Monday, August 18, 2008

Who has six bucks?

BEIJING (AP)—China’s He Kexin won a tiebreaker over all-around champion Nastia Liukin of the United States for the uneven bars gold medal Monday at the Beijing Olympics. Both scored 16.725, but He got the nod because her execution marks were closer to a perfect 10 than Liukin’s. Liukin would not criticize the scoring system that does not award dual gold medals.
“It’s nothing I can control, and honestly, I can say it has been very fair to me, and I got the biggest gold medal of them all,” said Liukin, winner of the women’s all-around gymnastics gold
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Honestly, why do we watch this crap? Scoring systems, judges and personal bias have no place in organized sport.
While watching the competition (why?) I was reminded of a line from "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," spoken by the late John Candy as Del Griffith:
"Six bucks and my right nut says we're not landing in Chicago."
Six bucks and my right nut says those Chinese gymnasts are 12 years old. The Olympic Committee (whoever they are) says that they checked and they're satisfied that these kids are 16 (or turning 16 during the year). Of course, even if they found that they were 12 (which they are) how could they backpeddle now and say, "We're sorry, you're out." They couldn't take the hit from the public once this whole mess is exposed as a fraud.
But, on the bright side, it's gymnastics, so who gives a crap?

5 comments:

kimmyk said...

they do look young i'll give ya that. but with gymnastics they getcha before you hit puberty...sadly, the regiment they're on stops their cycles and all kinds of crazy junk physically and so....part of me doubts they are all 16, but i imagine some of those baby face girls are.

they one i give a crap less about is badminton. when did that become an olympic sport?

Anthony said...

Individual competition in badminton was a demonstration event in the 1972 and 1988 Summer Olympics. It became a Summer Olympics sport at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

Anthony said...

I don't know nothin' 'bout no cycles and all, but that photo looks like a mom and her two children.

Anonymous said...

They are cloned muscle dwarfs, obediently serving their glorious nation.

("know nothin' 'bout cycles"? You were once married - to a woman, I thought!)

Kate Michele said...

I love that line.