Beautiful gold, so-so silver and shameful bronze: The running Olympics thread

Yes ... umpires have never been known to help decide a game.

 

Hella finish.

 

Hey Beavis, he said POLE vault! (huh-huh)
NBC apparently didn't get into it, but Stucynski apparently did a little trash-talkin' beforehand. NBC did show her coach trash-talking her afterward.
Who do you like in the catfight?

 

This is what NBC calls "plausibly live." For all we know, the same thing happened with the gymnastics. And it obviously happens with the highlight packages from field events. Goes all the way back to ABC and Wide World of Sports. Best example: Franz Klammer's winning downhill ski run in 1976. Frank Gifford and Bob Beattie called that about six times before Roone Arledge liked what he heard.

 

quoting here:

mrs petty: beach volleyball, really? one, two, three ... ass, tits, ass, tits ... one, two, three, ass, tits, ass, tits. are you kidding me? is this really a sport?

 

A tie should be given the same medals. Period.

 

A stutter step is enough to cost a runner a full second. Especially on the last hurdle, when the runner is most drained and doesn't have enough time to make up lost ground. Think of it this way. Each Olympic hurdler is taking somewhere around 12 steps in between each of the hurdles 2 through 10; a stutter step makes that number go up to 13 steps. So you are essentially cramming an extra step into the same space, slowing your body down-which you have to compensate for. Because as we all know, when you are running very very fast, your body goes all over the place when you have to stop add shorten your stride immediately. The last problem is, the stutter slows down the speed of the legs going over the hurdle which leads to more air time, which leads to less run time, which leads to higher times. I definitely think No. 2 could have come back to win that; it would have been hard, it would have been close, but it could have happened.

Of course, it did not because of the stutter step, but thats why its so important to get the steps down. It costs kids in high school meets, and it even costs some of the best runners in the world. Gotta attack that hurdle.

 

I never had a problem with ties in gymnastics. I do, however, think it's ridiculous that several sports don't have bronze-medal matches. If the IOC wants to cut back on the overall number of medals, that's the place to start.

 

Coaches don't get medals in any Olympic sport, nor should they. I realize it goes against the American Cult of the Coach, but it's nice to see the focus on the athletes -- the ones actually, you know, competing in the events.

 

Pretty good piece by Ron Borges on the shortcomings of the USA boxing team in the Olympics:

http://www.thesweetscience.com/boxing-article/6146/one-word-describes-usa-boxing-debacle/

 

Just a note: It's good to hear Ted Robinson calling something (diving) during these games.

He's been one of my favorites since doing chores and yardwork outside as a kid with the Giants games on in the background.

 

Watched the video footage online. Those other guys in the lead were absolutely sweating with Whitfield stalking them. Wonder if they wrote him off when he dropped back inside of the last kilo. I'll cop to not having heard of the German who won but he did serious work in holding off Docherty and Whitfield. And Whitfield will go down as one of the all-time greats when all is said and done.