ombelico

Things could get even more interesting since the U.S. now has a law that allows for prosecution of non-Americans whose doping violations affect American athletes (which is absolutely the case here): https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/us-anti-doping-act-should-be-used-beijing-games-usadas-tygart-2022-02-11/

I know the IOC lets each sport determine age eligibility for the Olympics but for crying out loud, if the WADA code says a 15-year-old is too young to "possess the mental capacity to understand and appreciate the prohibitions against conduct contained in the Code" then they should not be allowed to compete in the Olympics! Quote above from this article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/winter-olympics/russia-at-center-of-another-olympic-doping-controversy/ar-AATF2Wh?li=AAL2Bz4&ocid=DELLDHP

In track and field and swimming, if one athlete on a relay is found to fail a drug test, then everyone on the team is disqualified and loses the medal. In gymnastics, when one Chinese gymnast was determined to be underage at the 2000 Olympics, the entire team lost the bronze medal (which was then awarded to the U.S.). If one of the Russians failed a drug test, then the entire team will likely be disqualified from the event and lose the medal.

In the moment right at the end of Ilia's LP I thought "they have to put him on the team now" but after sleeping on it I think the team is the right one. Ilia did a fantastic job but as stated upthread, performance at Nationals is not the only factor that goes into selecting the team. It's an important component, but it's not the only thing. They really don't have anything else in Ilia's background to justify putting him on the team beyond this one great performance and potential future promise. Vincent really did not do himself any favors with his performance here, though, especially after his talk of "coming to Nationals to win" (paraphrasing). If Vincent had been left off the team in favor of Ilia, I would have easily accepted that. Vincent's had so many chances and after his Worlds performance last year (and Nationals performance this year), he's certainly not a guarantee of a strong performance at the Olympics. It is of course frustrating that Jason's jumps aren't up to the international standard, but he can still contribute to the team and with the exception of the quad, his performances were great. If Vincent's failed jumps had been scored properly, Jason would have rightly won the bronze medal.

I forget which season it was but I distinctly remember Paul talking about a week where the bakers were so close that the judges would "have to look back retrospectively" to differentiate between the bakers and choose who would be eliminated that week. So there is precedent, especially at this point in the season where it's just down to a few strong bakers. I agree with Lizzie being eliminated this time but I also agree that Juergen got a bit lucky. His macarons were not strong, he dropped his sausage rolls on the floor (and apparently the judges were not informed of this?), and honestly I thought his cake looked a bit wonky. But overall, he's been a much stronger baker over the previous episodes so I think it's fully justified for the judges to expect a stronger performance from him than from Lizzie going forward.

At this point I just ignore Noel and Matt and their tasteless jokes so that I can continue to enjoy the good parts of the show. Noel on his own would be fine (he interacts well with the bakers and is kind and supportive of them) but Matt and/or the combination of Noel and Matt just doesn't work. Matt brings a more caustic sense of humor that might work in other venues but isn't appropriate for GBBO. At some level I admire that Freya sticks to her principles and uses vegan recipes and ingredients, but at a certain point I think it will catch up with her. I know vegan bakes can still be tasty but at the end of the day if you're not allowing yourself to use milk, eggs, butter, cream, honey etc. you are putting yourself at a disadvantage in comparison to everyone else who uses those ingredients, which simply taste better than the vegan options. There's a reason those ingredients have been used in baking for centuries. Not to mention that some vegan options also take significantly longer, like using aquafaba instead of egg whites.

The author of the Slate piece (and all of their articles on gymnastics) is Rebecca Schuman, who shows up in "Golden" touting the typical line of "the USA team is so dominant, they will inevitably win the gold medal and even the C team would win" and now appears to be trying to distance herself from that. I read her pieces because I enjoy reading about gymnastics but overall I've never come away thinking that her work is especially knowledgeable and well-researched. I doubt she actually talked to any of the gymnasts before writing this latest piece.

Re: the whole sushi "episode", it sounded like NBC dumped them all in a van as soon as Simone had her medal and got them over to the Today show set without much notice. I don't think any of them (except perhaps Simone) was expecting to be on tv that evening. Then add on suddenly being offered food on national TV; even if they liked sushi I could understand them declining just out of surprise. I think it's pretty unfair to take any of this as evidence of anything regarding their character or maturity. I interpreted what MyKayla said about those that did and didn't make finals just to mean that it was just a bit awkward that Jordan and Grace were completely done with competition and didn't need to continue full training, whereas the others that had more finals still had to stay in competition mode (and MyKayla was in sort of a limbo waiting to see what was happening with Simone).

I'd have to watch again to figure out who you're referring to but I'm 100% sure that was not Marta. Reports are she and Bela are long gone and back in Romania. Morgan is going to the University of Florida.

Hopefully these Olympics will be a wake-up call for everyone (athletes, coaches, media, the audience, *cough* National Team Coordinators *Cough*) that you never, ever, know what is going to happen. Putting all of the attention and focus on just one person both skews the pressure onto one set of shoulders and leads to a myopic loss of recognition for the other team members and other athletes. I'm sad for Simone that she had to go through a crisis (for whatever reason) at the most inopportune time, but the silver lining is that it opened up opportunities for so many other wonderful athletes to win medals and get their moments in the sun. And paradoxically, it reveals just how remarkable her long-term success and dominance has been. If she had come in and won team, AA, vault, beam, and floor golds as expected, it would have just been lauded as #SimoneThings, pointed to as evidence of her superhuman abilities, and she and her gymnastics would have continued to be taken for granted. What we saw this week was how fragile that success has been all along, and how much it takes from her to grace us with all of the wonderful performances we have had the immense privilege to witness all of these years.

It appears that NBC is embargoing the replay, presumably to capitalize on Simone's return. Given that all of the other replays had been available right after the competition and that I value my sleep, I stayed unspoiled and went to load up the replay to find that it's not there! If there had been a note ahead of time that the replay wasn't going to be available, I would have woken up for it. Grr! With today's bronze medal, Simone now ties Shannon Miller for the most Olympic medals by a U.S. gymnast (but Simone comes out on top with more golds, 4-2) and ties Larisa Latynina for most Olympic and Worlds medals (but Simone comes out on top with more golds, 23-18). I'm just so happy for Simone that she was able to safely compete on beam and go out from these Olympics on a good note.

I don't think there's any way they could have left Jordan Chiles off the team without a huge uproar. She was solidly third in AA at both nationals and Olympic Trials with no missed routines. Although some other options (e.g., Skinner, Wong, DiCello) might have had the capability to beat her AA score on a given day, they never did at any point in the lead up to naming the team, IIRC. Also, in the end I'm glad that Jordan was on the team since it meant that both Cecile and Laurent could go (if only Simone were on the team, I'm pretty sure only Laurent would have been able to travel) and Cecile's presence this week has probably been really critical for Simone.

Another reason to bring back the one-touch warmup is to equalize between those athletes that haven't competed in the arena since the qualification rounds, and those that competed in the team and/or all-around finals in between. Warmups are done in both team and AA finals so the rationale for their exclusion in event finals is completely inconsistent, particularly when there is over a week between qualifying and event finals.

Part of the problem with the framing and explanation of Simone's issues this week is that it has been primarily described as a mental issue. Although mental health in and of itself is definitely a legitimate reason to step back, what Simone appears to be experiencing is not just a mental issue, but a neurological and vestibular one. It seems like once the "twisties" set in, it's not something that can be resolved solely with stress reduction but requires re-training her brain and vestibular system to know where she is in the air. This is an injury that requires recovery.

It will be part of a show on Peacock called "Tokyo Live" in the Olympics tab.

Given the time difference and schedule, I'm not sure how much more they could provide for gymnastics coverage. The gymnastics finals are aired live on the free part of Peacock. More dedicated fans who subscribe through cable or other providers can watch the livestreams and replays on nbcolympics.com or the NBCSports app, immediately after each event concludes. The gymnastics coverage has included a stream showing all events simultaneously, as well as a stream dedicated to following Team USA. They had streams of every single qualification round, not just the ones with USA competing. It may not be free, but it is available and it's not outrageous to expect viewers to have to pay something for that level of comprehensive coverage. Yes there have been a few glitches (the first rotation of the men's team final on the multi-event stream included a lovely extended view of the end of the parallel bars!) but overall there's been a massive amount of coverage.

There should be a video in the link in my post - I hope it plays correctly!

Kudos to Laurie Hernandez for calling Savannah Guthrie out on using the term "cracked" to describe Simone's decision to withdraw. Overall, I've been extremely impressed with Laurie's poise as an analyst. If she wants to make this a part of her career long-term, I think she will do really well. She has a knack for getting right to the heart of the matter and explaining things in a way that quickly synthesizes the issue for the regular viewer. https://www.today.com/news/aly-raisman-simone-biles-impact-not-having-fans-olympic-arena-t226632?fbclid=IwAR02-62KqEtx5664jcxMkqePhXYLd82zjnvJk3AZfEb3O9HXvfzq9ilemcQ

There are 4 members on each team. On each event, 3 compete, and all 3 scores count. The start list for each event had the 3 designated members in the order they would compete, and the 4th member was listed as "reserve." So, when Simone scratched after vault, Jordan, who was the reserve on bars and beam, moved into the 3rd spot on those events, and Suni, who was the reserve on floor, moved into the 3rd spot on that event.

Toxic masculinity is not a valid justification to not treat Simone Biles with grace, compassion, and empathy.

I actually don't have a problem with the team that they ended up with. Given the (too) small team size, going with 4 solid all-arounders makes sense. The issue is that Tom Forster made public comments to the effect that (paraphrasing) "we don't think it's going to come down to a few tenths" because "we've got Simone." Also, by putting Skinner on as the +1, it basically set it up so that it was assured that Simone's success would come at the cost of her teammate being 2-per-countried out of floor/vault finals. I'm not 100% sure but I think Skinner could have replaced her (but not Carey because of how she qualified in the individual nominative World Cup route). However, I don't think it's fair to say that Simone should have dropped out sooner and by not doing so she was selfishly preventing someone else from taking her spot. (Not saying that this was what you said, it's just a theme I've seen elsewhere.) In the press conference yesterday it really sounded like she thought she was going to be able to do it until vault warmups started and it rapidly went downhill from there. ETA: on further reflection I don't think Skinner would have been eligible anymore to be named to the team -- moving her to the main team would have had to have happened before qualifying. The US could still have competed if Simone withdrew before the final, they just would have had to compete with all 3 gymnasts doing every event (as happened in the end after vault). So Simone didn't "take away someone's spot" etc., it just meant that Suni and Jordan got shorter notice that they would have to fill in for her on the other events. Under the circumstances I really don't think it's fair to hold that against Simone (and it definitely seems like her teammates don't).

About a week ago, MyKayla Skinner posted a YouTube video where she showed that in their first hotel (in the town outside of Tokyo where they were first training) she and Simone were sharing a room together. But once they moved to their hotel in Tokyo right outside the Olympic Village, they were split into individual (and pretty tiny) rooms. Plus, some of their meals were (are?) being delivered as room service, so they were also expected to eat by themselves, at least for some meals. Although many athletes would likely appreciate the ability to have a room to themselves, Simone is clearly an extrovert and I wonder if these housing conditions have contributed to her situation. Add on not being able to have her family in the same country, probably not being able to even simply go for a walk, lack of an audience in the arena, constant COVID testing and isolation, and so on and so on. Yes, the other athletes are also missing their families and dealing with similar isolation, but none of them have anything near the expectations placed on them that Simone does. Then add on the team composition "strategy" blatantly taking her and her scores for granted, and the fact that this "strategy" was concocted by an organization that didn't protect her from chronic sexual and emotional abuse, and has barely made any effort to correct the problems and culture that led to the abuse, it wouldn't be surprising that a return to the Olympics could become unexpectedly triggering for her.

John Roethlisberger and Bridget Sloan seem like perfectly nice people, but their commentary adds absolutely zero insight. If all you can say is "amazing, wow" you are not adding anything of value. The inanity is off the charts.

Yes, for example Simone Biles (definitely the breakout star) was the USA flagbearer for the Closing Ceremonies in Rio. I'm not sure it's an official requirement that the flagbearers for the two ceremonies are different people, though. But for a huge team like USA it would be silly for the same person to do it both times.

For those looking for a deep dive into the Sydney vault debacle, here's a new podcast devoted to it: https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a37102221/blind-landing-podcast-biggest-gymnastics-mistake-olympic-history/