Funmurphys: the Blog

Olympic Fouls

I've enjoyed watching the olympics, well a lot of it anyway. The actual competitions - love. The chit chat between, the droning on of "analysts" - hate. One of the interesting things have been the controversies. Nothing new there.

First up we have the controversies in swimming -- did Kosuke Kitajima use an illegal dolphin kick during his race as some American swimmers have claimed (although not the American in the water during the race, Brendan Hansen)? What I love is the way the media acts like this is some unknowable question. Guess what, not only is there underwater video of the event that clearly shows Kitajima did, the announcer at the time pointed it out. Kitajima's claim is that he swims the same way every time, he's never been DQ'ed for it, end of story. The problem with that is, during his next semi-final race NBC compared his turns and showed how he did a dolphin kick during his gold medal performance but didn't during the later race. So much for swim the way every time.

Then one of Kitijima's accusers, Brian Peirsol, was temporarily DQ'ed during his second gold medal performance for an illegal turn -- although the judge wasn't clear enough and his paperwork wasn't in order so he was unDQ'ed. I have to admit I'm not clear on the rules on the backstroke turn, as the little team my kids swim on has trouble with this every year - this year one our 16 year old swimmers was DQ for a turn that "he floated too long" on. Still, there was some question as to whether or not this was payback for Peirsol's complaints about the officials.

And now there's a kerfuffle over the men's all-around in gymnastics: The Koreans are saying their guy was cheated of 0.1 of a point do to a judge's error. Who knows, maybe he'll get a gold medal too.

In a final note, the shotput was kind of crazy too. There was a tie for longest, but because Adam Nelson had fouled on every throw but one, he got the silver medal. He wasn't too happy initially with the officials for calling a foul on the last throw, but he turned out to be a class act in the end, apologizing to the officials after seeing a replay, congratulating the winner Yuriy Bilonog, raving about the fans and facility, and taking the blame squarely on his shoulders during a post event interview despite the NBC interviewers apparent desire for Nelson to blame anything and everybody but himself.