The tiebreaker, the US gymnastics, and the Karolyis

In today's Olympic Gymnastics competition, there are two ties in over all score for gold: one is men's vault and the other is women's uneven bars. Going through a specially designed tiebreaker process (up to six steps) instituted by the International Olympic Committee after the 1996 Atlanta games, the ties have been broken and Leszek Blanik won the gold medal for vault and Kexing He got the gold in uneven bars.

To me, this is just the same as Phelps the great won his 100 butterfly two days ago, there are a system of rules to follow and that is it. In fact, both athletes in these events are real champions. Especially for Nastia Liukin, who handled the situation extremely well, considering the difficult circumstances. All Americans should be proud of her.

She was quoted the following in an article on the Times:

"Liukin said she thought the scoring was fair, even mentioning that she thought Yang, the bronze-medalist, might have been underscored. In a subjectively judged sport, outcomes like this sometimes happened, she said."

At the same time, her fellow Americans, sadly including some so called journalists, were not that graceful. Many started to call the rule obscure and unreasonable, just short of following the idiotic Bela Karolyi that "the Chinese stole the medal again!".

In the overwhelming comments on these news stories, I'm glad there are quite a few rather rational about this. A good comment on the Post's explanation of the tiebreaker article is quoted here:

"One comedian captured this fracas succinctly: "why is it that after watching the Olympics for an hour, everyone suddenly thinks that they are experts in a sport they've rarely watched before?"

People like Bela Karoyli do not help in this situation - why is he even getting so much coverage? His wife is the coach! It's so unbelievable that NBC is letting him scream and cry (literally) like some lunatic on prime time television when he's basically the coach of the US team.

I for one am proud that the athletes themselves have not descended into this "sour grapes" mode that a lot of the commentators have, and that their own coaches have. If the scoring process is flawed, complain about it and work to fix it, but don't denigrate the sport with such pettiness.

Posted by: rhadams | August 18, 2008 1:27 PM"

My take on this is almost the same as this one on the same article:

"1) I will not try to second-guess human error or bias in judging;
2) Nastia behandles herself like a true olympian and (co-)champion.
3) As long as the rule is set beforehand, I have no problem with it. The same tie-breaker is used in men's vault today - and I didn't heard a lot of support for the French siler mealist.
4) Last but not last, please and please do not use Bella Karolyi's NBC comment to support you arguments. Would you use a judge's wife's comment to support a judge's decision?

Posted by: Anonymous | August 18, 2008 2:21 PM"

By "almost", I had more disguise to the Karolyis. They are basically making money from training the US women's gymnastics team in Texas. They have monetary interests in bashing China in the hopes that their own incompetence may be overlooked. For example, in this story on the LA Times, he was quoted:

"If that sounds complicated, former U.S. national coach Bela Karolyi didn't understand how the tiebreak process worked. He thought the scores from qualifying were used, and that would have given Liukin the gold medal."

For someone doing this for a living, if he didn't understand the rules, which has been instituted since 1996, he is incompetent. If he continues to basing the judge, the system, and the opponents with racist demeaning language, he is a pathetic looser.

Please note that his highest career point is to coach Nadia Comaneci to the first perfect 10 in the 1976, when Comaneci was only 14 years old. While calling the Chinese "half people" on national TV, he is the most vocal opponent of the 16-years age limit instituted by the Federation of Gymnastics.

To me, this is the real disgrace to the Olympic spirit.

For NBC, they could use some better misjudgment themselves so to avoid using such a lunatic on prime time national TV. Oh, that may be too high an expectation for NBC who decided to get rid of Jay Leno.

For the LA Times, who continues to quote the Karolyis, this is why "the Times" is for the New York Times.