Dolores is watching the girls rythmic dancing and rope tossing...

[Lancer]

Why isn't the US in this competition? All those cheerleaders out there practicing incredible routines, this dance/rope toss thing out to be a piece of cake...

Discuss.

[snoopy369]

Because we're not a nation of sissies?

[duck]

[rah]

And to think women's softball won't be an event after this year but this will still be. The horror.

[Lancer]

Sissies? Those chicks jumping around out there are hot! There's freakin FIVE of them!



We need to get those girls softball players into those skimpy leotards, or whatever the girls call them.

Or maybe not.

[Zkribbler]

[b]Olympics: Much-maligned rhythmic gymnastics takes centre stage August 20 2008[/b'


The ribbon-twirling dance routines aren't everyone's cup of tea, but with gold medals at stake competition will be deadly serious when the Olympic rhythmic gymnastics gets under way on Thursday.

Russia's army of supple young women are tipped to claim their third successive team gold, while super-flexible Ukrainian Anna Bezsonova is hot favourite in the individual competition.

Bezsonova, 24, who has been training since five and made her international debut at 10, has swept all before her on the globe's mats and will be looking to add gold to her Athens 2004 bronze and 2007 all-around world title.

China may be an outside bet in the team event after finishing sixth in 2004 and third in an international competition in France two years ago.

Competitors will do battle with rope, hoop, clubs and ribbon.

The event has attracted its fair share of criticism since joining the Olympic roster in 2004, with its spangly leotards making it the gymnastics equivalent of synchronised swimming.

"Rhythmic gymnastics has a reputation as one of the joke sports of the Olympics, included in the program to please a limited constituency," write Games experts David Wallechinsky and Jaime Loucky, authors of "The Complete Book of the Olympics".

But rigorous training is required and the event has a prodigious history with its roots said to stretch back to Ancient Egypt, pre-dating even the millennia-old Olympic movement.

Swiss composer Emile-Jaques Dalcroze added music and it was championed by famous American dancer Isadora Duncan, but it was in the former Soviet Union that the event flourished with national tournaments held since 1948.

Russia and Ukraine remain the top performers, sharing 14 Olympic medals out of 27 awarded so far. While almost exclusively a female sport, a small group of men also practise in Japan.

Apart from its questioned role, rhythmic gymnastics also has an occasionally chequered history in the Games with a past including judging scandals and a host of wardrobe malfunctions.

At Barcelona 1992, Ukrainian bronze-medallist Oksana Skaldina refused to acknowledge second-placed Carolina Pascual Gracia because she was convinced the judges had been biased towards the Spanish athlete.

Fifth-placed Maria Petrova of Bulgaria would have finished fourth but she was penalised when her leotard zipper broke, contravening strict costume rules by exposing part of her back.

Four years later many observers cried foul over the judging which seemed to favour the better-known gymnasts.

"Our sport is more of a sport outside the competition hall. It's in the hallways; it's in the cafes; between the judges," sniped Petrova, who again placed fifth.

Controversial Russians Alina Kabayeva and Irina Chashchina took gold and silver at Athens 2004, a year after returning from a ban for taking diuretics.

However, Kabayeva was able to demonstrate her extreme flexibility by, at one point, standing on one leg with the other leg bent back over her shoulder and under her chin, clasping a club between her foot and shoulder.

And in 1988, Poland's Teresa Folga won the Miss Olympic Village beauty contest after she "outshined other contestants with her beautiful hair, slim and attractive body and eloquent conversation skills," the Korea Herald said.

Yeah, let's malign this sport. It's not comparible to those great sports line air-pistol shooting. poot poot

[Jon Miller]

They didn't mention her flexibility in additio to the attractive body/etc.

JM

[Lancer]

I'm all for it. In fact, maybe we could combine ribbon-twirling dance routines with air-pistol shooting. You know, one girl could pop a pellet through the other girls hoop, that sort of thing.

[rah]

and if your partner screws up, you can cap her.

[Lancer]

Hell yeah!

[Lord Avalon]

Rhythmic gymnastics was added so older girls could still have events to compete in, instead of being over-the-hill for regular gymnastics, because their delayed puberty had finally arrived, and their tits threw off the center of gravity they were used to.

More shooting events! How about drive-by target shooting?

[rah]

That's something the americans could do good at.

[The Mad Monk]

Biathlon is sorta like that.

[Hercules]

I think there is a lot of skill attached to Rhythmic gymnastics, I just don't think it should be an Olympic sport.

[Lancer]

Pole dancing.

[snoopy369]

I figure RG was added so the Soviets could win another few medals??