The Olympics are a week old...
and Canada has no medals. I mean, think about that . . . CANADA. That is amazing. Among the 53 nations who have medaled:
-Zimbabwe
-Mongolia
-Kyrgyzstan
-Uzbekistan
-Egypt
-Bulgaria
-Vietnam
-Tajikistan
-Togo
(Not that they're the only underachievers. India, with its talent pool of 1.1 billion people pool, has won one medal.)
August 15th, 2008 at 10:04 PM ^
August 15th, 2008 at 10:06 PM ^
August 16th, 2008 at 12:54 AM ^
I know nothing of gymnastics, but even I could tell those scores were weird, not to imply any judges being bribed or something, but they did seem a little more strict with the American gymnasts.
As far as the age thing? it was reported on a couple big sources that one of the girls was "proved" to be 13 by virtue of an older chinese article on her.
August 16th, 2008 at 1:33 AM ^
Not all of those complaints (if any) are coming from the athletes. They are mostly coming from the NBC broadcasters and other American sports media outlets. The "8yr old Chinese girl" thing is a legitimate concern b/c that was a real suspicious age violation issue that had merit (not just how they looked, but actual documentation issues). The American gymnasts, however, never complained as far as I saw and only gave credit to how well the Chinese women competed.
Baseball vs Cuba is being complained about b/c the tiebreak rules are absolutely odd and ridiculous in the 11th inning. Most who follow baseball agree with how dumb they are. The American baseball players never complained about Cuba winning, just about the strange circumstances of the tiebreak rules (which they accepted as just a part of the game). Only the managers were bitching at eachother.
Blake wasn't complaining about losing, he was complaining about poor sportsmanship. His argument made sense and most importantly, he never blamed his loss on that play. Had he won he probably would still be ticked by it based on his words & actions in competitions past, and his general opinion of the Olympics.
The American boxer situation was weird, and the only one that sounded somewhat like sour grapes. From what I am hearing about it, he wasn't complaining about fans yelling. He decided to listen to the crowd's advice on how to win instead of apparently listening to his coaches. The crowd was supposedly telling him to dance around and his coaches were telling him to throw punches. He was also confused about the judging/scoring. I'm reading like 10 different stories on this, so sorry if I'm sounding ill informed here.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:45 AM ^
Egypt has over twice the population of Canada and has SOME measure of sport infrastructure, not all that surprising.
India has sent like 10(?) athletes.
August 16th, 2008 at 3:36 AM ^
August 16th, 2008 at 9:30 AM ^
August 16th, 2008 at 10:41 AM ^
August 16th, 2008 at 12:13 PM ^
August 16th, 2008 at 3:36 PM ^
August 16th, 2008 at 4:00 PM ^
August 16th, 2008 at 3:44 PM ^
"they are always SUPPOSED to be good, and they will make sure you know that, but when it comes down to it...do they really make any noise at all?"
to either MSU or Canada? since when is MSU supposed to be good at anything besides basketball and sice when is Canada supposed to be good at the summer olympics/
August 17th, 2008 at 12:34 PM ^
Canada obviously isn't up there with the U.S. in terms of overall strength, but they usually win a decent number of medals. For them to get shut out for an entire week is stunning.
(The drought's over, though; they just won a few yesterday.)
August 17th, 2008 at 12:29 PM ^
Another surprise - Great Britain (which is usually pretty average in the Olympics) has 11 gold medals, the third most in the world behind China and the U.S.
Here's the medal count:
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/medals;_ylt=AvNWBy7YTmO002slwVvLtNs1o5N4