Nastia Liukin: Robbed of a Deserving Gold medal!

Event Final: Uneven Bars
Beijing 2008

So drama and controversy never escapes Olympic sports, especially gymnastics. There is no stopwatch, no official to see whose fingers touched the wall first, nope just a “supposed” objective panel of judges.
Last night I watched the uneven bar women gymnastics final with anger towards the nature of the sport. US gymnast Nastia Liukin executed an almost flawless routine and I was sure that her scores would reflect that. She didn’t stick her dismount, but the level of difficulty on the apparatus… she was the clear winner, or so I thought.

Enter He Kexin. This tiny little pip squeak of a gymnast- probably no more than 70 lbs on her tiny frame… first off, I am almost positive that this girl is not 16 (the minimum age requirement to compete in the Olympics). SHE LOOKS LIKE SHE IS 12! The Chinese are cheaters! Secondly, her routine didn’t match Luikin’s in terms of execution. However, after the two gymnasts finished their routines and ended up with the exact same scores, Liukin somehow ends up in SECOND place!

I was confused. I thought maybe there would be some sort of tiebreak run off, or maybe the computers randomly generate a winner… Liukin was confused her damn self! Apparently, in the event of a tie, gymnastic regulations throw out each judge’s highest and lowest scores for each competitor (they were still tied) and so then they took an average of the three lowest scores—and technically Liukin’s was lower by ONE/ONE HUNDREDTH OF A POINT!

Everyone knows she should have won. Sigh:: This goes to show that sometimes you just have to accept things the way the are no matter how jacked up the it seems. Remember the figure skating controversy in Salt Lake City with the Canadian and Russian pairs teams? They both received Golds- perhaps both Kexin and Liukin should have received Gold at the very least. Well, Liukin has already won four Olympic medals, including the Gold Medal for the Women’s All-Around Event.

After the competition (recorded the previous night) Bob Costas sat down with Bella Karolyi to hear his thoughts and of course he was outraged. He is so passionate and dramatic- I love it! -such a character. He mentioned how in the vault event Alicia Sacremoni was robbed of her deserving bronze medal. He just wants Team USA to excel and that’s understandable. For the vault event it was a NORTH Korean who took Gold. Go f-ing figure. I didn’t even know North Korea had a team, or were even allowed to compete.

Tonight, I am excited to watch the final gymnastics event at the Olympics, the women’s balance beam. It happened last night, so don’t tell me any results. I am trying hard to avoid any news sites today for that reason. Perhaps Liukin will get her Gold tonight (?!?) ;)


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t. childz©