Games of the XXIX Olympiad: Beijing 2008

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Asher
What's funny is the Olympics have "sports" like that, and trap shooting, but Baseball (understandable due to the MLB) and Softball is done in the Olympics after this year...

Well, Hell, when the biggest countries don't really care about it (I'm talking baseball), its no doubt going to end up on the chopping block. Softball suffers from too few countries actually giving a damn to send teams.

[Guynemer]

Well, do the biggest countries care about synchronized diving or synchronized swimming or rowing or trap shooting or...?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Guynemer
Well, do the biggest countries care about synchronized diving or synchronized swimming or rowing or trap shooting or...?

Rowing is big many countries. Canada, Australia, France are the big ones -- maybe Britain also?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Guynemer
Well, do the biggest countries care about synchronized diving or synchronized swimming or rowing or trap shooting or...?

If you watched the competition, you'd have noted a great number of competitors in synch diving (including the US and China). The Chinese, who have just about swept the thing, really seem to like it.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


If you watched the competition, you'd have noted a great number of competitors in synch diving (including the US and China). The Chinese, who have just about swept the thing, really seem to like it.

The Chinese have very good divers in general. Any country with good divers likes synchronized diving simply because it's another opportunity for divers to earn medals. No one cares about the sport itself.

The divers train individually for the real diving events, then shortly before the Olympics they just practice identical dives together...it's medal whoring.

[Imran Siddiqui]

As is all the various number of swimming races, but no one says anything about that.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
As is all the various number of swimming races, but no one says anything about that.

I've actually heard a lot of people saying a lot of stuff about that, especially when it comes to Phelps.

Why don't they have wristshot competitions (accuracy) in olympic hockey? Also slapshot, puck handling, etc. It's really no different than having so many permutations of distances/swim styles in swimming.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well at least you are on the same page on that one . I haven't heard any of it relating to Phelps, but then again, I'm in the US, and people love Phelps winning everything under the sun.

It'd be nice to have more medals in team events, but it seems they only like one for those (whether it be hockey or soccer or baseball, etc).

[-Jrabbit]

Gymnastics is similar. The same core group of 5-8 people can win team, individual, and all-around. That's not so bad, except they do the SAME DAMNED ROUTINES over and over. Why not have them all do what they do (maybe over the course of 2-3 days) and assign the medals en masse? I find it really annoying that someone can screw up royally one day, then nail their routine the next day, and it's like the bad routine never happened. Mess up in the right order and youcan still get both team and individual medals.

Distance whoring has a long history in running events as well. (100-200-400-800-mile). Plus relays. So prepare to be further annoyed next week.

The 4 swim strokes are all distinctly different skills. Rarely is anyone medal-worthy at more than 2 of them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I actually believe in gymnastics, you can sometimes come across different routines in individual competition. Because in individual competition, the people can be more risky (if they know they aren't as talented as the people at the top) without fearing they'll doom the rest of the team.

The 4 swim strokes are all distinctly different skills. Rarely is anyone medal-worthy at more than 2 of them.

Indeed, but do we need so many distances for each of them? There are 32 different swim catagories.

[reismark]

Confirmed: Yup, the Chinese cheated the age limits in the women's gymnastics competition. And they themselves gave it away...

Chinese news service reported that gold medal gymnast was 13

BEIJING (AP) -- Just nine months before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government's news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal this week.

In its report Nov. 3, Xinhua identified He as one of "10 big new stars" who made a splash at China's Cities Games. It gave her age as 13 and reported that she beat Yang Yilin on the uneven bars at those games. In the final, "this little girl" pulled off a difficult release move on the bars known as the Li Na, named for another Chinese gymnast, Xinhua said in the report, which appeared on one of its Web sites, http://www.hb.xinhuanet.com

The Associated Press found the Xinhua report on the site Thursday morning and saved a copy of the page. Later that afternoon, the Web site was still working but the page was no longer accessible. Sports editors at the state-run news agency would not comment for publication.

If the age reported by Xinhua was correct, that would have meant He was too young to be on the Chinese team that beat the United States on Wednesday and clinched China's first women's team Olympic gold in gymnastics. He is also a favorite for gold in Monday's uneven bars final.

Yang was also on Wednesday's winning team. Questions have also been raised about her age and that of a third team member, Jiang Yuyuan.

Gymnasts have to be 16 during the Olympic year to be eligible for the games. He's birthday is listed as Jan. 1, 1992.

Chinese authorities insist that all three are old enough to compete. He herself told reporters after Wednesday's final that "my real age is 16. I don't pay any attention to what everyone says."

Zhang Hongliang, an official with China's gymnastics delegation at the games, said Thursday the differing ages which have appeared in Chinese media reports had not been checked in advance with the gymnastics federation.

"It's definitely a mistake," Zhang said of the Xinhua report, speaking in a telephone interview. "Never has any media outlet called me to check the athletes' ages."

Asked whether the federation had changed their ages to make them eligible, Zhang said: "We are a sports department. How would we have the ability to do that?"

"We already explained this very clearly. There's no need to discuss this thing again."

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has said repeatedly that a passport is the "accepted proof of a gymnast's eligibility," and that He and China's other gymnasts have presented ones that show they are age eligible. The IOC also checked the girls' passports and deemed them valid.

A May 23 story in the China Daily newspaper, the official English-language paper of the Chinese government, said He was 14. The story was later corrected to list her as 16.

"This is not a USAG issue," said Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics. "The FIG and the IOC are the proper bodies to handle this."

I wonder how quick the calls to DQ the Chinese and give the gold to the USA will start coming.

I also wonder how quick the IOC will be to completely ignore them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/tennis/news/story?id=3534435

Federer goes down to American James Blake in the QFs. Federer's having a rough time lately.

Serena Williams also lost to Russia's Elena Dementieva.

[Asher]

Originally posted by reismark
Confirmed: Yup, the Chinese cheated the age limits in the women's gymnastics competition. And they themselves gave it away...

As convinced I am that the girl is underaged, it's a far stretch to call anything the Chinese media said as a confirmation. It's just as likely they could understate her age in that original article to make it seems more incredible...

[Asher]

There's far more sources now that show at least one of the gymnasts as being 2 years too young.

http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:A5YfIIsOJjQJ:www.chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2008-05/23/content_6707927.htm+site:chinadaily.com.cn+%22he+kexin%22+14&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/exhibitD.jpg

The IOC has no balls.

[reismark]

Well, if more sources like this keep popping up, at some point the IOC won't be able to continue ignoring it. It's clear at this point that either the Chinese team or this one performer should be DQ'd and the scores invalidated; either way would knock China off the medal stand and give the gold to the Americans.