much. if you hit the ball, it most likely will hurt someone.
That sums up this whole thread for me. None of you knew jack s*** about this sport a week ago and now everyone has these long diatribes like they're suddenly experts because they watched a few hours and listened to some announcers. He's not. But he's been living in the US for a very long time now. And he's over 40 years old, over the hill. Unfortunately we don't have much better. The best player living in the US (far better than Zhuang) is playing for his home country (Karakasevic for Serbia). Most of our top players are the equivalent of the top basketball players in Sweden: not very good at the international level.
Especially when you have instant replay at your disposal! Either they completed the skill or they didn't. If they did they get full credit if they didn't they get the full amount of deductions. There shouldn't be any wiggle room there. But apparently there is and that's primarily where my frustration lies.
USA wins! more people do sports, more opportunities for sports. more medal. there is no question about that.
You're right, that was the average(16.225). His first score was a 16.600 -- that still gives the knee landing vault a score of 15.850. Still, it's only an 1.15 deduction compared to about 1.5 for the Chinese girl. http://www.nbcolympics.com/gymnastics/resultsandschedules/rsc=GAM002101/index.html
If you've read my earlier post in this thread (I don't blame you, obviously we're on page 80+), I play semi-competitively (much more serious when I was a kid) and I've had friends who have played professionally overseas. I've played some of the guys who tried out for the US Olympic team this year when I was a junior. So I think I know a little more than the average audience.
