London 2012 Summer Olympics

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Axver said:
Obviously you know a shitload more about swimming than I do, but I'm not clear how that rebuts two of the article's points that struck me as pretty decent: 1. Lochte at that stage of the race didn't have to go all-out to win (and when he did in another race, he beat her time) while she did, and 2. other male swimmers did swim the freestyle leg of the 400 IM faster than she did, but all the attention has been on the Lochte comparison. How come you don't think those points are valid?
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go back and look at her split vs the other women, and then vs the other men:

Ye Shiwen (CHN) 58.68
Beisel (USA) 102.33
Xuanxu (CHN) 101.58
Hosszu (HUN) 102.66
Hannah (GBR) 102.97
Rice (AUS) 103.98
Leverenz (USA) 104.45
Garcia (ESP) 102.91

Men
Lochte (USA) 58.65
Pereira (BRA) 59.70
Hagino (JPN) 58.20
Phelps (USA) 58.32
Le Clos (RSA) 59.15
Horihata (JPN) 57.58
Fraser-Holmes (AUS) 58.13
Marin (ITA) 100.12 (59.22p)



so she was 3+ seconds faster than any other woman, and she outsplit the men's silver medalist Pereira, Lo Close, and Marin. she was within a half second of Phelps and Lochte and the bronze medalist.

all these swimmers had swum the same grueling race. none of her other splits would be even remotely competitive with the men *except* for her closing freestyle, in which she was right in the middle of the pack. and that's what's so weird.

the other point about Lochte going all out in freestyle is where the author doesn't know swimming. he was looking at Lochte's 100 free split off the relay. he was only swimming 100m. of course that's going to be enormously faster than a 100 swum at the end of a 400 IM where you are fatigued. had Ye swum a solo 100 on a relay she would have been much faster than her final 400IM split as well ... however, and this is what makes it weirder, she wouldn't have been close to Lochte in a flat-out 100m, which makes her matching him in the final 100 all that much more strange. for the author to make it sound like Lochte was coasting and/or holding back and that explains it doesn't make any sense.

it's not like Lochte coasted the free in the IM, he swam it well, and it was a typical, expected split in line with his other competitors. Ye's split was out of this world, and i believe i've seen that the fastest previous final 100 split was Stephanie Rice in 2008 who came back in 1:00.9, which was considered insanely good at the time (and was suit-assisted).



on another note .... given how wild and crazy these Olympics have been, how quickly favorites fall, how many countries win medals now, how younger swimmers rise up, how difficult it is to repeat ... it makes Phelps in 2008 look all that much more extraordinary.

i'm very nervous for him tonight. i'd love to see a man finally three-peat.
 
Irvine511 said:
oh my god yes. it was hypnotic.
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Have you ever done any diving? I don't get some of the high scores when you can see that the sync is way off compared to what it's supposed to be. I know that the degree of difficulty is factored in too. Maybe that overpowers some of the mistakes, I don't know. They probably judge on reputation too.

And it was crazy seeing Greg Louganis with white hair. Probably grey not white but it looked more white on tv. Sort of depressing too, but he looks great and healthy-that's the most important thing.
 
WTF-I just read that Great Britain didn't win the silver in men's gymnastics, that the Japan inquiry worked. I went to bed shortly after they showed the guy giving the judges the papers and the money. Which did look very odd.
 
Glad to see the good ol' PRK kicking ass.
PRK.gif
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
Have you ever done any diving? I don't get some of the high scores when you can see that the sync is way off compared to what it's supposed to be. I know that the degree of difficulty is factored in too. Maybe that overpowers some of the mistakes, I don't know. They probably judge on reputation too.

And it was crazy seeing Greg Louganis with white hair. Probably grey not white but it looked more white on tv. Sort of depressing too, but he looks great and healthy-that's the most important thing.
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no, never dove myself competitively, but being a pool rat as a kid i've gone off many diving boards. i really have no understanding of the judging, even if we did have diving as part of our swim meets in high school and college. all i remember being told was to always act like your diver had just performed the greatest dive ever with the hopes that your enthusiasm might affect the judge's scores.

agreed on Louganis. i still remember being, like, 10 years old in 1988 and staying up to watch him duke it out with that 14 year old Chinese kid and how it came down to the last dive and it was all super-dramatic. they do more difficult dives now, but he was so graceful.

he's also had a hard, sad life in many ways (abusive father, he's a rape victim), but apparently he's doing well these days. he, like, lives in Malibu and trains dogs and consults for USA diving.
 
Irvine511 said:
he's also had a hard, sad life in many ways (abusive father, he's a rape victim), but apparently he's doing well these days. he, like, lives in Malibu and trains dogs and consults for USA diving.
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Yes I've read about that. I've seen him on some tv shows and in some magazines with his dogs too. I still remember when he hit his head, and last night I was wincing every time their heads got close to the platform. The divers just seem so much smaller since he was in his prime, they look like little kids in comparison. I did really like that 6'8 swimmer-ashamed to say I can't remember his name. The guy who was on last night, I think he got the gold medal. I was so tired so maybe I'm wrong.
 
Thanks for the spoiler tags, I usually just avoid this thread after a certain time of day but I just wanted to post this. I think it was also on Gawker that a girl posted that she had met him several times, she posted a picture with him. Said he's gorgeous and nice, but basically dumb as a rock. Hey she said it, not me. I hate that grill thing too, with the fire of a thousand suns.

Ryan Lochte Is Tweeting Some 'Weird Tweets'
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
WTF-I just read that Great Britain didn't win the silver in men's gymnastics, that the Japan inquiry worked. I went to bed shortly after they showed the guy giving the judges the papers and the money. Which did look very odd.
Click to expand...

Turned it on before going to be and saw judges looking at a replay...oddest thing I've ever seen.
 
i think this is my new motto in life:

Ryan Lochte
✔
@ryanlochte
Can u catch lightening in a bottle and set the water on fire?
Click to expand...


i have no doubts that Lochte is dumb as a rock. i think Ricky Berens said something like, "the thing with Phelps is that he thinks too much, the thing with Ryan is that he doesn't think at all." he makes Phelps look professorial, which, um, is hard to do.

and, yeah, turn the internets off at about 3pm and wait it out for the excruciating NBC prime time coverage.

though i did notice that they totally spoiled Missy Franklin last night with some dumb-ass Today Show preview -- "watch Missy Franklin talk to her parents for the first time after winning her first gold medal!" -- that they showed *before* her final. :doh:

and in regards to Franklin, i've been reading some Canadian papers. did you know that her Canadian parents just won that gold medal for the US? she has dual citizenship, you know.
 
I used to really love watching gymnastics. Between the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, I was literally obsessed with the sport. But as I got older, my interest waned.

Now I have no interest in watching any of it. I think its a mixture of a few reasons. One is that the new scoring system is horrible. Two, is that the women's floor routines are all about tumbling and almost nothing about artistry (Yeah, I'm one of those fans who looks forward to seeing the girls dance away and entertain the crowd, if possible). Why bother with music if you're not going to actually dance? They should take away the music from the girls and have them do routines like the male gymnasts.

Also, are the rotations done just like they have been for the past two Olympics? Where during the AA, all the athletes are placed according to their qualifying scores? Meaning, the top 10 qualifying gymnasts start off on vault, the next 10 on the uneven bars, etc. I think that takes away the excitement of the competition and makes it almost predictable.

Anyway, I might take a glimpse of tonight's competition, but I have no real desire.
 
The Russians are crying. They've been in 2nd place to us the whole day, but have just made some serious mistakes on floor. Knock on wood, but it's looking pretty good.
 
Redemption is spelled J-O-R-D-Y-N!!!

Wieber nails her floor routine this time around, and puts her squad squarely in line for the team GOLD!
 
And it's over. It's all over. These five exceptional American women stand as Olympic champions, as the familiar strains of The Star-Spangled Banner wash over the crowd here at North Greenwich Arena, on the banks of the River Thames.
 
Pearl said:
Two, is that the women's floor routines are all about tumbling and almost nothing about artistry (Yeah, I'm one of those fans who looks forward to seeing the girls dance away and entertain the crowd, if possible). Why bother with music if you're not going to actually dance?
Click to expand...

ITA. So glad somebody else feels the same way.

I have to admit (at the risk of being flogged) that I historically haven't liked watching the US women's gymnastics team and this is part of the reason why. Oftentimes they are by far the best athletes in the arena - they tumble like it's nobody's business, all power on the vault, for example, but just no artistry, no creativity in presentation. Since the new scoring system was brought in, the other teams have essentially followed their lead and now all we have is athleticism without anything extra. I liked the extra. Oh well, what can you do.

Can't wait for athletics to kick off on Friday!
 
anitram said:
ITA. So glad somebody else feels the same way.

I have to admit (at the risk of being flogged) that I historically haven't liked watching the US women's gymnastics team and this is part of the reason why. Oftentimes they are by far the best athletes in the arena - they tumble like it's nobody's business, all power on the vault, for example, but just no artistry, no creativity in presentation. Since the new scoring system was brought in, the other teams have essentially followed their lead and now all we have is athleticism without anything extra. I liked the extra. Oh well, what can you do.

Can't wait for athletics to kick off on Friday!
Click to expand...

Some American gymnasts had artistry. Shannon Miller comes to mind, though her music was irritating (she used one piece for about three years, and in Atlanta, she had violin music that sounded like it was dying an agonizing death).

At the risk of being flogged myself, I always prefered the Russian gymnasts on the floor. I always found them to be so graceful and their music pleasant to listen to. The Romanians had OK music, but poor dancing.
 
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