So I've had a couple frustrating Olympic days... no, not because of the Olympics but because real life keeps interfering with my ability to be glued to the TV and I miss the stuff I want to see.
I was so excited to see Synchronized Swimming on tv a couple days ago, but then my husband came home over lunch and we had to run an errand right then and there so I missed it.
That night I was just exhausted so I went to bed early only to notice the next morning that Gymmie was trying to flag me down to let me know that the Men's Rings Final was on... missed that.
And then last night I had to go pick up family from the airport and missed Ally Raisman's floor routine. ARRRRGG!!
Ah well, such is life. I've seen plenty of crazy awesome moments already so I really shouldn't complain.

I do want to say though, I really hate the way Gymnastics has had these so-called tie-breakers this year to determine who gets the bronze medal. Maybe Gymmie can enlighten me here, but is it already set that way in the rules? I hate the fact that someone gets shafted out of a medal for getting the same score as another person. (Felt so bad for Catalina Ponor from Romania last night, just like I did for Ally the other night.) Other sports have had ties so I think Gymnastics ought to as well.

Oh, gotta give a shout-out to Erik Kynard for his silver medal in men's high jump last night. He went/goes to Kansas State University!!

Small note: It's Aly. Short for Alexandra; a very nice name rooted in her Jewish heritage!

The IOC has required that gymnastics have ties at the Olympic Games for the last white ('96, maybe? Definitely since '00). It was because there was often less than...honorable judging, and the IOC was sick and tired of giving out so many additional medals because the judges weren't doing their jobs correctly. So, the tiebreaker became required at the Olympics. It's worth noting that the FIG only has it because the IOC makes them; at Worlds, ties stand as is.

Anyway, there have been major tiebreaks at prior Olympics, but they only were to determine a medal color, not the medal itself. Paul Hamm lost out on a high bar gold in Athens, and Nastia lost out on an uneven bars gold in Beijing.

Here in London, it's been REALLY weird to see so many high-profile ties, and have them determine who gets a medal at all. That's definitely not normal and it's pretty upsetting. Three athletes lost out on bronze medals due to tiebreakers, and another athlete missed out on the chance to compete in a final due to one as well.

Obviously nobody likes the tiebreakers. I understand how the event finals ones work; they make sense and are fair in the best use of the term. But the tiebreaker that they use for all-around competition is beyond confusing and wrong, IMHO. If they insist on breaking ties in the all-around, they need to come up with a system that actually takes all four scores into account. None of this "dropping events one by one" crap.

The IOC has improved their tiebreaker procedure some; it used to be that there absolutely can be no ties whatsoever and now there is a cap on how many tiebreaks you can apply before the tie stands. If this rule had been in place in Beijing, Nastia Liukin would have two gold medals instead of one. So I approve of that change. But as far as the all0around tiebreakers go...major fail.

Ugh, I realize I'm venting, but yeah. I understand why the IOC mandates that there be no ties, but it's still hard.

Anyway, let's temper this discussion with one of my favorite photos to come out of London yet! Just look at the smile on this girl; it could light up a million cities.

I was SO proud of Aly Raisman last night; you can't even believe. When she got 4th AGAIN I was so bummed out for her...she really is the queen of the 4th place and it was getting old. Then Bela and Marta saved the day by making her coach file an inquiry, and then Aly got the bronze medal that should have been hers in the first place!

And then she went out to the floor final and just ROCKED it; that was one of her best routines I've ever seen her do and it was incredible. That first pass makes my jaw drop every time; it's so difficult and yet she just floats it down.

When I knew Aly had won, I'm not gonna lie; I did cry! It was just such a fairy-tale ending for the girl who, a scant year ago, was not really expected to make the Olympic team and was by far the most "hated" gymnast on the internet (tis true) due to her not fitting the mold of a typical artistic gymnast. Here in London, Aly showed the haters exactly where they could put their comments, and proved that she is one of the best gymnasts in the world.

Add that to the fact that she is THE classiest and most loving competitor out on the floor, and you realize that this gold medal couldn't have come to a more deserving or hardworking person. All the years of hard work and being ignored finally paid off, and I am SO proud of her.

If you had told me a scant few months ago that Aly would be leaving London as the USA's most successful gymnast with not one, but TWO gold medals, I would have laughed in your face. I'm so glad I was wrong.

Yes, I really liked how that turned out. I stayed up late to watch the gymnastics--awesome! I was really impressed with that floor routine.
I think one of the most satisfying noises in the sport must be that thump that they get on a successful landing. I also thought it must have been easier for the Chinese girls to land on the balance beam since they had such tiny feet.
On another of my favorite sports:

I was super excited for Aly for getting Bronze on Beam and then Gold on Floor!! She totally deserved it. ...and her floor routine was. AMAZING.

One question though for Gymfan, or anyone else who knows for that matter: How was the coach able to contest her beam score? The fact that he knew she did better, or what?

And another thing that I've been trying to figure out: What did the judges deduct Makayla for on her GORGEOUS vault in the team competition?

Thanks in advance for the explanations!!

~Sheroo

I watched some of the cross-country jumps on youtube. There were fences shaped like houses, chess pieces, horseshoes--it was really cool.

I was super excited for Aly for getting Bronze on Beam and then Gold on Floor!! She totally deserved it. ...and her floor routine was. AMAZING.

One question though for Gymfan, or anyone else who knows for that matter: How was the coach able to contest her beam score? The fact that he knew she did better, or what?

In gymnastics, you're only allowed to protest one area of the score, and that's the difficulty value. You're not allowed to protest the execution score (i.e. how well or how cleanly you did your routine); just the difficulty. This is because calculating difficulty is a bit complicated and the judges do allow the coaches to contest what difficulty score was given.

Btw you probably already know this, but routines are scored in two parts now; difficulty and execution. The difficulty score is open-ended and is calculated by what kind of skills you do and how you connect them together. The execution score starts at a 10.0 and then deductions are given for various things. For instance, Aly's floor exercise is valued out of a 6.5. If she did it absolutely perfectly, her maximum score would be 16.5. In floor finals she received .900 in deductions, giving her a execution score of 9.1. That combined with 6.5 meant that her final score was 15.6.

But back to beam. Basically, Aly had a spin combination in her routine that was not credited with the .100 she was supposed to get for it. While scoring the routine, the judges thought she paused in between spins and therefore did not award the connection. But upon video review, they saw that there was no break in movement between the turns, so she got that tenth back. That enabled her to be tied for 3rd place, but because her execution score was higher than Ponor's, she won the tiebreaker.

What's funny is that her coach Mihai didn't even realize anything was wrong and had to be SCREAMED at by the Karoyli's from the stands before he was motivated to do something. That's his job to notice details like that, and I can't imagine Marta and Bela are very happy with him right now, lol. But the right result happened anyway; that was just a nerve-wracking way to get it!

And another thing that I've been trying to figure out: What did the judges deduct Makayla for on her GORGEOUS vault in the team competition?

Thanks in advance for the explanations!!

~Sheroo

If you slow McKayla's vault down, you can see that there are errors. She has soft knees while in flight, and her feet are twisted just a little bit. Also, she stuck her landing but popped out of it a bit too quickly; I think had she just stayed still for a few more seconds then she might have scored a little higher. There's no deduction for stepping quickly out of a stick, but it gives the impression to the judges that you did not in fact stick your landing and are only moving out of momentum and to cover up a step.

So McKayla did have a few issues in her vault, and those are all fair deductions. The problem is that when you see her scored compared to the rest of the field, that should have been a perfect vault. Other vaults seem to be only deducted for the major errors while McKayla's vaults get nit-picked to death. THAT is why it was a bit unfair that she received two tenths of deductions at all.

Anyone else planning on watching the closing tonight? We will have family over, but I think i can convince them it will be worth watching.
I hear that Sir Paul will be singing again. Hopfully his voice has gotten better.

The men's 10m platform diving final was great. I'm glad David Boudia won the gold. His dives in the finals were really good. I really liked the way he answered questions after the preliminaries. (He was 18th and just barely qualified for the semi-finals.)

I also really liked watching the women's floor finals in gymnastics. There were several great routines. The men's high bar finals were good to.

I watched a bit of rhythmic gymnastics last night and this afternoon. I never knew they could do all that stuff. How on earth does some throw a ball and catch it between their shoulder blades? And how did all those people move and throw their balls at the same time? I thought it was a lot better than I expected it to be, since before I'd just assumed it was people twirling around with ribbons. Now I can see that there's a lot more to it than that!

Lady Haleth. I do wish I had seen the gymnastics. I rather enjoyed them in the past.
As for the closing, I was able to stomach only sooo much. There were moments of good, talented artists, to be sure. But I had to turn the channel, and should have turned it before the Goth sequence. I was getting the impression I was watching a bad copy of the MTV Superbowl show from several years ago. Very dissapointing.

Finally, someone who understands the true awesomeness of rhythmic gymnastics! It's one of my favorite events, because the routines (especially the team routines) can get really fancy. It's too bad it's usually in the shadow of its artistic cousin. The US doesn't even have a medal in the event yet...

I caught the men's and women's modern pentathlon and it was definitely exciting. The horse jumping portion was all sorts of chaos; five athletes (one man, four women) ended up falling off their horses. (They get paired with a horse at random and only have 20 minutes to get used to the horse beforehand.) The new format, which combines the shooting and running parts, is also cool to watch. US athlete Margaux Isaksen managed to come in fourth, which is the best any American has done yet; hopefully in 2016 she'll be back and can get on the podium.

I loved the Closing Ceremony. It wasn't nearly as good as the Opening Ceremony, but it was still amazing.

And they had Queen! I loved that they had Freddie Mercury sing via old footage on the screen. It's a shame he wasn't still alive to make a genuine appearance.

It was so awesome seeing all the British icons from all different genres, singing together in one place. I think the best thing about the Olympics is the unity it brings.

I'm going to miss seeing footage that takes place in the U.K. But I'm also looking forward to seeing how Brazil handles their Olympic celebrations, and also the Winter Olympics in Russia.

~Riella

I saw part of the closing ceremony, but I went to bed before it was over. I still wonder what was up with that

Has anyone else seen the McKayla Marooney meme? I love it so much. She's not impressed with anything

http://mckaylaisnotimpressed.tumblr.com