[pressganged pete]

i can't see the benefit in olympic games anymore, it's an outdated concept because athletes meet routinely in international events these days, not like it was when the olympics started. i've no idea why any country wants to host them either, when it means such huge expenditure for an event which lasts for only 2 weeks.

[William H Bonney]

Draw for the Olympic football tournament:

Women's draw
Group E: Great Britain, New Zealand, Cameroon, Brazil
Group F: Japan, Canada, Sweden South Africa
Group G: USA, France, Colombia, Korea DPR

Men's draw:
Group A: Great Britain, Uruguay, UAE, Senegal
Group B: Mexico, Switzerland, Korean Republic, Gabon
Group C: Brazil, Belarus, New Zealand, Egypt
Group D: Spain, Honduras, Japan, Morocco

[Obelisk]

The women's 400m individual medley at the 2012 Olympics took place on 28 July at the London Aquatics Centre and was won by Ye Shiwen of China. As she had a sudden rise in performance, improving her personal best by 5sec, and a performance at a level much above that of her competitors, she has been suspected of doping.

John Leonard of the World Swimming Coaches Association said the last 50m was suspicious, as she swam it in 28.93sec, while men's gold medallist Ryan Lochte swam the same length at 29.10sec. However, several have defended Ye, saying that a sudden rise in performance should not automatically result in accusations of doping.

This is from the Science of Sport website:

First point, we're talking about a medley here - 100m each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. Because there are different strokes, any comparison we make between Shiwen and Lochte may be affected by the relative strengths of the two for the freestyle stroke. You might be comparing an exceptional freestyle female swimmer in Shiwen to a fairly mediocre male freestyle swimmer in Lochte. If that were true, then similar times at the end would be no big deal.

But that's NOT the case here - Lochte is a good freestyle swimmer. An hour ago, he did a 47.74s 100m relay leg. It didn't win gold, but it's right up there, at most only a second off the very best on the day. Shiwen, on the other hand, is clearly an exceptional freestyle swimmer, but is not in their relay teams, and nor does she do any individual freestyle events, so she's not at the kind of level that would destroy world records (which is what it would need to be to make the comparison invalid). I'd argue that they're probably very similar, relative to their peers, at that stroke.

So I think it is safe to say that at best, Shiwen may edge Lochte for relative strength in the event, but not by much, and so she is comparable to Lochte for the specific stroke. Therefore, a direct comparison between Lochte and Shiwen for the freestyle leg is not invalid - it can be made without the confounder of relative freestyle strength.

Next, you look at what it "typical" in the 400IM race. For men, the best swimmers typically close in 57 to 59 seconds (check splits from London). This is about 19 to 23% SLOWER than the best men finish in an isolated 100m freestyle.

For women, the TYPICAL (excluding Shiwen) final 100m freestyle takes 61 to 64 seconds. This is 18 to 22% slower than the best females swim 100m freestyle.

So the sport shows that you have a normal pattern, a typical ratio of medley freestyle to best freestyle - they SHOULD BE between 18 and 23% slower at the end of a 400m IM than in a 100m freestyle by itself.

Yet Shiwen is not. She does a 58.68 s final leg, which is only about 10% off the best 100m freestyle swimmers. The conclusion that I would draw from this is that her 100m freestyle leg is disproportionately fast not only by comparison to Lochte, but also to her peers, and to the best 100m freestyle swimmers.

The only way to interpret that is to recognize that the physiology of a fast finish tells us that she must have a significant reserve for that final leg. It says that her first 300m was an extremely conservative effort. The simple question is "Under what circumstances does a female have the capacity to finish a race as fast as a male?"

To answer this, think back to the key concept - finishing ability is a function of how close we are to our potential. To finish as fast as Shiwen does, relative to an unfatigued, isolated 100m freestyle, implies that she has a lot more potential in the event than was realized with her world record. The fact that Shiwen could close as fast as Lochte suggests to me that her efforts over the first 300m of that final took very little out of her.

If that is true, then her overall performance is a significant underperformance. The allocation of energy over the course of the race might be debated, but what physiology suggests is that it should probably be more even for Shiwen, and it would allow her to swim quite a lot faster than the 4:28 that she did.

Now, at this point, many will say "maybe it's just her way to finish fast", and that may be true. You'll find examples of athletes who just had more at the end, and of course you get ranges. But the range is 18-23% off the isolated performance, not 10%. That's too big, and it's not the optimal way, based on everything we know about performance and pacing. I suspect that Shiwen would probably be 2 or more seconds faster if she went out harder and pushed to the point of fatigue. It would force her final leg to be slower, maybe 62 instead of 58.6 seconds, but the gaps would have been created early.

Scary thought then that there is a "reserve" there that would see her get even better. It would only cause more questioning though - imagine a strong world record of 4:30 lowered by 5 or 6 seconds by a 16-year old?

[Black Dog]

BADMINTON: 8 women badminton players, including the world champions from China, have been accused of trying to throw matches at the Olympics to secure a favorable draw. The Badminton World Federation said in a statement it had charged the doubles players from China, South Korea and Indonesia under its players' code of conduct with "not using one's best efforts to win a match" and "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport."

Teams blamed the introduction of a round-robin stage rather than a straight knockout tournament as the main cause of the problem. In the round-robin format, losing one game can lead to an easier matchup in the next round. The Chinese players were accused of leading the way by deliberately losing a game. This led to other teams behaving in a similar way to try to force an easier quarterfinal. World doubles champions Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang of China and their South Korean opponents Jung Kyun-eun and Kim Ha-na were booed loudly by the crowd after dumping serves into the net and making simple errors, such as hitting the shuttlecock wide. The umpire warned them, and tournament referee Torsten Berg spoke to all four players but it had little effect. At one stage, Berg showed a black card, which usually means disqualification, but the game continued. Eventually, the Chinese women lost 21-14, 21-11 and both pairs were jeered off the court.

The problem was repeated in the next women's doubles between South Korea's Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung and Indonesia's Meiliana Jauhari and Greysia Polii. Both teams were also warned for deliberately losing points in a match the Koreans won 18-21, 21-14, 21-12. The capacity crowd vented its displeasure. The problems had begun when the second-seeded Chinese pair lost unexpectedly to a Danish team. That meant that the top-seeded Chinese team would meet its Olympic teammates in the semifinals instead of the final, preventing them from winning both gold and silver.

Australia coach Lasse Bundgaard blamed the group format for the controversy. "It's not good when you create a tournament where the players are put in this situation," he said. "If you can win a medal by losing, but not by winning, that's not a good situation to be put in. I totally understand why they are doing it. Now the Indonesians are doing the same but it's not a good situation to be put in."

[Obelisk]

On 4 August 2012 Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee runner to compete at an Olympic Games. In the men's 400m race he took 2nd place out of 5 in his heat with a time of 45.44 sec and therefore advanced to the semi-finals. On 5 August he ran in the second semi-final and finished 8th out of 8 with a time of 46.54 sec.

[Black Dog]

GYMNASTICS: When Olympic athletes succeed but judges fail

When U.S. gymnast Aly Raisman completed her routine on the balance beam during the individual finals Tuesday, she hugged her coach and stared at the scoreboard, waiting to see whether she had done enough to medal. When the score finally flashed, a nervous Raisman became disappointed. "Oh, no!" her coach, Mihai Brestyan, proclaimed as he spotted the eerily familiar results. She had landed in fourth place – again – and just shy of the medal stand for the second time in the Olympics.

What happened next would again thrust the judges, athletes and coaches into a heated debate over Olympic scoring. As Raisman tried to hold back her disappointment, shouts came from the crowd. U.S. national team coordinator Martha Karolyi, her husband, Bela (who is no longer associated with Team USA but is a constant fixture), and vice president of USA women's gymnastics Kathy Kelly shouted and motioned for Brestyan to file a protest. They believed that the judges hadn't accurately tabulated her difficulty score, specifically the connections between a few of her elements on the beam. Brestyan raced around the gym to get a form to fill out in the allotted time. Meanwhile, Raisman congratulated Catalina Ponor of Romania, who was in position for bronze.

Raisman and Team USA anxiously stared at the scoreboard as judges from the International Gymnastics Federation reviewed video of her routine. "It might be a tie," Raisman said: a repeat of the all-around finals. Raisman had tied Russia's Aliya Mustafina, which in the all-around means the lowest score was dropped. Raisman, long seen as the rock of the team, had narrowly missed an individual medal because of the tiebreaker rule. She was worried it would happen again. And Raisman was right, it was a tie. But her coach quickly reminded her she would end up on the podium because the execution scores alone, not the difficulty, were judged in the tiebreakaer.

The scoreboard flashed the official result. The tiebreaker went in Raisman's favor this time, and she received a bronze medal. It was perhaps one of the longest moments of Raisman's career. But it was not the first time this chaotic scene had played out in the Olympics - or questions about the accuracy of judging had come up. For years, the debate about how accurately sports can be judged, especially in the Olympics, has stirred debate. Many have argued that everything is subjective. And in a sport that comes down to hundredths of a point, that can be everything. As Raisman knows, it can also be the difference between being an Olympic medalist and missing out entirely. That is part of the reason the inquiry system Raisman's coach used was instituted.

"The inquiry was introduced along with FIG's new scoring system following the 2004 Olympics, where judging disasters marred the men's all-around and high bar finals. (The inquiry replaced an appeals process, which had a far lower rate of overturning scores at the 2004 Olympics, at least)," Nick Zaccardi wrote in a Sports Illustrated column explaining the system, using the acronym for the International Gymnastics Federation. "The FIG did away with the perfect 10 and redid its 'code of points' system with the more complicated two-pronged approach. The benefits of the change included eliminating potential bias in judging, the FIG said in 2005. Video review was also introduced."

Team USA's use of the inquiry in Raisman's case was the third in gymnastics during this Olympics alone.

[Obelisk]

Is the Decathlon the Olympic event with the hardest to follow scoring system? Ashton Eaton is the world record holder in the event with 9,039 points. After the first 3 events he led the decathlon with 2,848 points. Who outside the sport knows what that means? You literally need a scoring table to figure out how well an athlete is doing.

"I don't think the fans really understand how it works,'' Eaton said. "But I think they're learning because close to an entire stadium was staying for a decathlon shot put, which isn't too exciting.'' Hey, the shot put in the actual shot put isn't too exciting, either. But many of the other events in the decathlon are.

Imagine being able to run down a path carrying a pole, planting the pole in a small box and vaulting yourself over a 17-foot-high bar. Most of us couldn't even fall from a 17-foot height let alone vault to it. Now imagine being able to do that and run 100 meters in just more than 10 seconds and jump over a 6-and-a-half-foot bar and run close to a four-minute mile and throw a javelin almost 200 feet.

Decathletes are the very definition of the Olympic motto: faster, higher, stronger. It's time to give credit back to the complete, well-rounded athlete rather than just the ones who can do one thing well. Instead of viewing the decathlon as a drawn-out event with a confusing scoring system, we should look at it as a drama doesn't end in 10 seconds but steadily builds event by event.

[Black Dog]

ATHLETICS: Just after the U.S. team finished second in its 4x400-meter relay heat, a limping Manteo Mitchell told reporters his injury was nothing serious. "It might be a simple cramp," he said. Turns out it was a lot more than that.

Mitchell broke a bone in his left leg, USA Track and Field said in a news release. The 25-year-old, running the leadoff leg, felt his fibula snap with 200 meters to go. He had to finish or the United States would have been out of the event.

"I wanted to just lie down. It felt like somebody literally just snapped my leg in half," he said. For a half-lap he ran in excruciating pain until he handed off to Josh Mance. Mitchell's split was 46.1 and the Americans went on to finish in 2:58.87 to qualify for Friday's final.

Mitchell said on Monday he was going up a set of stairs, missed one and landed poorly. An X-ray taken Thursday after the relay showed the break.

(story from CNN)

[Obelisk]

This is from CNN too.

The seven missing in London. That's what the headlines in the West African nation of Cameroon call the athletes who walked away from the Olympic village at the London Games. The Cameroon athletes -- five male boxers, a female footballer and a male swimmer -- walked away from the Olympic village last week, immediately raising questions about their intentions.

While the Cameroon Olympic delegation has stopped short of saying the athletes planned to defect, at least one member of the country's national Olympic committee believes it's more than likely. "Back home, they aren't giving the proper training. They know if they are well trained, they could beat the person from another country," Aka Amuam Joseph told CNN during a recent interview outside a sports training facility in Cameroon. Joseph also serves as a member of the Cameroon Karate Federation. "It pains them to be here and see people beat them, who they can beat if they are well taken care of."

Nothing has been heard from the athletes since they went missing, said David Ojong, Cameroon's head of mission to London 2012, but said, but their compatriots "hope and believe" the athletes will rejoin the group before they return to Cameroon. Athletes competing at the London Games have visas that allow them to stay in the United Kingdom until November 8, according to authorities.

Footballer Drusille Ngako, who was one of the team's reserve players, was the first of the seven to disappear. He went missing on July 26, Ojong said. Swimmer Paul Ekane Edingue and boxers, Thomas Essomba, Christian Donfack Adjoufack, Yhyacinthe Abdon Mewoli, Serge Ambomo and Blaise Yepmou Mendouo, haven't been seen since last Monday, he said.

The Cameroonian delegation approached the Games organizers and the High Commission of Cameroon in London as soon as they became aware of the missing athletes, Ojong has said. Pictures of the athletes this week adorned the front pages of newspapers in Cameroon, including Le Jour which carried the banner headline: "The Seven Missing in London."

Since the 1996 Games in Atlanta, dozens of athletes from Cameroon have defected. Cameroon, with a population of about 20 million, is one of the world's poorest nations, according to the International Monetary Fund. It has little money to develop top-notch training facilities, one of the reasons Joseph believes the athletes going looking for "greener pastures."

"Why do Nigerians not flee away? Why do people from South Africa not flee away? When you go there, you see infrastructure of the highest level," Joseph said. "Why don't they flee? They know that what they find in Europe, they find back home." The training facilities in Cameroon are spartan. It's Olympic boxing facility offers just one ring in a building with a concrete floor, peeling paint and wooden spectator benches. Its weight room offers a limited selection and a peeling carpet. "I am positively convinced that if the government did more in this field, we would have little of this disturbance," Joseph said.

Athletes and team officials have been allowed to seek permission to enter and remain in the United Kingdom without a visa from March 30 to November 8.

[Black Dog]

WRESTLING: The Egyptian Olympic team have launched an investigation after 2 of their wrestlers had to withdraw from the freestyle competition after turning up late at the ExCeL on Sunday morning. Saleh Emara and Abdou Omar Abdou Ahmed were due to take to the mat in the 96kg and 66kg freestyle competition, but they arrived at the wrestling hall just after 9am, half an hour after the qualifying session had begun.

A spokesman for the Egyptian Olympic team said: 'They thought they were wrestling at 1pm like normal but because of the closing ceremony they changed the timing to 8.30am and the team didn't know about it.
'It was in the booklet that the team were given but they didn't see it, and because of that they were a little bit late. 'We know it is our mistake. We are investigating the matter now. 'We are calling the administrator to see who is responsible. They should have known. We will know who is responsible in a couple of hours.'

The Egyptian team and officials were seen frantically urging a bus driver at the Olympic Village to take them to the ExCeL on Sunday morning after they realised their mistake. Once they arrived at the venue they remonstrated with officials, but despite their protestations, they were not allowed to compete. In reality the Egyptian team have little excuse for their mistake as the competition schedules were published two years ago.

Neither wrestler was considered a serious medal contender in their respective weight categories.