Now that sounds more like it... :D Without an object of known height it's really hard to tell how tall a person is. But then the other gymnasts don't look as painfully skinny as Khorkina does.

Yay Kyle Shewfelt for winning gold for Canada! :)

Re: Speaking of Svetlana
 

Not only did she not win gold, she fell off the bars and came in LAST PLACE. She can think about that on her ride on the WAAAAAAAAmbulance. :D

Re: Re: Speaking of Svetlana
 

Yeah, that made me laugh. Karma is a bitch . . .

last night in the men's individual gymnastic rings they gave the gold metal to the greece dude, but he did not have a perfect routine. in fact, he took a step after landing and scored a 9.86 something. he was the first one to go. there were seven others after him and two of them landed everything perfect. now, if they are protesting medals with paul hamm, i think they should do the same for last night. i truly think they gave him the gold because of the the greek crowd cheering loudly for him.

Gymnastics and figure skating, as well as diving are largely judged subjectively rather than objectively. With the exception of mandatory elements in the routines and degree of difficulty factors, it's up to the eyes of the judges to scrutinize the routine and deduct points (or tenths of points) for mistakes. Some are so subtle that the average TV viewer wouldn't notice.

On very high degree of difficulty moves, such as blind landings, a hop or a step is not uncommon on landing, but isn't deducted as heavily as a simpler move.

Re: Re: Speaking of Svetlana
 

i'm so upset i missed it! hopefully they'll replay it nine million times today like they did with Paul Hamm's fall on vault.

YAY for Kyle bringing home our first Gold!!!!!


We also won a gold in the women 800 m wheelchair event. And early even for the paralympics!

Yea! Another medal - a silver in women's wrestling.

Congrats to Lori-Ann Muenzer for winning gold for Canada in women's sprint cycling!

I'm really starting to get frustrated with these subjective events at the olypics...figure skating, synchronized swimming, gymnatics....I'm looking at you!

We lost out on a bronze medal because of in aincorrect calculation. Now, in now way, shape or form am I suggesting the the Romanian athlete be stripped of his medal, because it wasn't his fault the judges screwed up.
But if there are certain standards that are supposed to be adhered to, then they should be! If a fall requires a minimum deduction then the competitor should get that minimum deduction. Now the trick is to get judges world wide to agree what consititutes a fall/slip up, etc, etc.

I realize that these sports take a lot of athletic ability and skill, but if the sport federation can't agree on minimum standards, then maybe they shouldn't be olympic events?

Grrrr....this is just a rant really. I'm very proud of Kyle Shewfelt. This is not just a Canadian issue. This happens to far too many athletes all over the world.

Unfortunately this is not the first time this has happened to Canada. For me it just conjured up the whole figure skating situation in Salt Lake.

last night they had ANOTHER scoring controversy in the men's gymnastic high bar. something about the judge giving the russian dude low scores and the crowd stared to boo for like 10 minutes. did anyone catch that?

Oh yeah.

There is going to be some major gymnastics scoring fallout after this!

That is so true. It's happened to us in synchronized swimming too.