Olympics 2008

[Stan4dSteph]

Did someone already mention this article in Time magazine?

[scaeagles]

Pretty sick.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

Although, Karolyi has been VERY outspoken about the obviously younger than 15 girls on the China team.

True, but only because the U.S. team observed the limit. His solution is to get rid of minimum age requirements. His complaint isn't so much that China used 14 year olds but that we didn't get to.

Then he offered a solution: "The only way to stop this is to take off the age limit," he said. "Take it away. We would have some amazing young athletes on our team, too, but they missed it by a few months. To force honest countries to hold back and allow other countries, not so honest, to push them forward, it's not fair."

I agree that if Olympic gymnastics is going to emphasize skills best done by 12 year olds then they should allow 12 year olds to do it. The real answer, though, is to change the sport to once again emphasize skills best done by adults. In my view, if a 13 year old can compete globally in your sport then you haven't so much created a sport as a playground game.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Tenigma

And for all the harm that Karolyi did to women's gymnastics, the hunger for such success was so great that we embraced him with open arms when he immigrated to the U.S. to open his own gym here.

Ugh, I remember that. I was pretty young, but even I was creeped out by that whole series of events. I don't know if I became aware of that paradox in '84 when he was just coaching MLR or '88 when he was the head coach, but I just remember being pretty distressed that there was this lurking possiblity that his reformation was an elaborate facade and that he really was practically torturing the team.

[BarTopDancer]

I "trained" (aka took gymnastics classes) at SCATS back in the early 80s, around the time of the 84 Olympics (I think I was 6 or 7). Even the supposedly beginners fun classes there was tremendous pressure to maintain a certain look and punishment if you failed to complete a routine or exercise the way it was expected.

My mom pulled me from the program because of the "culture". I took classes elsewhere for awhile but the culture was the same.

I remember coming home upset because I wasn't as flexible, or as skinny as the other girls and had to do punishment exercises because I wasn't as good.

[scaeagles]

Good coaches rarely, if ever, should give out punishment exercises for lack of skill. I only do for one thing - missing open layups in practice. If you can't make an open layup in practice 99.9% of the time you shouldn't be playing HS basketball. Those types of punishments typically just instill fear, and not many athletes are motivated well by fear.

Now for not doing what they're told....yeah. Run 'em till they drop.

[blueerica]

Originally Posted by Tenigma

Once you develop some semblance of hips and breasts, your career is OVER.

Hey now, hey now... I don't know about anyone else but I kinda thought Alicia Sacramone was a little on the 'stacked' side of things... And that Shawn Johnson... anyone looked at that ass. Might be the best one I've seen all games long.

And as much as I said that tongue-in-cheek, I am actually rather serious.

You know the irony of women's gymnastics? There is a single person on this planet solely credited with its current state of using little girls: Bela Karolyi. He was Nadia Comaneci's coach back when he worked with her in Romania, and he is credited with helping her perform the perfect 10s in the 1976 Olympics. It changed the entire landscape of female gymnastics. Up until then, most female gymnasts were oh, in their early 20s. There was a bit of controversy that Nadia was so young, but that all flew out the window when she did so well.

After that, there was a big movement to start them younger, to mold them earlier, and get them prepped to be Olympic-ready as soon as they were age-eligible.

Though I mostly agree, the pressures of 'communism' cannot be ignored for its treatment of not only gymnastics, but of other Olympic events, perhaps most notably swimming and diving. Watching the diving competition, you hear nothing but tales from athletes and correspondents of the age they are taken from their families to be (somewhat) isolated and begin training - much more rigidly than in the US.

In fact, they are crediting a recent change within the American system that has encouraged increased isolation (i.e. when they are starting their teens many world-class-potential divers move to Indianapolis where they can begin intense training at the HQ), a la China, with improving scores.

I'm not saying it's right, wrong, or anything - it is what it is, IMO.

[innerSpaceman]

Well Nastia Liukin won the gold medal and she looks to be somewhat older than 13. Can we all breathe a big sigh of relief?

[Alex]

Not really, it is great that she won at 18 but she is very much a product of all that I despise about the Olympics gymnastics system. The only reason she wasn't on the Olympic team at 14 in 2004 is that it would have been against the rules.

I do give her story a bit of a pass since she literally grew up in the sport since both of her parents were Olympic gymnasts and so at least she got to have their significant involvement beyond driving her to boot camp at 5 in the morning.

[Kevy Baby]

Great. Our cable just went out last night and TWC can't be here to fix it until Saturday afternoon - just in time to have missed Michael Phelps eight gold medal swim.