2008 Summer Olympics - Beijing, China (1 Viewer)

[Chuck Mayer]

Absolutely.

1) Is the IOC going to call China and it's 1.3B citizens liars for the sake of the obvious? No. Their official paperwork is more than enough reasonable doubt. These are the most popular games in some time, buoyed largely by the Chinese populace. They will be treated with kid's gloves.

2) The time to do this was BEFORE a Gold Medal was bestowed. And are they going to publicly remove a Gold Medal from a 13 year old girl and her 14-16 year old friends because of something their government did? Who wants to take the Gold Medal from the 13 year old on national TV? Hands?

3) The IOC couldn't resolve the Hamm fiasco of 2004. They resorted to asking him to give the medal back when they didn't have a leg to stand on (you couldn't score the routines based on videos back then - that would open a HUGE can of worms). They basically punted to an athlete and asked him to ignore the rules of his own sport. So there is no way they get this right.

 

[DavidJ]

So what is up with this scoring? I know that it is very USA-centric, but the NBC commentators are really perplexed by the scoring. Are other commentators, CBC for example, also questioning it?

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

It's not over yet, but it's blatantly obvious that the U.S. gymnasts are being hosed by the judges tonight.

 

[DavidJ]

Well, they did quite all right by the end of things...

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I know there was a sizable gulf between Chinese Bronze place finisher Yilin Yang and Russian Ksenia Semenova, but Ksenia's floor routine was far and away my favorite in the all around competition. Not only was the music more fun, she looked like she was having more fun too. Just a great entertaining performance.

After the iffy scoring on the balance beam, what a nailbiter of a conclusion. Glad to see NBC show Shawn Johnson being sportmanlike with her top two Chinese competitors. The Americans come off looking very arrogant and standoffish with most of their coverage.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

The scoring on the vault and the uneven bars was atrocious.

 

[andrew markworthy]

The point of the Olympics is that they should transcend politics. I'm not keen on a great many countries' political regimes (including China's), but if we're going to start taking the moral high ground, then quite which country is immune from criticism? Certainly not the UK, Greece, Australia, USA or Spain, to name the next and previous four hosts. Let's concentrate on the sport, eh, folks?

 

[Walter C]

I agree with that. I would say more, but it's against HTF rules, so I won't go any further. This Pandora's box should be sealed shut.

 

[Marianne]

Michael Phelps is physically perfect for swimming. As the media have been pointing out, he has a long v-shaped torso, wide wing span, big hands and feet, etc. Someone so genetically perfect doesn't come along that often.

Another genetically gifted athlete is Lance Armstrong due to his slow heart rate and larger than average lung capacity. He is physically perfect for endurance cycling.

Athletes like these will tend to dominate in their sports.

 

[MarkMel]

I see Andrew's point regarding the medal count in swimming. The event to medal opportunity is very high. But we can't begrudge Phelps for taking advantage of it. Take for example beach volleyball. They play many matches for the chance at one medal. If they want more medals, they should take up swimming.

Or, perhaps they should run swimming like gymnastics. For the overall they compete in four events for one medal in the overalls. But then they do have individual medals for each event there too.

So, if I had an super athlete that had the ability to play any sport and they wanted advice on what sport to compete in, I would say swimming. The effort to medal count opportunity ratio is very high.

Then again, I would tell them to play baseball where the effort to cash count is also very high and you can spend your cash much more easily and over a longer period of time than with a pile of Olympic gold.

 

[MarkMel]

Although that's true, I won't be surprised when they come up positive for some special pharmaceutical enhancements.

 

[Carlo_M]

If it really were that easy to "pile on the gold" due to the nature of swimming events in the Olympics, then all of the top gold medal winners would be swimmers. But only one (Spitz) is up there (of the four that Phelps won).

Why? Because no matter how many chances you get to medal: you still have to beat the best in the world at whatever you're trying to medal at. Plus, Phelps is an oddity in swimming so many events, whereas you see that there are many who only swim a select few races because they're the best at it, and they're conserving energy. Michael's got to beat them all at each one he swims in, often within an hour of swimming another event!

So regardless of how many chances he has to medal (which admittedly are more than other events) he still has to take on and beat the best in the world.

And yes, while physically he might be "built for the sport" - you can't be genetically groomed for competitive fire, mental toughness, and desire to be the best. You can genetically engineer someone even better than Phelps but if that person doesn't have the mental fortitude and desire that Phelps has, it won't make a lick of difference.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Michael Phelps is one of 12 athletes who volunteered for a program of "super testing", in which they are scrutinized more than any other athletes in the history of sport. They take blood and urine after every race, it undergoes extensive testing above and beyond what is required by the IOC, and the samples are held for 8 years so that future testing technology can come into play. Either he's not doping, or he's got some stuff that was engineered to be undetectable for 8 years into the future. You decide.

 

[Marianne]

But if you are "built for the sport" and have the mental and competitive desire and work ethic, then you will be unbeatable. The combination of these attributes is what sets Michael Phelps (and Lance Armstrong) apart.

 

[Carlo_M]

That may be true, but I still wouldn't hold that against him. Because the confluence of such things: genetic gifts plus heart and desire, is so rare. That's called a once in a generation athlete. Michael Jordan had inordinately large hands for his size and had a great vertical, but no one begrudges him that. Ted Williams had the visual acuity to see the baseball seams clearly on a 90mph fastball and the hand-eye coordination to match. A lot of other "greatest" athletes over history were probably built for their sports but went unrecognized because sports science wasn't where it is now to recognize such things.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

More on the "super testing" program the US is conducting:


Officials say Games may never be clean - The Boston Globe

 

[Marianne]

That was my point and I wasn't holding it against him!

 

[Marty M]

One of the things that irritates me about the Olympics is the obsession of the "us against them" attitude that the media likes to portray. The other thing is that if a particular athlete doesn't get the medal he is "supposed" to get, he is almost portrayed as a loser. It will be interesting to see how Michael Phelps will be portrayed if he doen't get eight gold medals or break Mark Spitz's record of seven golds. Will the press deem him a "loser"? I hope not because he has performed remarkably at these Olympics.

 

[Malcolm R]

The CBC commentators also thought the scores were quite low for certain athletes' routines.

 

[MarkMel]

I just said I wouldn't be surprised. Many so called clean athletes have come up positive years later. I like the idea of "super testing" and I hope it does work to reduce doping. What's really needed is a biological passport where the athlete values are tracked from the beginning of their career. There you would be able to see any abnormalities. Although even those can be explained away.

Pharmaceutical companies should also be required to put markers in their products that would show clearly the elevated values are a result of their product and not some physiological abnormality.

I follow and have raced cycling - one of the most tested sports and those guys seemed to be able to get products that were undetectable until just recently. That or they recently just developed tests for them. There are those that are still doping and just not getting caught.

Also there are products (EPO) that some do not have the confidence in the testing. This is where false positives will show up too often. Now lets say you have sample that tests positive for the A sample and negative for the B sample. Would you be willing to risk marking the athlete positive? When the test itself isn't sure.


I am/was a huge fan of Lance Armstrong. I will not be surprised if it comes out that he was doping. Although in his case he had the cash to have the best doctors and products to avoid detection. Where as with the Olympians I don't know where they'd get their cash flow from since these doping regimes are very costly and out of reach for many.

Although it also seems quite unbelievable all of the WRs being broken. Could is just be the new suits? The pool depth? The new lane lines? Maybe.


So for now let's celebrate these spectacular performances and leave it at that. Although in the back of my mind........