Olympics 2008

[Alex]

I knew that sychronized diving is lame, but I'd never had such a strongly negative reaction to it before.

Then after about 10 minutes I realized that the female commentator has a voice that is a dead ringer for Nancy Grace. Apparently that produces a deep visceral and immediate hatred. Once I realized that I kept expecting her to say "and to have a chance at taking silver they need to average 6.5 and why did you kill your wife sir?!"


And speaking of subjective judging, it just strikes me as completely broken when two judges can look at the exact same thing and one gives a 4.5 on execution, as New Zealand on China's last two dives, while the Japan judge gives 9.0 on the same dives.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by swanie

NBC just did a day in the life bit on Michael Phelps. The boy eats 10,000 calories a day and still can't crack 200 lbs.

I think I gained 10lbs watching that

The American Heart Association is going to be all over him.

[lashbear]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

I'm sure there are those who will declare that we are being bamboozled.

I think you're being bamboozled.

..or is it just the Darvon talking?

[lashbear]

Originally Posted by Alex

And speaking of subjective judging, it just strikes me as completely broken when two judges can look at the exact same thing and one gives a 4.5 on execution, as New Zealand on China's last two dives, while the Japan judge gives 9.0 on the same dives.

cos japan's just kiss-assing to become friends with China again?

[cirquelover]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

Dear Mom,

You are 4 hours ahead. I don't want to talk about today's events!!!!!!

Are we related?! My Mom is driving me crazy by telling me stuff. The first words out of her mouth every night is " Did you see.... win?". Followed by her saying " Oh, you probably don't want to hear the results do you.?", umm I think you already did thanks!

[Alex]

Originally Posted by lashbear

cos japan's just kiss-assing to become friends with China again?

Well, on a different dive by the Russians the New Zealand and Japan judges were switched and NZ gave 9.0 to the Russians while Japan gave 4.5 to them. Do kiwis love Russia (or maybe hate Georgia)?

[scaeagles]

This is why I hate the subjective scoring system. At least when a race is close you don't have one clock saynig Team A won by .07 seconds and team B won by .13 seconds.

[swanie]

Originally Posted by Alex

And speaking of subjective judging, it just strikes me as completely broken when two judges can look at the exact same thing and one gives a 4.5 on execution, as New Zealand on China's last two dives, while the Japan judge gives 9.0 on the same dives.

Are you sure they were grading the same diver? The 1st two scores are for one diver and the 2nd two scores are for the other diver.

It made for a HUGE disparity on a few dives.

[Alex]

Ok, that would explain it. But if each judge is only paying attention to one of the divers how are they rating the synchronization?

[swanie]

I can't speak for your example since we're an hour ahead here, but the 1st 4 scores (2 and 2) rate the divers individually. The remaining scores rate the pair's synchronization.

I found this on the grading system...

There are nine judges in the synchronized diving events. Two judges rate one individual diver, two other judges rate the second individual and five judges rate the synchronization of the pair. The high and low individual scores and the high and low synchronization scores are thrown out. The five remaining scores are totaled and multiplied by 0.6 and then multiplied by the DD.