Monzanator

1 minute ago, thiago_simoes said:

I wonder how important, exactly. I remember that in 2012 absolutely no one I know cared about the final match against Mexico. I even went to a restaurant with a group of friends at the time, not to watch the match but instead to talk about life. No one there cared about the match in the least, despite the fact that there was a TV there showing the match. But in 2016 everybody went crazy about it because the Olympics were in Brazil. This year, most people don't care about it again.

 

 

Exactly. This means that 98 gymnasts is a low number, because most of them are all-arounders who happen to compete at the Olympics and have a chance to fight for medals in individual events, while a number of great true specialists are kept at home thanks to the insanely low number of gymnasts allowed to qualify. FIG has become more and more welcoming towards specialists: now up to 3 per apparatus can qualify through the world championships and 1 per apparatus at the World Cup Series. In the past they only allowed 1 per apparatus to qualify, and only if this person was the World Champion at the event the year before the Olympics. Crazy.

Besides, 60 people fighting for only 3 medals is a little too much. Especially in an event with such a low number of people generally interested on it, except, of course, for the people in this forum.

But the key is, those people come from influential regions of the world - China, Russia, Australia and most of the Latin America. USA is the only athletics powerhouse that has zero presence in race walking over the years.

7 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

Not sure what “endurance boulder” is…but yes, the speed winner can stay competitive in this format because of the multiplication system used for the combined score. On one hand, it’s nice that speed specialists have a chance, on the other hand it’s a bit ridiculous since they tend to be towards the bottom of lead and boulder phases. Obviously, speed will be a separate event in Paris, so this won’t be an issue next cycle.

 

Lead and Boulder are generally regarded as being more similar to each other, than speed climbing is to either, so it’s not shocking that climbers stronger in Boulder and Lead might fair better in qualification. For example 2x16x17 (speed-boulder-lead) is still worse than than say 14x4x6.

The speed speciallists are lucky there are no 30 entries overall or else the entire Top 10 from speed climb wouldn't have made the final. So this combined event is unfair to them. It has to be separated like it is in the World Games. It's like in cycling when sprint speciallists will never contend for the overall Grand Tour or a mountain stage victory.

3 minutes ago, JoshMartini007 said:

To be fair, in artistic gymnastics there is a lot of overlap between the events. Even outside the Olympics FIG is barely welcoming towards specialists.

 

Yeah, I still remember the uproar when Leszek Blanik couldn't qualify for Athens 2004 despite being the reigning WCh silver medallist in the vault No love for apparatus speciallists in gymnastics whatsoever.

Very nice running from #70

Korzeniowski said there are less than 30 judges in the world who can actually work at the Olympics level

1 minute ago, heywoodu said:

Lawrence of Arabia has gotten himself a major problem.

I wonder if he realized he's got no chance here so just grabbed the early attention and now he's tailing off big time?

Da hell is Diniz doing?

Diniz hits the toilet

4 minutes ago, hckošice said:

absolutely.

 

The great times when athletes started at the stadium, made 3 laps before moving to the street and were rewarded for their effort by finishing in the Olympic stadium in front of full stands.

Or get taken off by the judges 200 meters before the stadium! Thankfully Korzeniowski returned with a vengence!

1 minute ago, LowerSaxony said:

The great Robert Korzeniowski who won every race walking event back then when I was a kid and fell in love with Race Walking :D

The very same. The only 4x Olympic champion in history.

He just said that Toth & Diniz shouldn't threaten the "Japanese youngsters" so let's see how that works.

Men's 50k walk is on. Legendary event in Poland all because of one person (who is commenting this on Polish ES right now)

@Olympian1010They have to separate the speed climb from endurance boulder. There is no other way. Making the final 8 only gives some of the handicap back since even if the speed winner finishes low in the other two events, he/she can still challenge for medals.

This seems to affect women more. Only four of Top 10 speed climbers made it past the qualifying while in lead & boulder 8 from Top 10! Huge difference.

Just now, LDOG said:

Even if they win gold they won't have the front page now 

Yes, that was my point! Barca could have waited like two days to make the news public

11 minutes ago, LDOG said:

Messi quits Barcelona confirmed 

 

Every media outlet here inmediately forgot about the olympics 

Not before the women's hockey final!

I believe someone mentioned this earlier but the throwing events produced 6/6 success rate when it comes to qualifying winners taking the gold medal. Let's see if javelin manages to continue the trend

Valentino Rossi (motorcycle racing) will retire at the end of the season.

I assume men's shot put was the third easiest perfect score to predict? (after the two 400H events).

25 minutes ago, OlympicsFan said:

Poland, Italy and Netherlands with once in a century fluke performances. At least most of their medalists will be gone soon. Both Kaul and Schäfer could have sleepwalked to a medal without their injuries, Kaul probably would have even won gold.

Got bad news for you, Anita Wlodarczyk said she will be in Paris already Makes U wonder where is Betty Heidler these days? Probably run out of magic pills

in the final. Meh.

1 minute ago, Gianlu33 said:

They already do if for Paris 24 Next step is divide boulder from lead, I hope.

Makes U wonder why they didn't do it for Tokyo? It's damn obvious this system is totally unfair from the scratch?

3 minutes ago, NearPup said:

Sports climbing? Amazing. They should have all three events at the Olympics.

 

The sports climbing combined event? That might actually be the worst event in the Olympics across both summer and winter games.

Yeah, it's clear they HAVE to separate the speed speciallists from boulder experts. With only one typical speed event of the three, those speciallists have no medal chance for the combined.

Just now, NearPup said:

The 6.0 scoring system was one of the worst scoring system in the history of sports so :P

But the 6.0 scoring system only determined the places (and judges places were more important anyway) while the places determind the final ranking.

Brian Orser won both short & free in Sarajevo but only took silver since he fiished 7th in compulsory figures.

1 minute ago, NearPup said:

Lol this format is so stupid. decides if or wins gold.

It's basically the old format in figure skating where a total number of placings decides the final ranking?

Warner 9,018 OR!

Should be bronze for Oosterwegel! Vidts tried to sneak in from 5th!