Posted on 07/30/2012 8:36:30 AM PDT by tonyome
Did anyone else watch the Olympic women's gymnastics last night? One of the young girls on the U.S. team is black. She is a great gymnast, but during last night's competition, she fell off the balance beam, and took several steps out of bounds on the floor exercise, yet beat out a fellow teammate to advance to the All Around final, even though her teammate made far less mistakes in her routines on the balance beam and floor exercise. I know nothing about Olympics Gymnastics judging, but even one of the NBC commentators remarked that her floor exercise routine "was scored much higher than I thought it would be". In my opinion, I think the judges gave the girl a break because she was black. Some people might be offended by that comment, but it looked fairly obvious to me.
The black girl was the only one who smiled. The rest acted like Soviet union robots from the 60’s.
She was out of bounds big time. There is a pic, btw she continued going out of bounds all the way to the pink. Judges hit her hard for the mistake, but her scores on the other 3 events were good enough to give she a second in the all around.
That really sucks is the girl that finished 4th overall and the current world champion does not get to compete since each team can only send 2 girls to the finals.
And another thing, this wasn’t about Douglas taking a spot away from Wieber — the situation only occurred because of an exceptionally strong performance by Abby Raisman, who simply out-performed her teammates Douglas and Wieber, both of whom were favorites going into the Olympics.
Neither of the other two members of the team could qualify because only those three performed all four events.
Raisman finished 2nd in the individual all-around, 1st on floor, and 5th on beam. She has a chance at 4 medals (including the team event).
Douglas was 3rd overall, 6th on the bar and 3rd on the beam, also with a chance at 4 medals.
Wieber (floor, 6th), Maroney (vault, 1st), and Ross (beam, 6th) all have chances for the team medal and one event final.
It is not just based on who made fewer mistakes, but the start value of the routine; i.e, which routine contained harder, more difficult to execute tricks and then you start deducting from there. Yes, Gabby Douglas made an obvious big mistake, but the judges make those deductions from the “start value†of her routine which gives you the final score. Her start value was higher than Jordyn Wieber’s. Gabby Douglas has already beaten Jordyn Weiber twice. I also agree that limiting each country to 2 athletes in the all-around part of the competition is a stupid rule. The top 24 should complete period. Lets hope that this episode will change that rule in the future.
You should have stopped right there, I'm afraid.
99/100 = GOLD MEDAL
Didn’t see it but smirked smugly, anyway...:)
She didn’t fall off the balance beam. Where did you get that from?
You wrote: “The real “affirmative action” is the rule that a single country can only place two competitors in the individual all-around final. Wieber was 4th overall, but will have to sit out while 21 girls she out-scored get to compete.”
I agree; pretty messed up. I don’t think any of the other sports have this rule.
Agree 100% with your post, and by the way, the OP is wrong about Gabby falling off the balance beam. She did not fall off the beam, rather had a great routine. I feel very bad for the girl who got bumped out of the individual all-around (current world champ, I understand). She is very much worthy, but she too stepped OB on the floor routine (barely). The tragedy is the “only two girls from any one country” rule for individual all-around. Our team is very strong and unfortunately that’s how it worked out. The black girl was a pleasure to watch though, as were the others on our solid team.
I think it’s messed up even in gymnastics. As far as I know, 3 of the girls all qualified for the beam final, and I don’t hear anyone saying they won’t be allowed to do it. It seems to just apply to the individual all-around, or no one’s made a fuss over Ross being left out of the beam.
Because of her high score, Wieber would be allowed to do the all-around if one of her teammates had to pull out because of an injury (that happened to Kerri Strug in ‘96 — she couldn’t go on that bad leg after the team final).
Never occured to me.
Thanks.
If you’re gonna smirk, be sure to do it smugly.
Sorry, but I’ve always held that any “Sport” that determines the results as someone’s opinion, to me is NOT a sport: floor exercises, ice skating, balance beams, etc. Any time that someone’s opinion has to be summoned, it is not a sport.
I mean, ballet is not a sport . . . so how come floor exercises or figure skating IS!
So... baseball isn’t a sport, because an umpire has to call balls and strikes? Basketball doesn’t count because the referee decides what is and isn’t a foul? Football/hockey the same with penalties?
Pretty much leaves only things that can be explicitly done by computer (archery, shooting, race timing — except swimming, which has stroke and turn judging — etc.)
This is starting to turn into a George Carlin routine.
i believe she (Gabby) was far and away the best gymnast during the Olympic trials....there’s such a thing as peaking as and athlete and that what Gabby seems to be doing....my heart broke for Jordan Weiber not making the individual finals- its complete BS...sort of like three teams in the AFC North going 11-5 and the NFL saying “sorry- you can only have two teams from each division in the playoffs”...a complete joke...
i’ve been to the games four times (’84/LA, ‘88/Calgary, ‘96/Atl, ‘02/SLC) and this PC/affirmative action has been creeping in...i also trained for the olympics for ten years (track and field) and it used to be there was one standard and if you met it you got in the games...now there’s an A standard for the countries with good athletes and B standard for the countries whose athletes suck and they let inferior athletes in...everyone loved the Jamaican bobsled team in 1988- but they had absolutely no right to be there...ditto for British ski jumper Eddie the eagle for those who remember him....
She never fell off the beam in her official routine. She did fall off while warming up...
The contest of political correctness trumps all.
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