Olympics Discussion Thread

[SpencerH]

I tired of all the swimming coverage. NBC has definitely reverted to near its normal bull****.

The shotput was held in an interesting site. When I first saw it I thought wtf ? They're having the shotput in some dirt field somewhere? Then I realized where it was.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Hueij
Sidenote, are you going to Lowlands too next weekend?

Nope.

I saw the cycling time trials yesterday and Jan Ullrich was unusually horrible. The US pretty much ruled.

Did they show anything of that in the US? Lance may be the only cyclist worth any attention, but you can hardly ignore a gold and bronze medal, not to mention a Russian cycling for US Postal Discovery Channel getting the silver.


Oh, and Leontien.

[SpencerH]

USA men beat Aus in basketball. I watched the first half and I thought it was gonna be another loss.

[Dis]

I think the basketball team will take a medal home.

They are responding by all this negative press against them.

[Saras]

Originally posted by Dissident
I think the basketball team will take a medal home.

Don't know it that'll be a gold one though. Seriously.

[Dis]

probably bronze

[Saras]

Originally posted by Dissident
probably bronze

Lithuania looks better and better; let's see tonite.

USA also looks better and better. The finals will be played not on the 28th but this saturday. Euro champions vs N.Americas varsity.

[gjramsey]

Originally posted by Mercator


Did they show anything of that in the US? Lance may be the only cyclist worth any attention, but you can hardly ignore a gold and bronze medal, not to mention a Russian cycling for US Postal Discovery Channel getting the silver.

NBC showed about a 5 minute snippet last night, showing Hamilton, Ekimov and Julich at the 3rd checkpoint and at the finish. They promised more coverage on MSNBC during the late night show.

[Arrian]

NBC sucks ass. End of story.

Australia is rippin' **** up. If you look at the medal leaderboard on ESPN, it's USA, China, Russia, Australia (and the Aussies have more golds than the Russians, like the Chinese have more than the US). Which one of these is not like the other...

-Arrian

[Az]

yay, first medal for Israel ( Bronze in Judo)

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Wow... in the individual men's gymnastics, Paul Hamm had a HELL of a comeback to win gold. That was simply jaw droppingly amazing.

His last two events were excellent. But he won cause his competition screwed up- specially the Chinese guy who was on a one to one competion with him- hamms worst was a 9.1 something, but the Chinese guy self-destroyed on the high bar and got a 8.9 something...gone.

Congrats to the two S.Korean men who were not even expected to medal. To lose the gold to the world champion by just .012 was a great achievement.

[Arrian]

I didn't get to see the finish, as I have a job ( ). The last I saw, Hamm had just kicked ass on the horse.

So for those who saw it... any doubts he deserved the Gold? I read the story about his comeback and an alarm bell went off in the back of my head. It kinda reminded me of ice skating in the winter olympics. Hamm is a known guy - a guy expected to win or at least medal. The Koreans weren't. In ice skating, you will often see judges give bull**** scores (harsh on the unknowns, soft on the knowns) so the results come out more or less as expected, unless something truely remarkable happens. Any indication of that, or did Hamm clearly earn it?

-Arrian

[GePap]

He was neck and neck with the Chinese gymnast who won silver in Sydney for the gold. Then Hamm fell on the vault and got a 9.125, sending him way back to 12th place. In his last two apparatuses (sp?) he got 9.837 (the second highest score on anything, the highest being a Romanian on the vault who got 9.850) which gave him a victory of 0.012 over the silver medalist, a Korean who was good overall but had no scores over 9.8. As I said, that Chinese guy who had bene battling with Hamm had an even bigger mistake and could not recover.

Hamm won becuase he was able to recover from a massive mistake with two excellent rotations, while none of the others in the field were able to be consistently great, which would have made it impossible for Hamm to win no matter what.

[Arrian]

So he deserved it, then. Good.

Thanks.

-Arrian

[gjramsey]

He last two were amazing, and he deserved the scores on those, I just have a problem getting a 9.1 when fall on your ass during the vault. One of the judges put up an arm so he didn't fall onto the judges table.