Summer Olympics: Beijing, China

[femme fatale]

Ian Thorpe does swimming commentary (or rather post-race analysis) for the Eurosport channel. He's rather good at it as well.

It is hard to compare athletes to each other. Like Fluff said, if your a marathon runner (for example) you only get one chance for a gold per Olympics whereas swimmers (usually) have at least a few. Plus there are plenty of sports that aren't in the Olympics, which still can have great athletes but cannot compete on the "most Olympics medals" scale. With that said, Michael Phelps is a great athlete, as well as plenty of others out there.

[Google]

 

[CCL]

Originally Posted by Lois Lane

I can't remember exactly, but didn't Thorpe retire right around the time of some doping allegations against him? I apologize if I've gotten the facts wrong, but I seem to remember that because I, too, remember him saying he was going to compete in Beijing.

I don't recall that. I looked it up and it said the German coach accused him of doping in 2000. In the spring of 2006 he had elevated levels of testosterone and some other hormone in his body but he was cleared of doping. He retired in November 2006 after suffering some illnesses and injuries. He seemed to lose interest more than anything else; he wanted to do other things with his life (he does a lot of media/celebrity stuff now, as mentioned above). Here's an article about his retirement: Thorpe looks up from black line | The Australian

As for gymnastics, there is always controversy over judged sports. The very nature of a human judging another human (rather than "the first person who touches the wall wins" sort of events) means there will be discrepancies but sometimes it is worse than others. From what I saw, I did think the Chinese women were better than the Americans overall. Mostly I feel bad for Alicia - she won a silver medal, which is great, but she's probably still beating herself up over her mistakes. She's probably not enjoying the medal much.

I agree with fluff and femme fatale that number of medals doesn't necessarily equal "greatest athlete ever." I was thinking of the decathlon - they have to do 10 seperate events but the winner doesn't receive ten seperate medals...

[Missyboxers]

Originally Posted by mindy384

I have noticed this throughout the gymnastics comp and it is really starting to tick me off... seems like the russians and americans get deductions for minor details while both the chinese and japanese athletes have wobbled, stepped, bent their elbows/kness...etc... and there scores still seemed higher.

seems a bit unfair to me and I wonder if there will be any controversy over the judging...they certainly seem a bit biased-even the commentators were shocked at many of the scores being so high for the chinese and japanese (specifically the chinese).

I was wondering about that myself. Not that I'm at all knowledgeable about scoring, but the announcers told me that one of the Chinese gymnasts had about six balance checks on the beam the other night, and her execution score certainly didn't seem to reflect that. I also couldn't for the life of me figure out how Fabian Hambuechan fell off the high bar and still got one of the highest scores, fourth place maybe, higher than Jonathan Horton, who didn't have nearly as glaring an error.

[Leo]

Originally Posted by Lois Lane

Has anyone else noticed that even at the prime events, there are plenty of seats visible in the crowd? I was looking at Mr. Lane and saying, "Gees, if we got ourselves to Beijing, we could probably get tickets to any event--even the gymnastics and swimming finals." China has what--1.3 billon people or so? Gees, just start giving the tickets away that didn't sell and fill up the seats!

They've basically resorted to bringing in "volunteers" lately to try and fill up the slack. Attendance-wise, it hasn't been a brilliant Olympics.

[myrosiedog]

Originally Posted by Newfherder

If we narrow the discussion down to the best Olympics athlete, I'd probably go with Paavo Nurmi, with Jessie Owens as my sentimental favorite.

Trivia--General George Patton, then a lowly Lieutenant, competed in the Pentathlon in 1912.

Nothing like having the wind taken out of your sails. I went flying in to tell my husband this interesting piece of trivia and said: "Guess what US General competed in the Olympics?" and he knew it already. I like being the Trivia know it all and he took that away from me.



I noticed at Beach Volleyball the other day that the stands were really empty and then a HUGE group of people in yellow shirts and red caps came in and took up the empty seats. They all had those yellow inflatable noise makers too. So you really noticed them in the stands as they stood out with all that yellow and red. But this happened during the 2nd set of the match, so I'm guessing the call went out to get volunteers in the seats.

[Bunny555]

Here is some fun trivia about the Olympics including the fact that ancient Olympians competed nude

10 Fascinating Facts About the Ancient Olympic Games | The Best Article Every day

[myrosiedog]

Originally Posted by Bunny555

Here is some fun trivia about the Olympics including the fact that ancient Olympians competed nude

10 Fascinating Facts About the Ancient Olympic Games | The Best Article Every day

Good thing they don't now. They showed a Water Polo athelete out of the pool yesterday and the sight of him in a speedo was bad enough. He definetly was not as fit as Phelps and apparantly in Water Polo they dont' wax their body hair either. I don't remember which team he was from, but I believe it was an Eastern European one.

Thanks for the site, I'll go look and see if I can scoop my hubby on something else besides Patton.

[jacobson00]

Originally Posted by mindy384

I have noticed this throughout the gymnastics comp and it is really starting to tick me off... seems like the russians and americans get deductions for minor details while both the chinese and japanese athletes have wobbled, stepped, bent their elbows/kness...etc... and there scores still seemed higher.

seems a bit unfair to me and I wonder if there will be any controversy over the judging...they certainly seem a bit biased-even the commentators were shocked at many of the scores being so high for the chinese and japanese (specifically the chinese).

you have to take into consideration the startup value of the Degree of difficulty. The chineses had higher startup value and the americans lower starup.
with A high DD, you make a major mistake, fall on your behind, wrong dismount or out of bound, YOu are screwed!!!, you do everything right YOU score high even with minor error.

[Leo]

The Chinese government must not know about Google cache. One blogger's gone digging and thanks to Google cache proved what everyone suspected: the 'women's' gymnastics team was underage.

Gateway Pundit: SPUN GOLD--- CHINA BUSTED Scrubbing Internet of Articles That Show Gymnasts Are Too Young To Compete! (Updated!)

[myrosiedog]

Well from the article it doesn't sound like anyone's going to do anything about it.
Would the other teams have to file a complaint and have it investigated?