<p>that the score for the last guy was not accurate. they had a replay and 're scored it" which after some length of time was changed. felt bad for GreaT Britain who had not medaled in 100 years and for Romania (I believe) they were so excited then NOT</p>
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<p>Kohei Uchimura completely messed up his dismount on pommel horse. Originally the judges did not credit him as having a dismount in his routine, heavily hurting his difficulty score. Coaches are allowed to protest decisions made by the difficulty score judges. Upon reevaluation they credited him with a dismount.</p>
<p>“Watched the Canadians play Romania in doubles tennis. Bravo to the ‘old man’ Daniel Nestor and his young partner on the win. Question for you tennis fans, does Federer ever play doubles other than in the Olympics?”</p>
<p>He plays doubles for Switzerland in Davis Cup (when he decides to play,)</p>
<p>I am quite upset by all the empty seats at each event. It goes to show how inaccessible the Olympics are to the average person. Each empty seat’s holder is part of the “elites” (government,corporate sponsors).
They couldn’t even fill them with soldiers and students. They should let the general public in on a “first come” basis.</p>
<p>Rowing is very, very hard and requires thighs of steel. I was recruited Freshman year in college to row, as I was the 3rd tallest Freshman girl (small school with very few women). It’s a spring sport, so they put us in the gym for the winter doing squats, dead lifts and snatches and working in the stationary rower. I switched to another sport after 2-3 weeks. </p>
<p>Consider you are going all out for 2000 meters - 1.3 miles in 5-8 minutes depending how many people are in the boat. (the seats of most boats slide, so the power of the stroke is with your legs, the arm pull is at the end and mostly to get the oar out of the water and repositioned for the next stroke. You need to do this in cadence with everyone in the boat. It’s quite hard and the rowers I’ve know over the years are in amazing shape).</p>
<p>Beach volleyball at night looks like a really fun event to go to.</p>
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<p>It is disappointing, especially considering how many people who applied to buy tickets were unsuccessful. It is a little odd how many seats have been taken up by officials and sponsors. Hopefully over the next few days it will be sorted. I don’t agree that it should be on a first come basis though, that would be a security nightmare - could you imagine how many people would descend on the Olympic park?</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation about the controversy in men’s gymnastics.</p>
<p>nj2011mom, I realize that it takes great strength and endurance, but assuming a person was already in fantastic rowing shape, how long would it take them to figure out how to do it well - e.g. the correct technique? All the rowers I’ve ever known of (e.g. relatives of friends, etc.) were just like you - recruited in college because they were tall. The gymnasts and swimmers have been at it for hours a day, virtually every day, since they were toddlers. Is “learning the sport” of rowing all about learning to pace yourself, like distance running or swimming?</p>
<p>yes it was a more indepth one than mine LOL!</p>
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<p>CTV reported today that the problem is being addressed, starting with the sale of seats whose tickets have not been presented within a half hour of the start of an event. That apparently started last night. Also, tickets that have been returned by several international sports federations. Three quarters of all tickets to the games were sold to the public, going on sale in 2011.</p>
<p>I was watching the women’s soccer match today, US vs. France, and there were tons of empty seats. It was being played in Glasgow, which I suppose may have something to do with it.</p>
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<p>You’re going to get a long, technical answer. :)</p>
<p>Technique and strength are both vital in rowing. Rowing uses all the muscles of the body, but a lot of it is leg strength. Also, the longer you can row (determined by leg length and body length), the longer the blade is in the water, and the further you push the boat. So height is important. If you look at this picture, I think it shows pretty well the muscles used – this is just as she’s finishing a stroke, and she has to keep her back straight and her muscles tensed as she’s leaning back:
[Row2k</a> Coverage: Olympic Games Photo Galleries - W1x Heats](<a href=“Olympic Games rowing photos | W1x Heats - | row2k.com”>Olympic Games rowing photos | W1x Heats - | row2k.com)</p>
<p>This is the start of the stroke:
[Row2k</a> Coverage: Olympic Games Photo Galleries - W1x Heats](<a href=“Olympic Games rowing photos | W1x Heats - | row2k.com”>Olympic Games rowing photos | W1x Heats - | row2k.com)</p>
<p>The rowing stroke starts with a push back of the legs, then the body swings back, and then the arms come in. You must have good body control – sitting up tall, tensing the abs, keeping your shoulders from going up – so it’s actually a good core workout as well. It’s also vitally important for everyone in the boat to move together. If the oars don’t go in the water together, it’ll mess up the rhythm and slow the boat down. There are a lot of things that rowers can do with their bodies to mess up the boat as well – even turning your head to one side can make the boat tip to that side, which makes it more difficult for people to row. Other little technical details that can slow a boat down – the oar going into the water half a second too late or too early or being too high or too low; the rowers moving too quickly back to the start of the stroke; the coxswain not being able to steer a straight line or weighing too much…</p>
<p>The really interesting thing about rowing, though, is that a 2k race (the standard racing distance for college and elite rowing) is a spring. It’s rowed at the anaerobic threshhold. It’s basically the only sport with that kind of sustained anaerobic workout for that length of time (The best comparison I can make is trying to do something like the 500-meter dash for six minutes). Cycling can come pretty close to rowing in the type of workout.</p>
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<p>There’s a huge mental aspect because the way a race goes is sort of like you start and go all out and you feel like it’s going pretty well and then you realize you’re only a third of the way through. So you keep going and get the halfway point, and think “oh, no there is no way I can do another half of this” and slog out the third quarter and then just try to get to the finish line as quickly as you can. And then possibly lean out of the boat and throw up (no joke). It’s not as much about pacing as about mentally being able to convince yourself to keep going, at least for sprint races. Head races, which are longer, are much more about pacing.</p>
<p>You can pick up good technique relatively quickly (there’s a girl on the national team who didn’t start rowing until toward the end of her time at Yale) or really struggle with it, but there are always things to improve on. I think getting to know each other is important as well. These women live full-time in Princeton and row together every day – some for years.</p>
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<p>Part of that may also be because that game was played so early - two days before the Opening Ceremonies.</p>
<p>They played lacrosse in British boarding school books I read that were written in the 1941. [The</a> Twins at St. Clare’s - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twins_at_St._Clare’s]The”>The Twins at St. Clare's - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Regarding how difficult rowing is…here is an entertaining series of articles by a BU reporter who undertook to learn:</p>
<p>[Sculling</a> School | BU Today | Boston University](<a href=“http://www.bu.edu/today/sculling-school/]Sculling”>http://www.bu.edu/today/sculling-school/)</p>
<p>I had not seen those articles before – awesome! I should note (had to check this when I noticed the last name) that Caleb Daniloff, the author, is the son of Nicholas Daniloff. Nicholas Daniloff is currently a journalism professor at Northeastern and a rower – he has written a book about his experience being arrested and accused of espionage by the KGB in Soviet Union in eighties.</p>
<p>[Nicholas</a> Daniloff’s Exclusive Story; Thirteen Days in a KGB Prison - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/05/16/nicholas-daniloffs-exclusive-story-thirteen-days]Nicholas”>http://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/05/16/nicholas-daniloffs-exclusive-story-thirteen-days)</p>
<p>He’s in his seventies and rows almost daily and raced in the Head of the Charles last year.</p>
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<p>I think it is data mining. Lochtes time was about 4:05 while Ye did it in 4:28. IWO, Lochte was finishing his swim when Ye started her free style leg. She was nowhere close to his time. </p>
<p>Here is another way to look at it. Top women can do the 50 in the 25 seconds range, and the top 400 specialists at about 30 seconds. Yes time was about 28 seconds give or take.</p>
<p>Until there is evidence to the contrary, I think she is simply a great free stylist (for an IM swimmer). I saw her did exactly the same thing last year in the 200 IM, caught the leaders with a blistering free style leg.</p>
<p>Really felt bad watching some of the cycling events. It appeared you had several dozen cyclists within inches of each other in all directions, leading to the inevitable contact that led to several innocent cyclists rows behind them going down hard. Seems so bad that these people spent years but lost everything because they were in the wrong place.</p>
<p>Dad<em>of</em>3,</p>
<p>You probably can’t stand watching this one!</p>
<p>[Fencing</a> controversy forces Korean to sit on piste for ages, eventually costs her medal | Fourth-Place Medal - Yahoo! Sports](<a href=“Fencing controversy forces Korean to sit on piste for ages, eventually costs her medal”>Fencing controversy forces Korean to sit on piste for ages, eventually costs her medal)</p>