Posted on 08/21/2008 7:12:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
BEIJING -- Torri Edwards' screeching expression said it all on a night of rain-soaked relay calamity on the Olympic track Thursday.
Think about the famous Edvard Munch painting, "The Scream," and you get general idea of back-to-back disasters unfolding for the U.S. relay teams within about 30 minutes. There was disqualification for the men in the preliminaries of the 400-meter relay, followed by the same for the women, a huge dose of Olympic-size ignominy.
This wasn't a whisper to a scream. It was a scream to a scream at the Bird's Nest.
And, on top of it all, the botched exchange came at the same juncture for both relays, on the last handoff. The men's snafu occurred on the Darvis Patton to Tyson Gay exchange, and the women stumbled when there was a drop between Edwards and Lauryn Williams because Williams couldn't close her hand around the baton.
Who wouldn't feel for Williams? Four years ago, there was a blown handoff between Marion Jones and Williams at the Olympics in Athens in the same event. Williams' miscue there came when she ran out of the zone on the exchange.
"I don't know how -- the same pass, the same situation," said Mechelle Lewis, who ran the second leg. "A big, huge unfortunate coincidence. But it happened.
" . . . She'll give you a better idea of what she's going through. But I'm pretty sure, two games in a row with a bad pass, I wouldn't be so happy if I was her."
Said Williams: "Maybe someone has a voodoo doll of me."
If so, then that voodoo doll was making the rounds for Team USA. And it could be argued that the male equivalent was the star-crossed Gay, who will leave Beijing empty-handed, an apt metaphor for the relay.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
All the networks will show is water sports, track, and gymnastics. Were any American boxers entered in the olympics?
UHD has shown every round of boxing, also MSNBC has shown many lesser known sports.
There is also video on the NBC Olympics website.
I really haven’t paid much attention really, just caught some snippets here and there.
G
I've seen soccer, baseball, softball and beach volleyball. And tennis.
I saw a fair amount of boxing. I think it was on “Universal HD” Whatever that is.
CNBC afternoon coverage has focused on boxing but the way the boxing matches have been judged they haven’t been much more than perplexing to watch. The judging has been atrocious.
The men’s handoff was really weak. Fault A: Gay’s hand was high and flopping around and, Fault B: Patton let go of the baton before Gay grabbed it. I prefer the lower body handoff with the baton being shoved up into the inverted V of the thumb and 4Fingers.
I just heard this on HAM radio.
Bummer
I wonder why Lord Obama willed that?
Boxing is a wasteland. I’ve watched 5 bouts now and I have not gotten right who the winner was. The helmet and the white paint glove have made boxing a boring Olympic sport.
BTW, track and field is what the Olympics is all about. All the frilly stuff is what makes me crazy.
I wish that dog-walking would become an Olympic sport. I walk my dog two to three times a day and I'm damn good at it and if it were only made a sport, I could possibly bring home another medal for the U.S.A.
Now I'm thinking that the dog-walk will take place on a three-mile course. Points will be deducted for having the dog take a crap in the wrong place and for having the lease get tangled and other things like that. Having the dog "tug" at the least - definitely points are getting deducted for that.
So basically the idea is to have a "perfect" three mile walk with your dog with the dog observing certain rules of decorum and behavior.
I also think that the dogs should stand with their owners to be medaled after the competition.
You know this track team has practiced their hand offs thousands of times, you'd think they could do it in their sleep.
And the softball team lost, for the first time ever. Kudos to the Japanese girls, for not being afraid.
Ughh...I feel just sick for them. This is my favorite part of the whole Olympics.
I can’t figure out how the softball team ended up playing Japan again. They had already beat them twice.
Plus the USA’s Women’s Soccer Team won vs Brazil. Hope Solo finally finds redemption plus it’s Brazil, the world soccer power.
It’s a mixed day for team USA.
Then again, we’re way ahead of the medal standings with China down by close to 10 medals to us.
And I believe it was raining, or at least sprinkling. The track was wet and had puddles in some spots. I'm sure their hands were slippery.
Then again, if you leave the other guy lying on the floor, there’s not much the judges can do about it...
So the lady who messed it up four years ago did it again? And Tyson Gay choked again? Clearly, the US sprinting coaches are idiots. We’ve got plenty of sprinters — there’s no need to put out those who just can’t handle the ultimate pressure.
At various times during the day they have Olympics coverage on MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network and Oxygen Network, along with the prime-time coverage on NBC. Besides the water, track and gymnastics stuff, they have featured basketball, soccer, baseball, field hockey, equestrian events, wrestling, boxing, volleyball, beach volleyball, and more.
that game was played about 3:30 am PST and it was over by 7am yet I couldn't get a score off of the tv.....they kept saying that there was going to be a gold medal game, not that someone had already won it....
that's the trouble with the Olympics ...I like watching LIVE and I never know if I am.....
as far as Japan goes, they had the same pitcher for three days straight now....that is an amazing feat....its not baseball but it does take a lot of energy and stamina.....
Our track and field team has been a major embarassment.
The announcer stated that these athletes have been put up in lush accommodations with everything at thier disposal.
Obviously getting rockstar treatment makes them perform like one too.
A coach on the team said that the problem is that like 75% of the team are anchors in their pre-Olympic lives, and don’t have experience with the early parts of relay. It’s basically a bunch of superstars without any consideration of how these people work together as a team. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians.
Oh geez, I ran relays in high school, nothing could be easier than passing the baton. It should only take a few hours of work to be proficient at it.
Heart-break?
They dropped the baton. They blew it.
What f’ing heartbreak are you talking about?
It’s the best of the best, not the clumsient of the clumsiest.
Why were all of the other teams able to pass the baton just fine (granted a few went out of the zone and were DQ'd as well)
I think US Track and Field has made the same mistake USA Basketball made in 2004. They sent all-stars out there and forgot to teach them how to work as team.
Maybe we should take the USA swimming coaches and loan them to the track coaches to teach them how to train a relay team correctly.
It’s not the same because these track runners are way faster than your high school team. It makes it harder.
Should still never happen, total lack of concentration.
The top womens' softball players are very intense, they wear a look of hatred on their faces that scares me :P, although they are good sportmen and do not play dirty.
I think Gay is doping. You typically only get tested if you medal, but making finals may also get you tested. Note that this is baseless speculation on my part, but I’ll speculate anyway.
If so, he sure didn't do a very good job of it.
Has anyone noticed that Frank Zappa is playing beach volleyball for the US?
In most olympic team sports, you have round robin pool play which gets you into the top 8. Then you have an 8 team single elimination tournament. In pool play, Japan finished 2nd to the US which means japan played the number 3 team in the opposite pool and the US played the 4 team in opposite pool.
The last game was the finals or gold medal game that Japan won.
It is the same in track and field where you need to finish in the top 2 or the 8 fastest to advance to the finals or gold medal run.
And Richard Moll is his partner.
Here's a very interesting and highly unusual statistic in these Olympics. Notice the distribution of country's gold medal count relative to silver and bronze medal counts for same country. Normally, distribution is similar and relatively even among the different medals, with gold possibly smaller than other two. in other words, gold medal count should generally be close to or slightly smaller than 1/3rd of total medal count for the country. In these Olympics it's the case for almost every country, except China. China stands out not only with extremely high count of gold medals, but their gold metal count is higher than their silver and bronze combined, i.e. much higher than half of China's medal count !
Considering that many of China's gold medals are in "artistic sports" where scores and place are assigned by subjective judges, I don't think this is such a surprising development. I wonder if we can correlate the number of Olympic gold medals to number of silver and bronze of the host countries in other Olympics and get a similar result. If not, the implications are pretty obvious.
| Total Medals | |||||
| Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| 1 | United States | 29 | 35 | 34 | 98 |
| 2 | China | 46 | 15 | 22 | 83 |
| 3 | Russia | 16 | 16 | 19 | 51 |
| 4 | Britain | 17 | 12 | 11 | 40 |
| 5 | Australia | 11 | 13 | 14 | 38 |
| 6 | France | 5 | 13 | 14 | 32 |
| 7 | Germany | 11 | 8 | 12 | 31 |
| 8 | South Korea | 10 | 10 | 6 | 26 |
| 9 | Japan | 9 | 6 | 9 | 24 |
| 10 | Italy | 6 | 7 | 8 | 21 |
| 11 | Ukraine | 5 | 5 | 9 | 19 |
| 12t | Netherlands | 6 | 5 | 4 | 15 |
| 12t | Canada | 3 | 7 | 5 | 15 |
| 14 | Cuba | 2 | 6 | 6 | 14 |
| 15 | Belarus | 2 | 3 | 8 | 13 |
| 16 | Spain | 4 | 5 | 2 | 11 |
| 17 | Kazakhstan | 1 | 4 | 5 | 10 |
| 18t | Jamaica | 5 | 3 | 1 | 9 |
| 18t | New Zealand | 3 | 1 | 5 | 9 |
| 18t | Brazil | 1 | 2 | 6 | 9 |
| 21t | Romania | 4 | 1 | 3 | 8 |
| 21t | Poland | 3 | 4 | 1 | 8 |
| 21t | Kenya | 2 | 4 | 2 | 8 |
| 24t | Czech Republic | 3 | 3 | 0 | 6 |
| 24t | Georgia | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| 24t | Denmark | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| 24t | North Korea | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| 24t | Norway | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 |
| 24t | Turkey | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 |
| 24t | Azerbaijan | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| 24t | Uzbekistan | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| 32t | Slovakia | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| 32t | Switzerland | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| 32t | Slovenia | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| 32t | Bulgaria | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| 32t | Indonesia | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| 32t | Hungary | 0 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| 32t | Sweden | 0 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| 32t | Lithuania | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| 32t | Armenia | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| 41t | Zimbabwe | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| 41t | Chinese Taipei | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| 43t | Ethiopia | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 43t | Finland | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| 43t | Argentina | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 43t | Austria | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 43t | Croatia | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 43t | Greece | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 49t | Estonia | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 49t | Mongolia | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 49t | Portugal | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 49t | Thailand | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 49t | India | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 49t | Latvia | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 49t | Mexico | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 49t | Algeria | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 49t | Colombia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 49t | Kyrgyzstan | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 49t | Serbia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 49t | Tajikistan | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 61t | Bahrain | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Cameroon | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Panama | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Tunisia | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Chile | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Dominican Republic | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Ecuador | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Malaysia | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Singapore | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | South Africa | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Trinidad and Tobago | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Vietnam | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 61t | Afghanistan | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 61t | Bahamas | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 61t | Egypt | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 61t | Iran | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 61t | Israel | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 61t | Morocco | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 61t | Togo | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 61t | Venezuela | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
In that case my dog would be eliminated...walk,pee,sniff....walk,sniff,mark territory....walk sniff pee turn circles numerous times for just the right pooh spot....
That’s good: Frank and the Bull
I’ve been saying this for nearly a week. That said, I did look at the medal counts for the last two Olympics, and China showed a similar trend at those times, as well...Russia did it in 1996.
Got to be something in the water...
Got to be something in the water... is as good way as any to describe that.
Some folks can run.
Some folks can chew gum..
Some folks can run and chew gum.
Some folks can’t.
Well, they definitely weren't in sync. I watched the replays, and it looked like the male and female runners who were handing off the baton were having trouble keeping up with the person they were supposed to be giving it to. In the females race, it looked almost as if the baton was knocked out of the passer's hand by the runner she was passing it too. Maybe the runners will be able to explain what happened. It was really a shame that it happened to both teams, but I think the females had the same thing happen in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Yes and no. They have won 20 medals in track and field, almost twice as many as their nearest rival, the Russians with 11. They may have underperformed, but they are far from being an embarrasment.
OK. I get it now. Thank you!
Yes, I think in Olympic boxing they deduct points for hitting the other guy!
If you added up all of the former Soviet republics they would blow away the US and China in total medals, even look at how tiny Belarus has done.
Now, we know the real reason we broke up the Soviet Union!
There is a problem with this proposition, it assumes that number of people in the same team is unlimited, while there would be quite an overlap in actual representation. I did that kind of math shortly after breakup of Soviet Union, with CIS taking its place. In real life, it doesn't add that much to medal count, only marginally so. The "drain" of sports talent after breakup, particularly into US and Western Europe has affected them much more in this respect. Liukin and Artemov are just two examples.
Here is what I get:
| Former Soviet Countries | |
|---|---|
| Country | Medals |
| Russia | 53 |
| Ukraine | 19 |
| Belarus | 13 |
| Kazakhstan | 10 |
| Azerbaijan | 7 |
| Georgia | 6 |
| Uzbekistan | 6 |
| Lithuania | 5 |
| Armenia | 5 |
| Estonia | 2 |
| Latvia | 2 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 2 |
| Tajikistan | 2 |
| GRAND TOTAL | 132 |
And as a comparison:
| The Anglosphere | |
|---|---|
| Country | Medals |
| United States | 99 |
| Great Britain | 40 |
| Australia | 38 |
| Canada | 15 |
| New Zealand | 9 |
| GRAND TOTAL | 201 |
If you add in all the Anglosphere countries including, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, South Africa, and India, the number gets even more lopsided.
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