The NYTimes, NBC, China, Gymnastics and more

Let me start out in a lighthearted tone. I'm going to kill the New York Times. (This is partially my own fault). Wanting to be an educated human being I receive news alerts- during the Olympics this has spoiled some of the fun. So when I saw that Shawn Johnson won gold on balance beam before I watched it I was frustrated. All that being said, when I was watching it I found myself less stressed knowing that she secured herself a gold in the Beijing Games.

NBC

I understand when they are playing programs late because we are
watching them live. But if it's not live- there is really no excuse.
Come on guys, anything after 8 is prime time... so move the
programming up from 11 pm to 8 or 9 p.m.- Especially on the west
Coast. What's really crazy about NBC's programming on the west coast is that they are playing everything on the same schedule as the East Coast. So when the Olympics went on until 1:30 in the morning last week on the East Coast (understandable since it was live)- was it really necessary to make California fans stay up until 1:30 to watch a tape?

See San Francisco Chronicle editorial.


Next topic: China

Anyone else getting really sick of hearing their national anthem? I
understand the home games are going to bring in more golds for the
home team. Not because of biased judging, but simply because teams
always do better at home. More cheers, more energy, home games are
always more fun. That all being said, let's discuss the Chinese and
gymnastics.

First, vault. Are you kidding me? Alicia Sacromone might not have done her best during the team competition, but she definitely deserved the bronze on her individual vault. Instead Cheng Fei won it, even after falling on her knees on her second vault. Fei is a talented gymnast- no doubt- AND she is one of the few Chinese gymnasts that looks of age, but that score was too high.
The same is true for the beam final. With more than three noticeable
balance checks she won bronze, beating out a better and less shaky Russian gymnast who had a near flawless routine. Start values differed, but still Fei scored too high in my opinion.

Last but not least bars. Can we please discuss…

One no way He Kexin is 16. That just irks me. All that aside, she had a great routine- so did Nastia. They tied. OK I'm going have to agree with Bella Kerolyi on this one, "give them both the gold." If swimmers can tie, why can't gymnasts? It's absurd. Instead they took away one of the protections that keeps the sport fair. The tiebreaker involved taking the lowest score and factoring it in, which is normally knocked out because the highest and lowest score are always knocked out in order to eliminate bias. Now your throwing
it back in? It just seems asinine.

In the end, I'm very proud of all the US gymnasts. Last night
with beam and high bar- in my opinion the two scariest events- our men and women walked away with 3 out of the 6 medals given (1 gold: Johnson (beam), 2 Silver: Liukin (beam) and Horton (high bar).

Also I’m very happy that Fabian Hamuechen of Germany won the bronze on high bar. He’s had a disappointing Olympics, but it’s good to see him walk away with a medal- especially when he’s so talented!

Lastly, I'm disappointed in some of the Jamaican runners who bragged before they even crossed the finish line... it's really disrespectful.