These have been fantastic summer olympics, the Chinese have been an excellent host nation, the facilities are the finest ever.
The country is magnificant.
The Chinese Athletes are amazing, they have come so far.
With all of that being true- it seems in such bad taste to complain about a couple of these events but I'm a sports fan so wtf im going to do it anyway.
Alicia Sacramone clearly got jipped. Nastia Luken appears to have gotten jipped, the Womens Gymnastic team appears to have gotten jipped.
There seems to be 13 year old gymnasts competing.
The Gymnastics scoring system is all crazy. Bela Karolyi and his wife are being pretty vocal about the sillyness going on in gymnastics.
I saw this on a blog:
Australian veteran shooter Russell Mark alleged that Chinese judges, influenced by a boisterous home crowd, helped local hope Hu Binyuan win the Double Trap bronze medal.
Mark, 44, the Atlanta Games gold medalist who finished fifth in the event here, told Australian media those local judges had awarded a hit to Hu even though he missed the target.
"One of them clearly he missed," Mark was quoted as saying. "I don't think anyone out there thought he hit it. If that had been for a gold medal, I would have been protesting."
And this
Judging controversies have also blighted the boxing tournament.
China's Gu Yu caused an upset by defeating Joe Murray, the bantamweight world bronze medalist, on Tuesday but afterwards his camp was adamant he had been on the receiving end of some questionable verdicts.
They implied that the home fighter had been favored.
"I knew what it was going to be like. I've been watching the scoring the past few days and I knew it was bad. So I was expecting it," Murray said.
"They were giving him points for anything but when I was hitting him they were not giving me points," he said.
British head coach Terry Edwards added: "I thought they were very generous to the Chinese lad. You expect a slight bias but you come to the Olympic Games and you also expect a level playing field,
And on Yahoo today there is a blogger that says:
The Real 2008 Medal Count
China: 22 gold; 11 silver; 11 bronze
United States: 21 gold; 19 silver; 21 bronze
As you can see, in the events where medals are determined by competitors rather than judges, the gold medal gap between China and the U.S. is greatly narrowed, and the total medal count is an American runaway. Counting the judged events, China has a commanding lead in golds. Hmmm... Nope, nothing fishy about that!
Is it poor sportsmanship to call out these questionable happenings or is it poor sportsmanship to appease the Chinese by not calling them out.
As a sports fan I like to see real competitions, I dont watch WWF, I dont even like the home cooking that goes on in some NBA games especially foul calls on all stars.
Phew -- im losing a lot of sleep watching these Olympics not just because of the time zone differnces.