Is CHINA Setting A New Gold Standard?

Kel Varnsen

A few times on CBC the commentators have mentioned that home court advantage is projected to give the Chinese a boost of 7-8 medals. They said it is mostly in the judged sports where as unbiased as the judges are it is hard to ignore a stadium full of fans cheering on their Chinese athletes, when you are deciding on a diving or gymnastics score.

polaris

Kel Varnsen wrote:

A few times on CBC the commentators have mentioned that home court advantage is projected to give the Chinese a boost of 7-8 medals. They said it is mostly in the judged sports where as unbiased as the judges are it is hard to ignore a stadium full of fans cheering on their Chinese athletes, when you are deciding on a diving or gymnastics score.

yeah ... i'd say they are given an advantage for sure ...

EvilToasterElf

polaris wrote:

yeah ... i'd say they are given an advantage for sure ...

Well most of the Chinese divers are defending the gold medals they won in Athens and they executed most of their dives pretty flawlessly so I don't think that argument really holds up.

Also the US women's gymnastics team was pretty far ahead of their Chinese counterparts in the team excercises, but they made some mistakes during their last round, the Chinese team didn't make any mistakes, so they won.

In the events I saw, such as boxing (the point system is determined by four judges making simultaneous decisions) there wasn't a single Chinese judge.

polaris

EvilToasterElf wrote:

Well most of the Chinese divers are defending the gold medals they won in Athens and they executed most of their dives pretty flawlessly so I don't think that argument really holds up.

Also the US women's gymnastics team was pretty far ahead of their Chinese counterparts in the team excercises, but they made some mistakes during their last round, the Chinese team didn't make any mistakes, so they won.

In the events I saw, such as boxing (the point system is determined by four judges making simultaneous decisions) there wasn't a single Chinese judge.

oh ... don't get me wrong - it's not south korea or anything ... but with judged events - it's one thing to short change someone from another country - it's just not gonna happen to any chinese athlete because they are the host nation ...

the reason china is dominating is because they made it a priority over everything else ...

i'm not suggesting anything is rigged just that being the host country affords some advantages ...

EvilToasterElf

polaris wrote:

oh ... don't get me wrong - it's not south korea or anything ... but with judged events - it's one thing to short change someone from another country - it's just not gonna happen to any chinese athlete because they are the host nation ...

the reason china is dominating is because they made it a priority over everything else ...

i'm not suggesting anything is rigged just that being the host country affords some advantages ...

Fair enough. I'll agree on that one. I think 7-8 medals is a bit much, but I suppose we'll have to see.

Kel Varnsen

EvilToasterElf wrote:

Fair enough. I'll agree on that one. I think 7-8 medals is a bit much, but I suppose we'll have to see.

I don't think so, there are a lot of sports where judges come into play (and a lot of sports that get zero coverage), and if the 4th place guy was almost as good as the 3rd place guy but the 4th place guy is the home town favorite and is getting tons of cheering, it could possibly sway the judges to give him that extra tenth of a point he needs to get boosted to third.

g under p

EvilToasterElf wrote:

Well I can probably shed some light on this, I've been living in Shanghai for almost a year. I just got back from Beijing where I scalped tickets to a couple events and I've been here for the build up and reading and watching A LOT of Olympic coverage.

There are essentially two systems now for counting medals. The US-Russia backed system simply counts the number of combined medals (Gold-Silver-Bronze) and essentially whoever has the most is the "winner" if you can call it that.

The Chinese system is simply to count whoever has the most gold medals as the winner. (Supposedly their was a government sports official quoted as saying one gold medal was worth 100 silvers)

The reason that the Soviet Union and the USA tend to dominate the Olympic tallies generally comes down to a matter of bulk. Those countries are usually the only two to place athletes in almost every single event. But at least in the post-cold war times neither country really spends tremendous amounts of money training athletes specifically for the Olympics. I think it the US you can apply for some kind of training stipend, and there are many companies (UPS and Staples come to mind) who use athletes in their workforce for PR purposes and probably give them pretty generous benefits to train.

The United States Olympic athletes are in general an offshoot of a huge middle class sports culture that begins at childhood and continues well into and after University for amateur athletes, but the onus of personal responsibility is on the athlete and not the state.

China on the other hand does not have a well established middle class or nearly the same sports culture that the United States has. What China does is essentially pluck potential athletes out of the poorest areas of China when they are children and then the government raises them through "sports schools." Essentially they home grow poor children in an environment designed to make them Olympic Gold Medalists. They also put extreme efforts into placing their athletes into relatively obscure events (a la women's weightlifting) in the hopes of securing more gold medals. This seems to have been quite effective so far.

China has also put together the largest olympic team in history. Which basically nullifies the buckshot advantage the US and Russia have enjoyed for some time.

Though the air quality may have some affect on the athletes I wouldn't really consider it a major advantage or hurdle (no pun intended) with the possible exception of super long distance events. There was a story going around that the British Equestrian team arrived at the Los Angeles games with face masks on their horses. Two of the days I was in Beijing were some of the clearest most beautiful blue skies I'd seen in a year in China. I think the pollution merely makes the bad days look really bad, but the good days seem the same as anywhere else.

China came in third at the Sydney games, and second in Athens, I think it's more than likely that they are going to take everything here. This country is extraordinarily patriotic (like civil war reenactors on meth) and everyone who wins a gold medal here is going to be a national hero for some time.

Heiwa,

ETE

Outstanding and thanks for your very insightful thoughts on these games from the Chinese perspective. Nothing wrong with setting the stage to get your athletes ready to *go for the gold* and they're doing quite well in that area.

Peace

Songburst

catefrances wrote:

so i take it youre not just any schmo, cause i doubt you could slap on a wetsuit and win 8 gold medals.

Lol -- Even with the drugs, I would just be happy to survive a 50m swim never mind win a medal.

even flow?

I'll be worried about the Chinese when they make strides in hockey. Until then go ahead and win all the medals you want.

Anon

The chinese are performing better than anyone else because the are better and conditioned from a very young age if they show promise to be the best in the world.

They were talking about the Chinese Table Tennis players on the Olympic coverage the other day. The commentators were saying that the Chinese children are tested when they are aged three, to see if they have good racket skills. If they test well, they are enrolled in special sports schools. (Whether they like it or not). When they reach age 12, the best become fulltime table tennis players.

Those that are awesome enough to make the national squad, train insane hours, seven hours a day, seven days a week. They are not treated like kids. They are machines. Their reason for existance is to excell in table tennis. That's it. Plucked from their childhood at age 3. That's why they are better than us.

Pacomc79

meh, host country 7 years of focus on dominating every event possible.

They are kicking arse because they focused on kicking arse.

Good for them for doing that when they get the home field advantage and giving the home folks something to cheer about.


We spend more time worrying about self esteem than excellence and we still have impressive incredible dominating athletes in a nation of 300 million. Likely the most diverse when it comes to broad ranges of talents and historical family origins too.

Understanding how much these games mean to them on the world stage, I'm happy for China they are doing so well. Not a huge fan of subjective sports though.

polaris

EvilToasterElf wrote:

Fair enough. I'll agree on that one. I think 7-8 medals is a bit much, but I suppose we'll have to see.

i'm no expert but the trampoline final men's today was a good example ... the canuck nailed his routine with the highest degree of difficulty but was given a score that was meant to make it beatable ... then the final chinese jumper has a ok routine with less difficulty and he wins ...

this is the sort of stuff that happens that no one really notices because it isn't a big time event ...

7-8 medals is about right ...

Solat13

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/The-REAL-Olympic-medal-count?urn=oly,101537

meistereder

I've always thought the medal count took away the spirit of the games anyway. I mean, is the point really to show global dominance?

polaris

yeah ... i've paid a bit more attention and i will go as far as saying that there is tampering going on in the judged events ... it's not just home field advantages ...

Kel Varnsen

polaris wrote:

yeah ... i've paid a bit more attention and i will go as far as saying that there is tampering going on in the judged events ... it's not just home field advantages ...

I am not sure how much tampering there could be. From what I understand in most if not all of the judged events, if you have an athlete in the competition, a judge from your country will not judge any of the competitors.

polaris

Kel Varnsen wrote:

I am not sure how much tampering there could be. From what I understand in most if not all of the judged events, if you have an athlete in the competition, a judge from your country will not judge any of the competitors.

http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/taekwondo/story/2008/08/19/f-olympics-taekwondo-gonda.html

ever hear of bloc judging? ...

Collin

I don't know, man. I did gymnastics for 10 years and the scores seemed mostly fair to me. Perhaps the US and Canada and other nations are just sore losers. I could include my own nation, but we hardly ever win any medals. So we're used to losing big time.

Also, it seems to me tampering would be hard in gymnastics scores. The gymnasts get two different scores, the "A" score and the "B" score.

The "A" score is a mark derived by looking at the difficulty of the routine. It's a cumulative mark that starts from 0. A more difficult routine (combinations, for example) will get a higher mark.

With the "B" score the gymnasts start with a 10 and loose point for penalties i.e. falling, poor form, inbalance... These are called deductions.

These two marks are give by different judges. I've seen people point out that it takes a while for the scores to be posted, this is because the A judges can use video replay.

To get the final score the "A" and "B" score are added.

The system isn't that arbitrary either, you can find the penalties and deductions on the FIG website...

It's seems fairly fair to me. Perhaps you should consider your own media's bias too...

edit: I was watching the high bar final with my mom, brother and two friends and my brother's girlfriend. None of them saw mistakes (except when gymnasts fell off). They didn't see the little mistakes, or even fairly big ones. They "judged" the whole thing on how spectacular it looked and complained when their favourite gymnast didn't win, despite all the obvious penalties.

g under p

Thanks for that insight man, just awesome.

Peace

spyguy

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,407803,00.html

A determined U.S. computer expert has delved into cached pages on the Internet to unearth Chinese official documents showing a gymnast who took gold in the uneven bars competition, edging the U.S.'s Nastia Liukin, may indeed be underage.

Controversy over whether He Kexin is under the minimum age of 16 has surrounded her participation in the Beijing Olympics. The latest challenge over the age of the tiny Olympian comes from the discovery through a cyberspace maze of Chinese official documents listing her date of birth.

She may not look as if she has reached the minimum competing age of 16, but China said her passport, issued in February, gives her birthday as Jan. 1, 1992. The International Olympic Committee said proof from her passport is good enough.