No, he wasn’t “right.” But he had a valid complaint that there was no legitimate way to protest the refereeing decision. This doesn’t mean that the decision was wrong, nor that he should have pouted about it and acted like a two-year-old.
In his defense, it was the second Olympics in a row that such a decision had gone against him, costing him a chance at gold. That’s why I love track and field: no “judges.” :dubious:
Thailand picked up another Gold (men’s flyweight boxing) and another Silver (men’s light welterweight boxing). That makes 4 medals now: 2 Gold and 2 Silver.
The entire country was watching the boxing last night. Walking through Patpong, every TV set in the bars was tuned in, and the little guard’s booth at the entrance to the carpark had a small crowd gathered around it watching the fights on the set in there.
This is, without any doubt, the cleanest, fairest Olympiad, summer or winter, I’ve seen in my life. No petty, snivelling protest by a volleyball team that choked the last three sets to steal our men’s indoor volleyball team of a win. No results on an illegally-set pommel horse allowed to stand for Haruhi knows what reason. No idiotic wrestling non-calls that would embarrass an NBA referee. No eligibility/weight crapstorm in a rowing event. Not even any flap over the mascots (sheesh, you’d think Izzy was a danged mass murderer…). Yeah, there’s some grumbling in boxing, but that just comes with the territory. Two things, in particular, really stand out for me: 1. Walter Dix rightfully winning a bronze medal in the 200m dash after the 2nd-place finisher was DQed for stepping on the inside line. In the past, you could’ve held a damn gun to the officials’ heads, and they wouldn’t have done this. 2. Angel Matos being barred for the sport for truly egregious behavior, which, in the past, would’ve gotten a feeble warning and some mealy-mouthed assurance that that the guy’s only human and we shouldn’t judge.
I mean, think about it. Just think about it. What’s the huge scandal of Beijing '08? I used to dread learning of the horror stories that’d inevitably be a part of this spectacle, and unless there’s been some foul play in the discus throw or archery that I’m unaware of, there’s none.
This was a long time coming (how long ago was team “URS”?). I think this is simply a case of all the horrible calls and naked corruption and sickening injustices finally making a huge impact on the public image of these games. All the bad blood, all the protests, all the hatred and bitterness and ill will, it’s made this once-proud tradition really hard to watch. Even worse, a lot of athletes, having seen the bogus results and blatant favortism, had become convinced that the rules were completely meaningless and they could do whatever they damn wanted, from Marion Jones to the Korean short-track speed skaters to those hotel-trashing boneheads, right up to Angel Matos. For the first time ever, a lot of people in charge have taken a good, hard look at the events of the past and said, “My GOD, what the bloody frigging hell has this become?” I also think that they’ve finally realized the difference between an unpopular but legitimate result and vile baldfaced robbery, and mumbling “controversy” over and over wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
No doubt there were a number of factors that spurred this change. The fall of the USSR taking away the #1 reason for institutionalized corruption and settling the medal count issue for all time, obviously, but also the proliferation of sports and sports TV, ensuring that history and prestige were no longer sufficient to sustain a mockery of a sport. And of course, the renewed crackdown on doping. All these things, and undoubtedly more, and the end result is an Olympiad I can truly…dare I say it?..enjoy. A lot. A tremendous lot.
Of course, NBC finally coming to their senses and keeping the soap opera glurge to a minimum doesn’t hurt, either. 
(More things I’ve learned these past 15-odd days to come; just this cheerful tidbit for now.)
You didn’t watch women’s gymnastics, I take it?
Is anyone watching the gold medal basketball game? The US men look absolutely horrible. They are obviously not used to playing a game where brushing the opposing players’ jersey is a foul.
I went with the title of the article.
What an ending to the Men’s Platform Diving! The Chinese choked, the Aussie stepped up, and the Chinese were denied the sweep!
That seems to be a bit unfair to the Aussie diver. He won it. What’d he get, two tens and a Nine and a half?
I said the Aussie stepped up. The only reason he was even in a place to win it (and he needed a near perfect dive to do so), was because the Chinese diver bent his knees. Had the Chinese diver done his dive at his normal level, the Aussie wouldn’t have been mathematically able to make up the difference.
Sorry we couldn’t help you out there. But our guys rocked nevertheless!
They’ll be hailed as heroes when they get back on Wednesday.
How the hell can you muster a world class team from a population of ~300,000? Handball must be really big in Iceland.
They deserve it. The Frenchies had to WORK for that gold.
Congratulations Iceland!
Third biggest sport, after golf and football (the kind you play with your feet). But since the competition is lesser in handball than in the other two, we ROCK!
They sure did - but we just didn’t have any “flow” this game. Had to work for each and every goal.
But I’m over it. Still mighty good!
Re. NBC coverage - Taking into account the inherent limitations imposed by time, audience, culture, accessibility of events, etc., IMO they did a pretty good job. As I mentioned earlier, there was no nauseating glurge flood (which was actually started by CBS in '98…man, was that wretched), there were no obvious probelms with camera angles, lighting, timing, etc., they stuck with events, no irritating jumping back and forth, and the commentary was, for the most part, spot-on. I also didn’t notice a lot of gratuitous cheerleading, except for the Michael Phelps coverage (and that was more or less unavoidable).
And yet…I remember a time when we actually got to see things like taekwondo, fencing, and archery. I remember when we’d get to hear numerous national anthems, not just The Star-Spangled banner over and over until the very last day. Count me in as one of the viewers who thought there was way too much beach volleyball (I live in Hawaii! I can see bikinis any week of the year!). Swimming was also overdone, and I don’t remember seeing any track and field outside of the running events. The branch networks weren’t much better; one was the Boxing Channel, another the Baseball Channel.
The bottom line is that the Olympiad is simply far too big for one company. Why is it still like this? More networks involved, more complete coverage, and more money going to the IOC. What’s not to like?
Re. Gold, gold, gold - This, I hope, will be the year the American media seriously rethinks its collective Midaslike obsession with element Au. Of our* 110 medals, 36 were gold, 38 silver, and 36 bronze. A tremendous outing by any standard where two thirds of our hardware was something other than yellow 'n sparkly. Especially telling was bronze medallist Walter Dix, interviewed just seconds after he learned that he had been bumped from 4th place to 3rd, saying “But I still lost.” :dubious: (You didn’t lose! You gained!) If all we get to hear about are the goldies, there are going to be many, many fine American athletes who accomplished something special…the majority! Two of three!..that are going to be left in the cold. And that’d be just sad. BTW, China won the most golds.
Re. Redeem Team - Well, now. Gone were the Harlem Globetrotter days of '92 and '96. (“We said we were going to eat these guys for lunch, not treat!”) The world had caught up. No more slacking off and getting away with it. No more free rides. '04 destroyed the illusion forever. Now Team USA men’s basketball had to earn the gold medal. And that’s exactly what they did.
All this talk about how we* didn’t scare anyone anymore, we no longer had the aura of invincibility, we were beatable…well, guess what, being able to beat us and actually beating us are two different things. As for noting how close the final was, tell it to someone who cares. An inch or a mile, they all count the same. Ask Michael Phelps. You’ve heard of him, right?
It’s weird. I was all ready to accept the fact that '04 was the great fall, that we’d lost our edge, that from now on we’d just have to accept second or third…and this NBA pickup team plays thier hearts out and gets the job done. For all the gloom and doom, was '04 really just a weird little blip, the one shining moment for some team other than America to take the gold before we went back to owning this sport?
I dunno, but all of a sudden this sport has become really, really intriguing.
Re. doping - I’m just glad that this hasn’t completely overshadowed these games. There were a handful of cases, all of whom seemed to be caught. Yes, it has reached the point where some fans cannot see an amazing performance without crying “juice!”, and that’s pretty goddam sad. Hopefully, as the net gets tighter and more officials see this as a real problem, we’ll hear even less of this in Vancouver and London.
And personally, I find blanket cynicism uncalled for. Have we learned nothing from Lance Armstrong? Some people really are that gifted, that determined, that talented, and that. damn. good. When there is PROOF of doping, condemn all you want. Otherwise, save the mindless suspicions for Clue.
Terminus Est - As a matter of fact, I did, I commented on it, and my stance remains unchanged. It’s a dumb number, it’s not going to change anything that needs to be changed, and anyone who thought that no one would try to buck it was hopelessly naive.
Listen, there is no sport more bass-ackwards, with the possible exception of competitive face slapping, than women’s gymnastics. Having any signs of puberty whatsoever is a crippling handicap? Can you name another sport where someone built like Dominique Moceanu would be anything other than comic relief? You don’t want underage pixies in it, have events that don’t require underage pixies. I hear the men’s side does this just fine. Throwing up some rule completely out of the blue, without changing a single event, without doing a thing about the gymnastics mills that produce these little girls…dumb. Hopelessly naive. Ridiculous. Never gonna work.
The whole stupid sport is a scandal. This “underage” thing is a little blip that’s not in the same galaxy as the '72 Keystone Kops robbing of the righful gold-medal winning men’s basketball team or results from a non-regulation vault standing. Additionally, there’s an ongoing investigation, and even though there’s no realistic chance that the result will be reversed, at least they’re genuinely concerned about the bad press and will be more careful about enforcement in the future. That’s a helluva lot more than Roy Jones Jr. ever got.
I tuned in at the wrong moment to the volleyball medal game, but I could nearly swear I saw someone score a point with his face. Did that really happen?
yes it did. one of the guys on the usa team (i forget who exactly) blocked the ball at the net with his face/head. the ball was not returned, point usa.
that match was a really good one and both teams had fantastic plays.
Re: DKW on NBC’s coverage…spot on, mostly. They did a technically fine job. But since my viewing was 90% limited to their primetime slot, I just grew sick of swimming & diving, gymnastics, beach volleyball and track. (Not “track & field”…just track. They showed virtually no field events.)
So as things were winding down and they had time to show us their favorite moments again, what did they bless us with? Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson (oh, yeah, and Usain Bolt). :rolleyes: Because God knows we hadn’t seen enough of them already.
But their Saturday daytime coverage was a breath of fresh air. Canoe/kayak, synchronized swimming, boxing, ping pong!
Thanks for the acknowledgment, jsc1953. I’m not just doin’ this for my health, I like getting responses! 
Yeah, you really have to steer away from primetime if you want anything remotely surprising. Expect the Winter Olympics to be like that from now on, too.
Not much left to talk about, but I do feel like getting one last little issue out there, although I’m not sure if anyone really takes it seriously. There was this article on ESPN.com, and one of the comments was about how “every country besides America had China winning” the medal count. For the record, here’s the top 7 according to that site:
USA: 36-38-36 110
China: 51-21-28 100
Russia: 23-21-28 72
Great Britain: 19-13-15 47
Australia: 14-15-17 46
Germany: 16-10-15 41
France: 7-16-17 40
Leaving aside any issues of what merit there is to “winning” the medal count, or for that matter what’s the point when events with radically different levels of subjectiveness and fairness all get the same hardware (not to mention a swimmer being able to win 8 gold medals but a discus thrower one, etc.)…well, I just don’t the problem here. The team with the most medals wins the medal count (that’s why it’s called that). The fact that the majority of our production was below gold simply meant that we had the best team and were dominant all around; we didn’t have just a handful of stars backed by a bunch of also-rans. Even when we weren’t the best, we contended in nearly everything, and in all, it was hard to keep us off the podium.
Furthermore, only China had more golds, and they had the advantage of being the host nation. If China and Russia out-golded us, yeah, that might have taken some of the luster off, but as it was just the nation you’d expect, I can honestly say that we were the best. It was close, of course, and let’s not take anything away from China, who did superbly, but if we’re arguing about who did the best, all that’s required is second best plus one.
Besides, the other “official” system (which I only ever saw in one of our local newspapers) is nonsensical. It ranks the teams by golds, then uses the silver and bronze tallies as “tiebreakers”. I say nuts to that. I mean, under this system, France is behind Italy, which it took home 12 more medals than, and Armenia drops something like 20 places.
Another option is the old Epyx scoring, 5 points for gold, 3 for silver, and 1 for bronze. This puts greater weight on first place while still making the other medals worth something. I’ver never seen anyone seriously advocate this, though.
So whaddya think? Or is it silly that we’re still debating this many years after the end of the Cold War (which I’ve believed from day one)?
Of course it’s silly. The IOC wisely don’t seem to endorse medal tables at all. But do you think US media would use the “all medals are equal” count if it were the other way round, i.e. that it would place the USA lower than the “golds first” count? Would Michael Phelps be all over the papers if he had won eight bronze medals? (Actually, it would probably be quite a good story, about a serial loser 
)
Something like a 5-3-1 or 3-2-1 points system would seem fairer, but at that point it starts to feel like we’re taking the whole thing too seriously. And anyway, why is third place infinitely more valuable than fourth?
I still think anyone who scores a point with his face deserves an extra medal.