Every Two Years: 2012 Olympic Thread

Oh, I totally believe that they were doing it and it was obvious. It's just the fact that it is thoroughly unprovable. Plus, that's what you get for shitty tournament set up.

 

Almost as shitty as the user region locking that video.

 

The 77kg lifting was fantastic. I can't believe there's a week more of this. Can't wait for Klokov vs. Akkaev in the 105kg.

 

What is with all of the screaming? I was watching fencing and ping pong earlier today and these chicks were screaming after every point in both events. I can understand being amped up and being within a point of a medal but screaming when the score is 2-1 in a match to 15 in the quarter final? That's just dumb.

 

Women's volleyball need to get their shit together. Full body black suits? Ladies, this isn't what volleyball about.

 

And Kerry and Misty May lost a set, I think that this just proves that the bikini is the source of their power.

 

How much should I read into the fact that you see an attractive, taut, dripping wet man and the two terms you come up with to describe him are "boner" and "asshole"?

For those not in the know, boner/asshole is the Nebraskan gay equivalent of top/bottom.

 

Would it kill the gymnastics announcers to let us know some of the rules ahead of time? It practically sounds like the are making shit up ("well that doesn't count as a dismount..." Well why not? They're doing a terrible god of explaining the technicalities).

 

Background: I did seven years of gymnastics, but never competed at a high level.

This is a pretty good starting point.

If you really want to get into the guts of the sport, the Code of Points has pretty much everything you would ever want to know.

There are two parts to each score - difficulty and execution.

For difficulty, they do the following:

They take the most difficult parts of the routine and tally up a maximum score that the person can possibly receive. The appendix to the Code has difficulty values for every move. Basically, they give letter values to each move, starting with A. An A move is something really, really easy - like a kid's forward roll. Most Olympic-level competition is mixtures of Ds, Es, Fs, and Gs. Usually, they'll only do one G, and that'll be the dismount. I don't think anyone's done something ridiculous enough for it to be an H, but I'm sure someone will try eventually.

At the Olympic level, an E move gets .5 points, an F move gets .6 points, and a G move gets .7 points. The top eight (top ten for men) difficulty scores are then added together to get the first part of the Difficulty Score.

Next, there are required elements. On each event, there are five things that you need to do. For example, on uneven bars, the five elements are as follows:

1 – Flight element from the low bar to the high bar and one from the high bar to the low bar.
2 – Release (gymnast releases grip from the bar, does some shit, and then grabs the bar again).
3 – Two different grips (palms up and palms down) and giants (where you go all the way around the bar).
4 – Non-release move where the gymnast does a minimum 360-degree turn. Usually, this is a handstand.
5 – Dismount.

You get .5 points for each of these, for a maximum of 2.5 points.

Next, if you chain things together, you get another .1 or .2 points depending on how difficult the moves are. You can do this for multiple moves. This is where people who are good at floor get ridiculous scores. Women can do this on beam, uneven bars, and floor; men can do it on floor and horizontal bar. The exact combinations are spelled out in the Code.

So, in summary - the difficulty score is calculated through difficulty, required elements, and chaining shit together.

The execution score is the old-fashioned Scored Out Of Ten stuff we know and love. The technicalities are pretty nitpicky and spelled out for each event in excruciating detail in the Code. Deductions are .1 for minor shit, .3 for missing something important in the element, .5 for a serious fuck-up, and 1 full point for falling.

They then add the two scores together, and that's your score.

----------------------

Now, when people fuck up, it starts messing with this system.

Take that Russian girl who fucked up an acrobatic pass on floor. She messed up the landing on the setup, so she wasn't able to do the second, more difficult move. This does the following:

• She doesn't get credit for doing a required element. That's .5 gone.
• She doesn't get credit for chaining two moves together. That's .2 gone.
• She doesn't get the difficulty score for having a difficult move in there. Since she messed up a difficult element, the calculation has to take one of her easier moves. Seeing as how there weren't any other hard moves, they take something like a B or a C instead of the E she was going to do. That's another .4 points gone.
• She fucked up egregiously, so execution takes off another .5.

So, just by messing up on the landing on one thing, she loses 1.6 points. No wonder she was crying.

If people have any questions, I can elaborate, but I think I went a little too far already.

 

Based on? Just curious. I've liked Lochte, but his interviews have been terrible, he's very monotone and isn't enunciating for shit. But he's extremely well liked by those around him, so I'd be more inclined to trust their opinions.

On the flip side, after what was kind of series of disastrous PR situations that made him look like an asshat, Phelps has been fantastic this Olympics. In the past he seemed wooden and awkward, but he's been candid and sincere in interviews, showing alot of respect and appreciation for whats come before him and his place in history. As someone who was kind of sick of him coming into the games, I gained alot of respect for how he's handled himself.

 

Cheering like crazy after every point is a part of Ping-Pong, and is as true of men as it is of the women. Whenever you play table tennis, you have this natural burst of either enthusiasm or disappointment at the end of the point, depending on who won.

This is a ubiquitous trait; it's as true of the club-level players like myself and friends as it is of the world's elite.

Of all the players, I think the most blatant self-cheerer is my countryman Alexander Shibaev, 21 years old and ranked 29th in the world heading into the Olympics. Sadly, he lost in the 3rd round, so we didn't hear more "SHO!!!"'



Speaking of which, table tennis at the 2012 Olympics has seriously sucked. It's even worse than I outlined in this post. The reason?

The ITTF (table tennis federation) outlined a new rule these Olympics that each country can only have 2 representatives this year, not 3. Thus, Ma Long, the world's #2, the reigning Pro Tour Champion, who regularly beats the world's #1 and World Champion, Zhang Jike, doesn't even get a chance to compete in the singles. Instead, he has only qualified for the team event.

This also means many talented top 25 players from Japan, Germany, and South Korea are also missing.

With the exception of aging former world champion 36 year-old Vladimir Samsonov almost beating Zhang Jike in a 7 set thriller, the games have been pretty boring. Jun Mizutani, the world's #5, who is very good but not great, was upset easily in straight sets in the 4th round (he was seeded directly into the 3rd round).

The semi-finals are Wang Hao against Chinese Tapei's Chih-Yuan Chuang (#8 in the world) and Zhang Jike against Germany's Dmitri Ovtacharov (#12 in the world). Chuang and Ovtacharov are strong players, but they can only win if their opponents have an awful day where they're missing everything in sight. Otherwise, they're just not on the same level as the Chinese duo.

 

You belong to a ping pong club? What happened? Did the chess club kick you out?

 

Well for one thing, him claiming he does 850 lb tire flips for sets of 20. That's complete and utter bullshit. I could go into the reasons why, but the absolute fittest lightweight strongmen in the world are on the verge of passing out at around 10 or 12 flips with a tire that size. These aren't your big fat guys you see on ESPN, they're the super fit, super fast, super ripped ones who make crossfitters look like puny unfit dorks.

That tire he was flipping on the training montage was a legit 600ish tire, though. That was a legit contest tire weight for top level amateur contests 5 or 6 years ago.

You want more reasons; His closet full of personalized shoes with his name on them . . . "I like it when I walk on the beach because it says 'Ryan' and 'Lochte' wherever I step." His entire wardrobe was emblazoned with "RL" from his stupid flat-billed skater hat to his belt buckle. The guy is fucking full of himself.

 

there was an article today about his MOTHER discussing that he has a lot of one night stands. Now maybe this was taking out of context. And it is probably true of most athletes of this caliber. But the rest have the sense not to a. talk about it with their moms b. talk about it with the media. So since I also get a major douche vibe from him, I am choosing to judge him for this.

and yes, I agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with one night stands, but take offense when it is discussed as a point of pride (or hell, even discussed) to be published for all the little kids who look up to him to read. I know that they signed up to be athletes, not role models, but they all know that they are being idolized by little swimmers who dream that one day they can be .... just .... like.... Lochte

Eh, whatever, abs aside, I just don't care for him.

 

You must have to beat the women off you with a stick.

 

Aida Roman, just took silver in women's archery. Sexy/cute.

 

Just what I was thinking about a half hour ago as my entire kitchen staff was watching that event. Too bad she lost.