Paris Olympics - July 26th to August 11th (did I mention it's in Paris?)

[Mrich]

Well, it wouldn't be an Olympics without some kind of scoring controversy.

OK, this is what I have gleaned from reading about it on a gymnastics forum. In gymnastics, a routine has a "difficulty" score indicating the skills in the routine, and a "execution" score which indicates how well the routine was done. The difficulty is calculated by adding all the skills; every little turn is included, not just the tumbling runs.

When Jordan Chiles did her floor routine, she ended up in 4th place. Well, Jordan's coach noticed that the difficulty score was off, so she submitted a request for a review - an "inquiry". Chiles was the last competitor, so the athlete that thought she had the bronze medal was already celebrating. After a review, the judges agreed and she was awarded full credit for the skill, and that little bump put her into 3rd place. The result was that iconic photo of Simone Biles (who won silver) and Jordan Chiles bowing to the goddess from Brazil, and gold medal winner - Rebeca Andrade.

Then the Romanian team filed a complaint that said the coach inquiry was too late. Apparently the last gymnast is only alllowed 1 minute to submit an inquiry. The judges agreed that the inquiry was requested at 64 seconds. So they said the decision to make the adjustment of the score was reversed. (This is several days after the medal ceremony.)

And now, US Gymnastics says "we now have video proof that the inquiry was requested at 47 seconds":



What a shitshow!

[keith]

USA women's basketball team, gold medal by a single point over France! The French player stepped on the 3 point line in the final shot of the game, so it was only a two-pointer or it would have gone to OT. Super exciting finish!

Edit: My power washer broke today when I pulled it out. Well, it was probably 15 years old, the motor is frozen or sumpin'. So I reckon I can watch a little more of the Games for a few minutes.

Nobody ever got divorced for buying a Karcher

[Foggy]

Yeah, well, Karcher is not in my immediate future, Charlotte is. I'll write about it in my thread, gimme a few minutes.

[andersweinstein]

When I saw news of the US appeal, I wondered if the CAS had any mechanism for reconsidering a decision. Looks like no.

[p0rtia]

Enjoy a View.jpg (399.82 KiB) Viewed 1544 times

[neonzx]

Variety@Variety

J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk Named in Cyberbullying Lawsuit Filed by Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif After Olympic Win (EXCLUSIVE)

[Rolodex]

That's great. I wish there was a way to sue facebook; comments were filled with such horrible stuff. These days, I seem to get a lot a posts from accounts I don't follow (media) and people I never heard of. Lots of the "media" ones were about the Olympics; they seemed to be legit accounts just reporting pics or info, but the comments were disgusting and fb leaves them up when you report them.

In other news, I mostly enjoyed the closing ceremonies (which always seem to be more low key than the opening). It was also very French. I laughed when the pianist came out floating up vertically. I thought of Keith Emerson having done that back in 1974. He sat at a grand piano that raised up and then spun. ELP was amazing and weird and wonderful.

[poplove]

@Natalyacoyle
My story of Olympic spirit from Athletics on Saturday.

I sat by a lovely man from Australia. He kept pulling out new flags from his bag & waving them. I asked him about it,
“I bring the 9 smallest nations flags with me as they won’t have many people in the stands”
#Paris2024

[Suranis]

So, the IOC is directly suppressing footage of things from the Games that turned out somewhat embarressing. Sr Sydney Watson had a video talking about Rachael Gunn, the godawful Breakdancer from Australia, wherin she used 15 seconds of footage of the woman sliding along the mat and the video got copyright claimed.



This includes Sydney Watson copying the Breakdancing performance to the delight of her 2 dogs, which is worth watching by itself.

She mentions in passing that the IOC is also suppressing footage of the "Bacchist" last supper part of the Opening Ceremony sequence because of the backlash. In short, they are erasing it from history. And the Boxer from Algeria that people falsely alleged was Trans when in fact the Woman was born female. (And yes that's pretty much good enough for me. To the point I'm going to leave it to the people whose job it is to make those decisions to do their job and make the decision.)

The IOC is NOT, of course, suppressing footage of Positive things, such as the Turkish Shooting competitors being badasses.

The original video she was forced to edit 15 seconds out of is here. Basically she alleges various "Shady Shit" the woman pulled to get sent to the Olympics representing Australia when she couldn't Breakdance. Reminder - Rachael Gunn didn't get a single point. And she is now signed to a Talent agency and is all signed up to a "reality" TV show. Because the world is rational and celebrates "Talent and excellence." Be Best!



Edit Oh and apparently they are also suppressing the poisoning of several athletes because they didn’t want to admit the Seine was full of sewage and not fit to be used for swimming. Pepe le Pew is horrified.

https://globalnews.ca/news/10683691/par ... -olympics/

[Suranis]

Another video from an Australian basically corroborating that the Olympics is actively suppressing Rayguns performance. Even pictures are getting accounts frozen and email in your inbox telling one to remove them. Its getting scrubbed.

Also Australian "Breakdancing people" and politicians are defending her performance. Which got zero points. Zero.

But she "had a go."

[andersweinstein]

The line that Raygun "got zero points" may be a tad misleading since, as she mentioned in an instagram post, they are not given point scores, but rather subject to pairwise comparisons against their opponents. For each round, judges decide which of the two competitors did better on 5 different criteria, which results are then weighted in a certain way to determine an overall winner for the round. The judges use screens with five horizontal sliders, one for each category. The sliders start in the middle (50%) position, and they drag them right or left to indicate which competitor they consider superior in that category and by how much.

What is true is that in every one of 6 rounds (3 battles of two rounds each in the round robin phase), all nine judges were unanimous that her opponent won the round overall. So she got zero votes as a round winner. I think total round winner votes were shown on screen at some point --- total votes are the first tie-breaker after total rounds won in determining who advances -- and that's where the "zero points" may have come from. It just means she went to a competition where everyone else was clearly better than her -- she didn't win a single round with any judge.

In fact if you drill down into the subscores, which can be found on the Olympics site, there were a couple of rounds in which a couple of judges gave her the edge over her opponent on "originality", and one where a judge gave her the edge on "vocabulary". So in the eyes of a couple of judges she at least outdid her opponents on *some* aspect of the performance in some rounds. Just never enough to win a round overall when all criteria considered.