2012 Summer Olympics Thread: London July 27 - August 12

[knightngale]

The douchebaggy team won. Went undefeated. Beat YOUR Japan. You mad. Blind hatred. You say no redemption occurred but you a Japan fan, mad ... Jpn players were crying. We got Gold . We're #1 in the world...
And no i dont. Do you? And regardless, it doesnt take a soccer guru to know the magnitude of the Olympics and a Gold Medal.
And so what? There a plenty of events going on at one moment.. Just because a FIFA WC Tourney is strictly a soccer tournament in itself doesnt negate a gold medal and the olympics... and doesnt negate a victory against the team that won the WC last yr... REDEMPTION... And you mad...
Get over it...

Japan is not my team. I said I root for anyone that plays against this squad. You are the one that is mad that I root against the U.S. Calm down bro.
I didn't mention anything about negating. World Cup>Olympics. That is a fact. It is not equal. This is no redemption. The U.S. is ranked #1 most of the time and win the olympics almost every time. They have not won a world cup since 1999 and probably will not win the next one with a lot of their key players being old as hell, especially the defense. You mad?

 

[foreverdecember21]

No i dont care but i do I like rubbin it in your face just though (Pause) because u so passionate with ur hate ... Its hilarious to me... even in Alex Morgn is hot threads u come in with more slander as if the girl in ur avy is bad .... U acting like a child like "HEY THAT DOESNT COUNT! RE-DO"

This is no redemption...? Yes it is.... Get over it...

But if Japan won ud be spewing out "Haha OWNED." "FRAUDS" "What happened to redemption" "Overrated" etc...

its all bad because the US team won though, right...?

Look at you dawg

But go on ...

 

[tsamshox]

Knightngale MAD

 

[mronegative]

The douchebaggy team won. Went undefeated. Beat YOUR Japan. You mad. Blind hatred. You say no redemption occurred but you a Japan fan, mad ... Jpn players were crying. We got Gold . We're #1 in the world...
And no i dont. Do you? And regardless, it doesnt take a soccer guru to know the magnitude of the Olympics and a Gold Medal.
And so what? There a plenty of events going on at one moment.. Just because a FIFA WC Tourney is strictly a soccer tournament in itself doesnt negate a gold medal and the olympics... and doesnt negate a victory against the team that won the WC last yr... REDEMPTION... And you mad...
Get over it...

Japan is not my team. I said I root for anyone that plays against this squad. You are the one that is mad that I root against the U.S. Calm down bro.
I didn't mention anything about negating. World Cup>Olympics. That is a fact. It is not equal. This is no redemption. The U.S. is ranked #1 most of the time and win the olympics almost every time. They have not won a world cup since 1999 and probably will not win the next one with a lot of their key players being old as hell, especially the defense. You mad?

 

[jd214]

Just watched the men's 200 Meters race, Usain Bolt.

and again, Looks like dude took it easy towards the end. :x

 

[penalize]

hes too fast for his own good....if he went full speed the whole race he would have broken the world record..

 

[itzjono]

So proud to be jamaican right now big ups to bolt, blake, and weir, stunning performance

 

[pepperjackchees]

Glad that Pistorius will get another chance. Hope he medals. Would be a huge boost to others faced with the same disability and then some. 

 

[gridebounca11]

Love how this dudes name is like destiny for him. Amazing speed. Dominant aint even the word.

 

[Peep Game]

That's a real interesting article about the physics of olympic bodies. I'd like for them to have something on mid-distance runners, or if it would just be a fusion of sprinters & marathon runners.

 

[futuremd]

Glad that Pistorius will get another chance. Hope he medals. Would be a huge boost to others faced with the same disability and then some. 

I still don't agree with letting him compete though if we're going to have the paraolympics(sp?) as a whole other entity. 

 

[kdawg]

^ I disagree. If he qualifies he qualifies.

The bigger issue is should be be able to run in the regular olympics and then the paralympics - that doesn't seem fair. Sure he has a disability but if he qualifies to run in the regular olympics is it really something that should make him eligible for the paralympics?

 

[lyonbc1]

^ I disagree. If he qualifies he qualifies.

The bigger issue is should be be able to run in the regular olympics and then the paralympics - that doesn't seem fair. Sure he has a disability but if he qualifies to run in the regular olympics is it really something that should make him eligible for the paralympics?

Yeah, I think he should be banned from the paralympics since he's qualified for the regular Olympics....its an awesome story and biomechanically his legs dont give him an advantage, if they did he'd run the fastest times around...he can't improve his lower leg fast twitch muscles like others can, so realistically his times can't really improve all that much....and c'mon dude has no legs, let him live his dream

 

[kdawg]

Marathon swimming. Crazy. Been going over 90 mins now and they still have a lap to do.

 

[mronegative]

Marathon swimming. Crazy. Been going over 90 mins now and they still have a lap to do.

When I saw how they "feed" I lost it.

 

[futuremd]

^ I disagree. If he qualifies he qualifies.

The bigger issue is should be be able to run in the regular olympics and then the paralympics - that doesn't seem fair. Sure he has a disability but if he qualifies to run in the regular olympics is it really something that should make him eligible for the paralympics?

Yeah, I think he should be banned from the paralympics since he's qualified for the regular Olympics....its an awesome story and biomechanically his legs dont give him an advantage, if they did he'd run the fastest times around...he can't improve his lower leg fast twitch muscles like others can, so realistically his times can't really improve all that much....and c'mon dude has no legs, let him live his dream

Thus why I don't think he should be in the regular olympics.

 

[futuremd]

[h1]Medals obscure cost of China's state-run sports regime[/h1]

Thu, Aug 9 2012

By Ian Ransom  and Ryan McNeil

LONDON (Reuters) - China's massive medal haul at the London Games has once again showcased the country's ability to produce champions through its rigid Soviet-style sports regime, but national pride has been tempered by concerns about the human costs of sporting glory.

Chinese bloggers expressed their disgust last week after a Shanghai newspaper reported that the parents of Olympic diver Wu Minxia had concealed her mother's long battle with breast cancer for fear of disturbing her training.

Wu, 26, who was also shielded from news of her grandparents' deaths, shrugged off the controversy to win both the synchronised and individual three-metre springboard events in London.

"It's not only Chinese athletes who are like this. Parents seldom come to our training base and we are just like a big family who all train together," Wu said after winning the individual title on Sunday.

"There may be distance from our families but the distance doesn't make us feel we are far apart. I chose to be a diver to pursue this goal."

While the fall of Communism in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s put paid to the command-and-control systems that turned the Soviet Union and East Germany into sporting superpowers, China's "juguo tizhi" - literally 'whole nation system' - remains as entrenched as ever.

Like Wu, the greater majority of China's 396 Olympians have started their sports at tender ages, sacrificed their childhoods for the state and drawn their emotional support from team mates, coaches and officials, in lieu of family members and friends.

The relationship remains strong between the athletes and the state that nurtured them, and fairytale stories abound of Chinese children wrenched from poverty and enriched by success on the global stage.

But the Olympic medals have obscured the more unsavoury aspects of the sports regime, which has been blamed for leaving less successful athletes uneducated and ill-equipped to thrive outside the competition venues.

ABUSE ACCUSATIONS

It has also drawn criticism from Western coaches who have accused their Chinese counterparts of producing winners through systematic physical abuse.

"You wonder why the Chinese women are so successful? Most of the men are coaches. The women are literally beaten into submission," Johannah Doecke, diving coach at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in the United States, told Reuters.

"If you said no to anything, you would be chastised, slapped around. It's a brutal system."

Doecke trained one of China's elite divers in Chen Ni, who rose to a provincial grade before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 19.

Doecke describes Chen as someone who was terrified of making a mistake when she first came under her instruction.

"If she made a mistake, she would instantly kowtow and apologise," she said.

Doecke worked with other Chinese coaches who had left their home country and said they would jest that she would need to be forceful to get the best out of Chen.

"As I worked with Chen, I would hear from time to time, 'if you want a good performance out of her, you'll have to beat her'," she said.

China's dominance in sports like table tennis and badminton has seen Western athletes level similar accusations of mistreatment.

Britain's top women table tennis players said China's methods would not be allowed elsewhere.

"It wouldn't be legal in Britain to train as hard as the Chinese," said Joanna Parker, Britain's top female player, last week.

Her team mate Kelly Sibley told the Olympic news service: "It's how they (Chinese coaches) treat them (Chinese trainee players) as well.

"We were playing a couple of years ago in a centre in Shanghai. Someone was playing and the coach just went up and kicked him in the side."

Chinese officials have bristled at the criticism.

"You have to train hard. Why does the West think like this?" Shi Zhihao, the male head of China's women's table tennis team, said angrily in response.

"China is very free, if you want you can do it, and if you don't want to do it you don't have to."

Chen declined to comment on whether she had been subject to physical discipline by her Chinese coaches, but defended it as being misunderstood.

"The coaches are like athletes' parents," she said in comments emailed to Reuters.

"Most of the time, coaches care about their divers even more than their own children.

"Diving is a dangerous sport, things could change in a second ... thus, as parents they have to do anything that force their children to do things safely.

"Sometimes it ends up (that they) hit their divers, but I know that it will more hurt inside of coaches every time when they had to hit their divers."

CASH BONUSES

The athletes that bring China Olympic glory stand to receive grateful thanks from the state, with cash bonuses from China's national sports ministry and from lower levels of government for bringing prestige to their home towns and provinces.

Less successful athletes have much less to fall back on and state media have reported a number of cases of retired national champions struggling with long-term injuries and poverty.

Chinese athletes in London have, nonetheless, been largely unreserved in their praise of their coaches and the gruelling training systems that have taken the delegation to more than 35 gold medals in London.

However, Chinese swimmer Lu Ying, who won silver in the women's 100 metres butterfly in London, spoke out against the team's domestic training system as being all work and no play.

"In China we're used to study, study and train, train and then rest," Lu, who has done part of her training in Australia since 2008, said through an interpreter earlier this week.

"I think our way of thinking has many limits. In Australia I've been invited to barbecues with my teammates - that would never happen in China."

China's top badminton player Lin Dan, who defended his men's singles gold at London, also broke ranks with his team amid a match-throwing scandal last week that claimed two of his team mates among eight players disqualified from the tournament.

The four women's doubles pairs, including China's world champions Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, were expelled for deliberately playing to lose in a bid to improve their position in the draw for the knockout rounds.

Lin blamed the world governing body for instituting a round-robin format for the Olympic tournament that was ripe for manipulation, but said the disqualified players' tactics had brought a "negative" impact on the sport.

ALL COSTS

Chinese bloggers linked that scandal to the country's pursuit of Olympic medals at all costs and have criticised the system for putting too much pressure on Olympians to succeed.

"The whole-nation system is disastrous," wrote one user on China's Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo.

"The budding young talents are shut up in closed training schools from a young age and apart from their own events, almost have no other life skills."

Despite the criticism, China's Communist Party leaders rely on the system to produce champions that can puff up national pride, and are unlikely to tinker with it, according to Xu Guoqi, a professor at the University of Hong Kong and an expert in Chinese sports.

"As long as the Chinese are not confident enough of themselves in the world, as long as the regime has a legitimacy problem, it will continue its 'juguo tizhi'," he said in comments emailed to Reuters.

"Some people might criticise the system, but imagine the pressure and attacks on athletes and the regime if China fails to do well in the Games."

(Additional reporting by Steve Slater  in London and Sabrina Mao in Beijing; Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

 

[shogun]

I didn't even know bmx was an olympic event until 2 days ago. It's fun to watch, especially when they have some crazy crashes.

Does the decathalon get any love? It'd crazy that they have to train for those 10 events. Seemed like the 2 Americans dominated most of them. The points system is weird though. I need to look up how it works.

Not many events left that I want to watch. The relay races, indoor volleyball, and maybe basketball.

 

[lyonbc1]

[h1]Medals obscure cost of China's state-run sports regime[/h1]

Thu, Aug 9 2012



By Ian Ransom and Ryan McNeil



LONDON (Reuters) - China's massive medal haul at the London Games has once again showcased the country's ability to produce champions through its rigid Soviet-style sports regime, but national pride has been tempered by concerns about the human costs of sporting glory.



Chinese bloggers expressed their disgust last week after a Shanghai newspaper reported that the parents of Olympic diver Wu Minxia had concealed her mother's long battle with breast cancer for fear of disturbing her training.



Wu, 26, who was also shielded from news of her grandparents' deaths, shrugged off the controversy to win both the synchronised and individual three-metre springboard events in London.



"It's not only Chinese athletes who are like this. Parents seldom come to our training base and we are just like a big family who all train together," Wu said after winning the individual title on Sunday.



"There may be distance from our families but the distance doesn't make us feel we are far apart. I chose to be a diver to pursue this goal."



While the fall of Communism in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s put paid to the command-and-control systems that turned the Soviet Union and East Germany into sporting superpowers, China's "juguo tizhi" - literally 'whole nation system' - remains as entrenched as ever.



Like Wu, the greater majority of China's 396 Olympians have started their sports at tender ages, sacrificed their childhoods for the state and drawn their emotional support from team mates, coaches and officials, in lieu of family members and friends.



The relationship remains strong between the athletes and the state that nurtured them, and fairytale stories abound of Chinese children wrenched from poverty and enriched by success on the global stage.



But the Olympic medals have obscured the more unsavoury aspects of the sports regime, which has been blamed for leaving less successful athletes uneducated and ill-equipped to thrive outside the competition venues.



ABUSE ACCUSATIONS



It has also drawn criticism from Western coaches who have accused their Chinese counterparts of producing winners through systematic physical abuse.



"You wonder why the Chinese women are so successful? Most of the men are coaches. The women are literally beaten into submission," Johannah Doecke, diving coach at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in the United States, told Reuters.



"If you said no to anything, you would be chastised, slapped around. It's a brutal system."



Doecke trained one of China's elite divers in Chen Ni, who rose to a provincial grade before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 19.



Doecke describes Chen as someone who was terrified of making a mistake when she first came under her instruction.



"If she made a mistake, she would instantly kowtow and apologise," she said.



Doecke worked with other Chinese coaches who had left their home country and said they would jest that she would need to be forceful to get the best out of Chen.



"As I worked with Chen, I would hear from time to time, 'if you want a good performance out of her, you'll have to beat her'," she said.



China's dominance in sports like table tennis and badminton has seen Western athletes level similar accusations of mistreatment.



Britain's top women table tennis players said China's methods would not be allowed elsewhere.



"It wouldn't be legal in Britain to train as hard as the Chinese," said Joanna Parker, Britain's top female player, last week.



Her team mate Kelly Sibley told the Olympic news service: "It's how they (Chinese coaches) treat them (Chinese trainee players) as well.



"We were playing a couple of years ago in a centre in Shanghai. Someone was playing and the coach just went up and kicked him in the side."



Chinese officials have bristled at the criticism.



"You have to train hard. Why does the West think like this?" Shi Zhihao, the male head of China's women's table tennis team, said angrily in response.



"China is very free, if you want you can do it, and if you don't want to do it you don't have to."



Chen declined to comment on whether she had been subject to physical discipline by her Chinese coaches, but defended it as being misunderstood.



"The coaches are like athletes' parents," she said in comments emailed to Reuters.



"Most of the time, coaches care about their divers even more than their own children.



"Diving is a dangerous sport, things could change in a second ... thus, as parents they have to do anything that force their children to do things safely.



"Sometimes it ends up (that they) hit their divers, but I know that it will more hurt inside of coaches every time when they had to hit their divers."



CASH BONUSES



The athletes that bring China Olympic glory stand to receive grateful thanks from the state, with cash bonuses from China's national sports ministry and from lower levels of government for bringing prestige to their home towns and provinces.



Less successful athletes have much less to fall back on and state media have reported a number of cases of retired national champions struggling with long-term injuries and poverty.



Chinese athletes in London have, nonetheless, been largely unreserved in their praise of their coaches and the gruelling training systems that have taken the delegation to more than 35 gold medals in London.



However, Chinese swimmer Lu Ying, who won silver in the women's 100 metres butterfly in London, spoke out against the team's domestic training system as being all work and no play.



"In China we're used to study, study and train, train and then rest," Lu, who has done part of her training in Australia since 2008, said through an interpreter earlier this week.



"I think our way of thinking has many limits. In Australia I've been invited to barbecues with my teammates - that would never happen in China."



China's top badminton player Lin Dan, who defended his men's singles gold at London, also broke ranks with his team amid a match-throwing scandal last week that claimed two of his team mates among eight players disqualified from the tournament.



The four women's doubles pairs, including China's world champions Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, were expelled for deliberately playing to lose in a bid to improve their position in the draw for the knockout rounds.



Lin blamed the world governing body for instituting a round-robin format for the Olympic tournament that was ripe for manipulation, but said the disqualified players' tactics had brought a "negative" impact on the sport.



ALL COSTS



Chinese bloggers linked that scandal to the country's pursuit of Olympic medals at all costs and have criticised the system for putting too much pressure on Olympians to succeed.



"The whole-nation system is disastrous," wrote one user on China's Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo.



"The budding young talents are shut up in closed training schools from a young age and apart from their own events, almost have no other life skills."



Despite the criticism, China's Communist Party leaders rely on the system to produce champions that can puff up national pride, and are unlikely to tinker with it, according to Xu Guoqi, a professor at the University of Hong Kong and an expert in Chinese sports.



"As long as the Chinese are not confident enough of themselves in the world, as long as the regime has a legitimacy problem, it will continue its 'juguo tizhi'," he said in comments emailed to Reuters.



"Some people might criticise the system, but imagine the pressure and attacks on athletes and the regime if China fails to do well in the Games."



(Additional reporting by Steve Slater in London and Sabrina Mao in Beijing; Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

That story about the sychronized diver was pretty sad....but they could be in more trouble in the future, I dunno if it was you FutureMD who posted an article or I read it elsewhere but China's population is huge but a large majority of it is elderly or aging...and with their 1 child rule they have decreased the odds of them developing world class athletes in the future, which is gonna put more pressure on the ones in the pipeline now since its gonna be drying up. Contrast that with the US where we have a much younger demographic and they won't be able to keep this up the future..plus they really focus on events that other countries don't place emphasis on (ping pong (even the USA's best players are of Asian descent), badminton, etc). I knew the US would blow them away in the medal count once track and field started and bball, soccer, and all that finished. Plus the system they use just isn't healthy mentally or emotionally for their athletes

EDIT: @shogun Yeah, the decathlon is crazy....those dudes deserve the title they get of "greatest athlete" b/c they have to be good at many completely different things

 

[kdawg]

^ I yeah, I read that the other day.

Basically it said that this is China's peak as there is a ratio of age that is important and they're an ageing society.

There's definitely something suspicious about the Chinese performances too - it can't just be explained by intense training and athlete selection - it just feels like the Eastern Bloc of the 80s.

 

[kdawg]

I didn't even know bmx was an olympic event until 2 days ago. It's fun to watch, especially when they have some crazy crashes.

Fun to watch but it shouldn't be an olympic sport. It's just not an impressive enough athletic achievement IMO - sure, it's fast and interesting but it just doesn't fit for me.

 

[cornzilla]

Just watched the men's 200 Meters race, Usain Bolt.

and again, Looks like dude took it easy towards the end. :x

Bolt really needs to stop playing around at the end of his sprints and show us his real speed. Everyone knows he can go faster.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Oh Yeah Puma needs to release this shirt again.

 

[jhawk826]

Fun to watch but it shouldn't be an olympic sport. It's just not an impressive enough athletic achievement IMO - sure, it's fast and interesting but it just doesn't fit for me.

Nor is table tennis or badminton.

Russia is up 31-20 at the half against Spain.

 

[srvballer]

why doesn't Ibaka get more minutes for Spain? It baffles me

 

[shogun]

I didn't even know bmx was an olympic event until 2 days ago. It's fun to watch, especially when they have some crazy crashes.

Fun to watch but it shouldn't be an olympic sport. It's just not an impressive enough athletic achievement IMO - sure, it's fast and interesting but it just doesn't fit for me.

I was thinking the same, it's more of an X-Games event but then I remembered that snowboarding is in the Winter Olympics. It's one of the few things I watch at the winter games.