Have I mentioned I love the Olympics? I don't have a tv and Hong Kong is in a terrible time zone to watch these Olympics but I'm as obsessed as ever. This has been a thoroughly entertaining one with many many storylines, including my own ill-fated adventure to watch the Opening Ceremonies. I'll get to that last. In the meantime, we have so many controversies! Who would have thought that tanking wouldn't be an issue in Beijing and would in London? From Jordyn Wieber not advancing in the Woman's Gymnastics All-Around, to the South Korean fencer experiencing the longest second of her life, to the woman's badminton fiasco, there's a lot of people crying foul, and a lot of people crying in general. Then there's also Phelps doing his thing or not doing his thing, Ye Shiwen (whom I could put under the controversies tab), and an awesome American table tennis player.
First, the US Women's Gymnastics Team won gold in the team performance, in a dominating performance beating the Russians by 5 points. It was their first gold since on home soil in Atlanta after the memorable Kerri Strug broken ankle routine. But more people are talking about Jordyn Wieber, who finished 4th among all competitors in the individual all-around, but wasn't allowed to advance to the finals of 24 because of a rule limiting each country to 2 competitors. Alex Raisman (from Needham, MA) and Gabby Douglas had finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. It's pretty rough finishing ahead of 20 odd people who you have to see advance ahead of you, especially when you had a legitimate shot at gold and that's the one thing you've been dreaming of your entire life. However, I do find it odd that American media didn't report that this isn't the first time this has happened, and that in fact Anastasia Grishina, the Russian gymnast who finished 12th in qualifying also couldn't advance because of the same situation (and #21 from GB, and #22 from China). No it's not fair, but the rule isn't entirely broken. Each country is only allowed 3 competitors in the first place, and to have them all advance to the finals would not reflect the truly global nature of the sport. It's not that they don't want 3 Americans in the finals, but they don't want 3 Americans, 3 Russians, 3 Brits, and 3 Chinese. We don't want to see a distance running finals of all Kenyans and Ethiopians, or a badmintons quarterfinals of all Asians. More on the latter later. However, I think the rule could be amended that if the 3rd finisher of a country finishes top 5 overall, he/she should be allowed to advance. The Olympics is about international cooperation and showcasing different countries, but it's also about crowning the best athletes in the world. Jordyn Wieber had a legitimate chance to win gold, much less medal, and she should really be allowed that.
Shin A-Lam has become an overnight celebrity as such that only the Olympics can produce. She was in a semifinals fencing match against Britta Heidermann from Germany, and was tied 1-1 after regulation. They then went into a sudden death overtime, where a coin was flipped and Lam was given priority, meaning that if no one scored in that final minute, she would be declared winner and advance to the gold medal. That seems to me like a bs rule, but such is fencing I guess. And so Shin played to that strategy and it was scoreless in OT with 1 second left. With one second left, Heidermann took a desperate last plunge. She missed and time stopped, or ended. The official ruled that nope, there was still 1 second left. Another final desperate plunge. Another parry and miss. Another long consultation at the clock and video replay. Still 1 second left. One final plunge. Hit. Heidermann rejoices, and Shin is in disbelief. I haven't rewatched youtube clips of the bout with a stopwatch, and I understand that 1 second could very well be 1.9 seconds. However, the world consensus is that that one second lasted way, way longer than it should. I'm just of the belief that it was very hard for Shin to focus and refocus after she had already thought she won (she parried every single attack all minute long and couldn't defend one last one?), and also that electronic timing is very, very good but not perfect. And if their technology is so good, they should at least display the tenths of a second on a clock. The NBA used to have a rule where you couldn't catch, turn and shoot a jumper in under 0.7 seconds, and that all attempts to do so when the clock was that low would not count, regardless of what it looked like on replay. I tend to agree with that principle. In this scenario, I think there should be a rule where you can have at max two restarts in one second. Nobody is buying three. Even worse was the rule that required Shin to sit on the mat during the entire 75 minute duration of her appeal, and allowing the world to see her in tears as she wondered whether her dreams of gold could still come true. I believe a lot of news sources reported incorrectly that Shin was staging a protest by refusing to leave the mat - this is untrue, her staying on the mat was a part of the formal protest procedure. There's a lot more to this story, including reports that the timekeeper was a 15 year old volunteer! I think it's a sad tale for her, but she's become an overnight celebrity and something good may yet come of this.
Now to the badminton tanking. I was very confused about how the round robin system could lead to a situation where lowering your seed would be such an advantage that half the field would try to do it. But ok here is what I think happened after staring at the standings for a while. We have 4 teams disqualified, Wang/Yu from China, Jung/Kim from South Korea (both in group A), Ha/Kim from South Korea and Polii/Jouhari from Indonesia in group C. A1 would play C2 and A2 would play C1 in the next round. Another Chinese team advanced and would have played the winner of A1/C2 in the semifinals if things played to seed. Wang/Yu were favorites and would have been A1, but lost so that they'd be A2 and would only be able to meet the other Chinese team in the finals. However they were clearly the superior team in their field, meaning C2 would then play a weaker opponent than C1. And thus neither Ha/Kim and Polii/Jouhari wanted to defeat the other and face the Chinese team. Jung/Kim from group A might have tanked to ruin the Chinese plan, or else to avoid facing their Korean counterparts. I kind of get the original Chinese rationale for not wanting to face each other until absolutely necessary. If both teams have a legitimate chance to get into the finals, you don't want the luck of the draw preventing that from happening. I then also get the Korean and Indonesian response. We see this in American professional sports, especially when teams tank for the lottery. However, we shouldn't see this in the Olympics and it's entirely preventable.
EDIT: Anthony Tao
reports that Wang may have injured herself before the match and they eased up to rest her for the elimination round. That may have been a part of it but I'm not buying that that's the entire reason she tanked.
People have been decrying the round-robin format of this tournament, instead saying it should be an elimination format from the start. I should clarify that by people I mean American sports journalists who cover sports outside of the big four exactly twice every four years, and have no clue what they're talking about. When every single competitor has trained their whole lives for this, the biggest event in their sports, and flown all this way and attended all these ceremonies, you don't want to send half of them home after one match. The round robin format is absolutely the way to go. However, what you need to do is have A1 play D2, A2 play C1, B1 play C2, B2 play D1. This is what happens in ultimate tournaments and makes the seedings much more difficult to rig, and prevents the chain of events from happening as it did above. What you could also do is reseed after the round robin start and go from there. Pretty simple solutions. What the Olympic officials did, booting out the competitors for exploiting their own flawed rules, is awful. I cannot defend them for kicking people out for not breaking explicit rules, especially when these were medal contenders. The officials did more to change the landscape of the competition than the competitors did by not trying their hardest. However, I also think the athletes are entirely at fault here. These are the Olympics, where not only the pinnacle of performance is expected but also the pinnacle of sportsmanship. This is where you look at the potential seedings and swallow hard and just play your game, one point at a time, one match at a time. The Olympics is not the venue to pull something sneaky to gain an advantage, and definitely not the venue to not try your hardest. It's an absolute disgrace to the fans who had an extremely difficult time getting tickets to the event, embarrassing to the countries you represent and to competitors of the same sport in past Olympics. The Chinese teams should have accepted it and realized they would have met in the semifinals, which meant that both could still walk away with medals. All these competitors deserve to be severely rebuked - booted from the competition is another thing entirely.
More controversies have arisen since I first published this! The bigger one is the Azerbaijani boxer who got solidly mauled by a Japanese fighter, hitting the mat five times in the final round, and yet was declared winner in a gross miscarriage of proper judging. I don't pretend to be an Olympic boxing expert. I saw it live in Beijing and it is extremely difficult to understand and very different from professional boxing. It's all about landing punches and scoring and less about inflicting immense physical pain. Still, nearly all reports agree on the travesty of this decision, and it was official overturned the following day amidst reports that British press uncovered a money trail from Azerbaijan towards boxing officials in the AIBA, allegedly $9 million to ensure 2 gold medals. Boxing is called the easiest sport to rig, and this stuff happens in the professional US circuit too (see Bradley-Pacquiao). Thank goodness that the decision was overturned instead of in 1988, when Roy Jones Jr. outpunched his South Korean challenger nearly 3 to 1 and lost in a blatant home country rigging. These are the obvious ones. How many matches that are close and competitive are fixed? Between the fixing, the concussions and MMA, I'm pretty convinced boxing is fast on its way out as a relevant sport.
The Brazilian women's soccer team, a strong medal contender, traveled by bus from Wembley Stadium back home a day before their game before GB. A comedy of errors unfolded in which the bus broke down, the driver was unable to get a call out for a while and when another bus was finally sent over, the driver said he had fulfilled his quota of hours and would not be allowed to drive them to London. The delay took a whole five hours and caused the team to miss their usual training session. They lost 1-0 to Great Britain the next day and cried conspiracy. Yeah maybe. I'm inclined to find British incompetence at managing this bus more believable than British evilness in messing with the Brazilians to gain a competitive advantage. If I was on that bus, I'd definitely complain, but it wasn't on the day of the game just the night before. I've been gone to a few tournaments on severely delayed flights (including World's) and gotten very little sleep the night before play and still pulled through without excuses. That's what athletes are supposed to do. I don't think this controversy is that big a deal.
Then we have Ye Shiwen, who made a huge splash by winning the 200IM and 400IM, notably pulling away from the field in the last 50m freestyle length in the 400IM and setting a world record at 4:28.43. This raised immense eyebrows, since her previous personal record coming into the Games was 4:33.79, and her 50m freestyle was swam in a blistering 28.93s, faster than Ryan Lochhte's last 50m in the sam event. To our generation, jaded by the countless name athletes and great performances now attributable to steroids, we immediately suspect something. It doesn't help that other swimmers on the Chinese swimming team just recently got busted. A top US official immediately raised the possibility of doping and a firestorm has kinda ensued. I think as seasoned sports fans, we can't be too surprised or disheartened if something does come out. However, this performance isn't as fishy as it seems. First, let's forget about her "beating Lochte." Lochte's total time was 4:05.18 and his race strategy involved setting an insurmountable lead, not relying on his kick. Second, Ye is 16, and she was 14 when she set her previous pr. In the ensuing two years she's grown from 160cm to 172cm. Is it unreasonable for someone to improve by 5 seconds from the ages of 14 to 16 and especially shine on the biggest stage of them all? I wouldn't be surprised if that was indeed the truth. But I wouldn't be surprised if doping was involved, either.
