<p>I was following live tweets on the qualification day, and the guy I was following said she performed the worst beam routine he’s ever seen from her…then she scored over 15 and ended up in the event finals. After seeing her beam yesterday, I think the judges intentionally overscored her, knowing that she was capable of sheer beauty and perfection, wanting her in the finals. </p>
<p>She looks like an old 24, compared to the tiny 16 year olds. On the medal stand, she looked like their mom. But on beam…lovely!</p>
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<p>Yeah, so much of it is mental. Can they hit on that day at that moment? We’ll see how our guys do in the AA. I am afraid that Orozco will still be beaten down by his performance from Monday - he seems like such a serious guy.</p>
<p>I love the way Ponor looked on the beam. There was no hesitation. She seemed to fly through the skills with very little effort towards balancing. The skill level is so crazy in all the gymnastic events that it is almost impossible to achieve any level of consistency from day to day. Crowning the overall is just the overall for those few hours. They would need to compete over several days and drop the high and low scores to really get a picture of who is the best overall.</p>
<p>I was talking to a male friend who only watches gymnastics during the Olympics and whose sons were big time baseball players. His comment, after watching the men’s team final was, “there’s a reason why it’s best of 7 in the World Series.”</p>
<p>The other point is that the all around is a bit like the decathalon…the best gymnast who can do all four events. At event finals, we always see fabulous routines that we haven’t seen before and wonder “why wasn’t she in the AA?” Because she may be terrific one or more but less than all events.</p>
<p>Yes, we saw a ‘safer’ floor routine from Aly last night then I think we’ll see in the event final, and possibly the AA. She was having trouble with a tumbling pass and took out an element. They had a substantial lead and she didn’t need it. I can’t imagine seeing a ‘less safe’ bar routine from Gabby. She really does fly!</p>
<p>Athletics (track and field to Americans) has more medals available, but there is far less overlap between events than there is in swimming due to the very different skill and body types required to excel in them. The difference in training and body type required to win say the marathon vs. the shot put vs high jump is huge. By contrast the differences in training and ideal body type between the freestyle vs. butterfly vs. breast stroke are much smaller.</p>
<p>Another factor working against multiple medals for track runners is the pounding the body takes in running vs. swimming. Both are tiring, but recovery time back to full strength is much longer for runners vs. a swimmers swimmers competing at the highest level for similar lengths of time.</p>
<p>The best chance for winning a lot of medals on the track falls to the sprinters. The 100, 200, and 400 meter races all require the same sort of muscular body type. Their events don’t last long, which also aids recovery time. And those athletes can also sometimes cross-over to the long jump (think Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, and Jackie-Joyner-Kersee).</p>
<p>As dopping tech progresses and become more and more sophisticated, negative test results are loosing their meanning. There is common sense that for one thing dictates that men and women compete separately. why? Isn’t it because they have different hormones that make their abilities very different? When a 16 y o drops her time by huge number of 5 sec. and at the same time does the fastest split in her last 50 m (not the first one, but the last one, at the point when female body absolutely cannot do it faster than buffed up male who has also won the same even at the same Olympic in the same pool - yes, even pools are slightly different, all swimmers know that), no negative test will put people at peace with that. We do have common sense. Science is only good as far as input and collected outcome goes, both of them are very much controled by human beings, who are very vested in this process.
By the same token, why people are dying or having severe side effect from FDA approved drugs? Don’t we spend many years testing them? We are talking about relatively frequent occurrances.
However, pointing to “gost busters” always works, right? Well, maybe not for everybody…</p>
<p>alwaysamom-
I just read that about the badminton players! Its apparently a strategy to be paired against an easier competitor in the next round. As they used to say on… Hogan’s Heroes (I think) " verrrrrry interesting…"
<p>I don’t follow badminton, but it’s interesting that their tournament structure has a glitch that promotes intentional losing. They should fix that.</p>
<p>Track and field has a “best effort” rule to prevent runners from tanking races they are losing in order to save themselves for later events. It’s seldom actually enforced, and runners do sometimes just coast in, especially in the marathon. But the rule at least serves to keep the athlete from making it obvious.</p>
<p>"Another factor working against multiple medals for track runners is the pounding the body takes in running vs. swimming. "
-Any runner is welcome to swim and feel it for themselves. As one of the HSers athlete who was in every single sport and was a tremendous runner himself pointed out that after 15 min. in the pool during his Phys. Ed. class, he was “done”. He said that after this he had tremendous respect for his younger sister swimmer. Mind you, many 10 y o swimmers swim 5 - 6 hrs / day in a summer when they have time and at least 2.5 hrs / every day during school year. They are not allowed to swim at the speed of HS phys. ed class, nope, coach will scream if they do. they swim timed sets and they better listen or they are out. </p>
<p>So, please, without any further talk, just dive in and swim these couple miles that you normally run. Do not be surpized that you will not be able to get out of bed next day. Many swimmers experience this on a daily basis with only hope that once they dive in into cool water next day, it might make them feel better.
To discount what Missy did winning gold in 100 back while swimming it 9 min. after she swam 200 free and made it into finals, I can only say that this is a sign of great arrogance and nothing else. It is pretty awesome feat, only very tough person can do it. They do not recover for several days, let alone few minutes in between. Even great Phelps scratched his 200 free after qualifying at the tirals to give him better chance at the relay.</p>
<p>This exactly proves my point. There is nobody, not even the best runners in the world, who can train by running 6 hours a day, day after day. And I agree that swimming is very tiring. But, as I said, it’s the pounding that running inflicts on the body (not the effort), that makes running harder to recover from. Any runner, especially a 10 year old, who ran for 6 hours every day would soon be so riddled with injuries that he/she could barely walk. Keeping that up for any extended period would result in permanent damage.</p>
<p>I have the highest respect for Missy Franklin, Michael Phelps, and all the other top swimmers. They are marvelous athletes who train very hard. My point was not to criticize them in any way but to point the differences between track and field events and swimming events that undeniably makes it more readily possible for swimmers to win multiple Olympic medals. Athletic coaches agree on this point and the record certainly bears it out.</p>
<p>Back to soccer, much was made of the “sucker punch” delivered to Abby Wambach by Lady Andrade of Columbia. Fifa reviewed the film and banned her for two games for her action, which she insisted was “an accident,” an incidental touch (even though the ball was elsewhere, so why the need to be throwing her arms towards Abby’s eyes).</p>
<p>I’ve only been able to find this on youtube, and it’s from such a distance that it’s hard to see the actual hit. Has anyone seen any better film of this incident?</p>