London Olympics

[Kevin Seitzer]

i don't care about the medals. i watch for the amazing athleticism.

And you read Playboy for the articles?

[johnnya24]

Isn't it also that the home team is allowed a participant for every event?

Yeah ... but I doubt you will get even one more medal as a consequence of that. Every event is really competitive these days ... the Chinese have cleverly cornered all the less competitive events to boost their totals and showed their imperial dominance to the world.

[johnnya24]

Me too. I don't give a rat's a$$ who wins the medals.

Michael Johnson said something similar on air yesterday. I'm guessing this is a symptom of years of unbroken success ... and the secure knowledge that you will be top 2 in the medal table no matter what.

Us smaller fish have to really appreciate our success when it comes

[Mithrandir]

Michael Johnson said something similar on air yesterday. I'm guessing this is a symptom of years of unbroken success ... and the secure knowledge that you will be top 2 in the medal table no matter what.

Us smaller fish have to really appreciate our success when it comes

It's more to do with "Why should i care if the USA wins medals when my country is so f**ked up"?

[JudeBaldo]

a great fart is not judged simply by its volume, but by the quality of the sound. you would definitely need judges for this one. fat, sweaty judges.

edit to add: fat sweaty judges would be a good name for a band. maybe.

See that's the problem with judging, a great fart isn't one based on sound, but on smell. One that's bad enough to clear an entire room. Now that's a great fart.

[chancellor]

I might have to go back and look at the tape, but I only recall three knowledgeable fans calling for an appeal.

Take a look at the replay if you still have it - there's easily a dozen people to the left of the Karolyis that are waving their arms and calling for an appeal, too. And at least two of them were coaches - the white, thinning hair guy about three seats over from the Karolyis is the Michigan gymnastics coach.

I'm not sure it was "pretty evident" the math didn't correlate. Maybe you could summarize that for us.

Pretty obvious to me. In a sport where thousands can differentiate for a medal, this was the only appeal we filed, and a significant group of people knew immediately it didn't correlate. Plus, the move up was exactly a tenth of a point, indicating a form was missed to calculate out the event difficulty.

[chancellor]

elD, my man, you simply must quit holding back. You're gonna hurt yourself keeping your feelings inside.

[virgonomic]

The Canadian team can go f*ck themselves. The Canadian coach accused the US of "employing illegal tactics" in the box. Melissa Tancredi, a Canadian player, said that she hoped the referee "could sleep well at night with his American jersey on" or some such nonsense.

Tancredi, the bitchwhore that she is, committed seven fouls in the game. That's a lot but she only got a yellow. The real kicker, though, is that she STOMPED ON SOMEONE'S HEAD during the game. Yes, you read that right.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/soccer/expert-analysis-time-wasting-accusations-and-head-stomp-controversy.html

Good guys (gals) 1 - Evil Canadian Succubi 0

Tough to say whether it was deliberate. Tancredi appeared to have her head up, watching the ball the whole time. It looked like she felt Lloyd fall at her feet, jumped on her right foot, and landed gingerly with her left, then pushed off, with Lloyd's head underneath. I think "stomp" is an exaggeration.

[Judge Jude]

"probably one of those guys who likes to make "air quotes" with his fingers in real life."

haha
not really

[johnnya24]

Tough to say whether it was deliberate.

Yes ... definitely deliberate. Was almost like watching Mario Balotelli

[johnnya24]

You got me. It was a semi-troll, at least.

What prompted my post was the fact that after the competition, when it became clear that the young lady from the USA did not quite pass the Romanian young lady for third place, there was a frenzy of activity to file an inquiry, which later resulted in 3rd and 4th place being reversed. I felt a little sorry for the girl from Romania, and wasn't real proud of the way we (the USA) had paperworked our girl into a medal. The whole thing underscored the very subjective nature of certain competitions. I really don't want to get into the "sport vs. non-sport" argument which pops up every year or so.

I'm happy for the USA girl. I would have been happier if they had given two bronze medals, since the final score wound up being a tie.

But, as I said, the point was a jab at the legalistic nature of sports these days. Hence my chant "ABA! ABA!"

I will say that mith's definition is comically inadequate. If you and I compete to see who can fart the loudest, that's a sport under his definition. And you could use equipment to measure the decibels, so it wouldn't have subjective judging. Of course, if you went with free-style farting, that would be a different matter.

My wife and I talked about the balance beam quite a bit. I used the basketball example. If I score 80 points and you score 70, I will always win, regardless of what the French judge thinks. And it doesn't matter whether the baskets you made have a higher degree of difficulty or whether you look good scoring. 80 beats 70 anytime, anywhere.

So, good call on the troll, but there was intended to be a little bit of meat to it.

In gymnastics you cannot appeal the judgement score if you think it wasn't high enough, you can only appeal technical things like the judges giving incorrect difficulty, or missing / penalizing an element that they missed. For instance, GB were awarded team silver because the Japanese guy made a mess of the pommel horse dismount. But the judges incorrectly ruled that the dismount had not been made, so they deducted an extra 0.5. When it was corrected, Japan got silver, GB got bronze ... Ukraine got stiffed out of the medals. This is the only kind of thing that can be appealed ... execution scores (the judgement side) cannot be appealed.

[Roto Rooter]

Landed gingerly. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

[virgonomic]

Landed gingerly. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Ok, I'll concede, there was a stomp. She did thrust her leg backward. No further action from FIFA.

[johnnya24]

Ok, I'll concede, there was a stomp. She did thrust her leg backward. No further action from FIFA.

That is the kind of incident that can be addressed after the game if it were a regular season incident. FIFA may deal with it, but too late to have an impact on this tournament. FIFA are pretty useless as you may have gathered. They are a good example of what you get when you let jumped up middle managers and bureaucrats in charge ... they are a conglomerate of bureaucrats from all the football associations around the world. It takes them 3 years to make a simple decision. They have been looking at goal line technology for 10 years now.

Typical FIFA committee meeting:

[Lucky]

Okay, so what are the real highlights for you guys so far? I know we have a lot of action yet to take place, but there have been some memorable moments.

I loved Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon. It seemed as though so much of the country's hopes were on her, and she came through in a big way.

Weirdest thing...that runner from the USA who insisted upon licking himself all over before every event. To me the greatest wimp-out in the Games was the failure of the reporter to ask him (after he won the gold medal) "What the hell was that all about?"