NBC and Nastia Liukin - SHUT UP already... she lost, fair and square

Holy christ... Roll out the conspiracy theories of how the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique waited until an Olympic Moment to screw Nastia Liukin out of a gold medal. Yahoo! has it's idiot blog on the Olympics running today with the header (front and center on Yahoo! homepage):

Olympics' Big Injustice:
Nastia Liukin should feel cheated after scoring the same as gold medalist He Kexin.

Enough already.

At issue here is a scoring system that prevents ties. It's quite simple. Drop the high and the low score of the judges for each athlete's score. In the event of a tie drop EACH athlete's lowest score. And last night guess what. It works a tie happened it was broken - "no shit sherlock" event: He Kexin, the Chinese gymnast, had more high scores. They did not, as the NY Daily News reported, have the same score. That's like students of mine demanding they get the same rank in my class just because they can't see the "rounded off" part of a grade. It's there, trust me. And when the Star Telegram reports that "Not unexpectedly, Liukin and her father and coach, Valeri, weren’t familiar with the tiebreaking rules, nor were many in the National Indoor Stadium." it give me pause. Come on. These people are at THE PINNACLE of competition in the field. And she lost by 3/100 of a point (which in a scale of 10 is fairly substantial - NOT 1/1000 as the NBC commentators professed last night.Knowing the rules is part of the game. Accepting that you lost by them is part of sportspersonship.

But NBC commentators on gymnastics last night (at a loss of what to talk about since Mike Phelps wasn't there to jis all over the place about) were falling all over themselves trying to explain how Liukin had been denied her gold medal. Saying things like "It's problematic when you have the best gymnastics teams on the floor and countries aren't allowed to sit on the judging panel when they are competing themselves. So we end up with inexperienced judges like New Zealand, South Africa, Bulgaria (now there's a country with absolutely NO experience in sport systems domination...). They don't know how to score properly." and then followed that explained that Nastia Liukin lost the gold medal because a computer split the tie between the two of them. Ooooooh! The Mystery Box did it! That's all wrong. It's those under age Chinese! That's not fair.

Holy shit. Think about it for a second. United States is about to embark on yet another voyage of telling the world what is fair and democratic. And they've been such a beacon of hope in this field for years now haven't they (Jim Thorpe's humiliation, Tommie Smith and John Carlos' humiliation at Mexico by the US Olympic team, Title IX and Title IX dismemberment from that bastion of good research The CATO Institute ("Title IX Destroys our Olympic Team" from Conservapedia (that well of reality itself, WTF), see "Hoop Dreams" the movie (race and exploitation are alive and well decades after Jesse Owens, Thorpe, and 'Black Power, catastrophic youth injuries, etc., etc., etc.) But the US Olympic gymnastics team is out front leading the charge that this is "too complicated" and puts athletes "at risk" and that the experience of figure skating is to be noted (that athleticism was valued more than aesthetics. Where to start, where to start..

OK, at the top, with the immediate accusations they've been screwed out of a gold medal (boo fucking hoo...).

Inexperienced judges - Sure, maybe. But first of all that's such a fucking arrogant stand in the first place. Ooooo those "developing countries" how could they possibly understand the nuances of scoring US (that's 'us' not "U.S." but the two are synonymous is this self-absorbed shit-hole of a country most days). Regardless, even if they are inexperienced then they are going to be EQUALLY inexperienced to ALL athlete's scoring.. U.S. '0', Logic '1'.

The Black Box Did It - This is so incredibly lame it hardly warrants intelligent attention. The Black Box only does what we tell it to do. The FIG, AND the U.S. of A. agreed to how it would work - it simply does what people tell it to do, just more quickly. It's a no brainer. Liukin has fewer higher scored scores than Kexin. MORE PEOPLE ranked Kexin higher than Liukin. Period.

Oh, and about that young gymnast accusation the U.S. keeps throwing about... While there may be some truth to this we may never know. HOWEVER... Age doesn't when medals. Skill does. Is it an advantage to be younger and female in gymnastics? In some cases definitely. And are there risks for young females? Definitely. But maybe it says something about our own expectations of the female form (no fat thank-you very much) and is more connected to disordered eating and even inability to keep athletes performing for the sake of the sport (rather than advertising contracts?) etc. And puhleeze.... It's not like women in this country are not pimped out on the un-even bars every evening by "soccer-mom" cum-Cathy Rigby-ies in ever suburban hell hole in United States. We just don't bring them to the Olympics. We wait until they're older and then dope 'em up and then send them to the Olympics (of course we'll lie about it first(Joyner-Kersee fought rumors of steroid use in 1998...until...)... and then we'll tell the truth. (2007 when she finally admitted to doping). Or try Marion Jones... Ah yes, taking the the high road of Team USA.

Look. The bottom line is Liukin didn't slam dunk the routine. She "left the door open". The other girl scored BETTER than she, AND with MORE judges. The tie is an artefact of system - NOT a reality measure of performance. The U.S.A. doesn't deserve to win every time. And everytime they don't win it's not because the system is against them. In fact they rigged most of that system themselves. Some are just better atheletes. But what is worst of all is listening to pundits (ESPECIALLY NBC) fucking whine about it all. The evening became one of the most vile moments for NBC and the American Olympics in broadcast of the last week and a half. After a week and a half of wallowing in the world domination of Michael Phelps they ran with it... She deserved this medal, she was cheated, the judges were incompetent, the FIG system is flawed. Holy Shit.... They went on and on trying to justify why the loser should be the winner. And with NO valid (to any form of scrutiny anyways) reason. And to top it off she was a shitty sport about it as well. Her disgust of not winning was supposed to be "hers" was more than apparent as NBC trained their cameras on her watching her rightfully anguished emotions (it is the Olympics, I don't fault her for wanting it so bad.).

I had to turn the TV off. I almost threw up. So this is "fairness" in American sports for you? If you don't get what you want then cry foul. Say they're cheating. Say you didn't know the rules. That it was fixed. Shut up already. You lost. Fair and square.