The 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics

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Darth Despot said:
He was the ream doc for the entire program.

I watched a documentary, I think it was on Netflix about that whole mess and I can say for sure if I had a daughter who was into gymnastics I'd try to steer her in a different direction. The whole culture is insane.
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Yeah, my friend growing up, Amy was in that world. She is a sad shell of her flourishing self as a kid now and it breaks my heart.

She's just pretty negative about the world and people although she still believes in goodness she just can't see it in most people.

Tragic.
 
Yeah I've pulled back a bit from what I posted yesterday and don't feel nearly as strongly about it.
 
So I'm watching one of these 7x7 rugby matches - GB vs Argentina, and there was an Australian announcer and it occurred to me...

Is there anyone worse at Spanish pronunciations than Aussies?
 
Darth Despot said:
It's sad and disturbing, but I think it's safe to assume all the US National level gymnasts were abused for several years.

Nasser was a real sick asshole.
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He wasn’t the only nor the first.... most women in elite sports have been through the same BS.

Darth Despot said:
He was the ream doc for the entire program.

I watched a documentary, I think it was on Netflix about that whole mess and I can say for sure if I had a daughter who was into gymnastics I'd try to steer her in a different direction. The whole culture is insane.
Click to expand...
Perhaps instead of steering her, your daughter, you would listen and react instead....

So not changing her course instead supporting and standing by...and protecting her.

~Dee~
 
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www.wsj.com

American Sunisa Lee Wins the Olympic Women’s Gymnastics All-Around Gold

American Sunisa Lee became the new Olympic women’s all-around champion, retaining in U.S. possession a particularly coveted gold medal suddenly up for grabs after the stunning departure of Simone Biles from the competition.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com


American Sunisa Lee Wins the Olympic Women’s Gymnastics All-Around Gold​

Her coronation came at the conclusion of three surreal days that saw the greatest ever gymnast withdraw and completely upend expectations of how the event would unfold​



TOKYO—Sunisa Lee became the new Olympic women’s all-around champion on Thursday, retaining in U.S. possession a particularly coveted gold medal suddenly up for grabs after the stunning departure of Simone Biles from the competition.

Her coronation came at the conclusion of three surreal days that saw the greatest ever gymnast withdraw and completely upend expectations of how the event would unfold—and leave everyone uncertain if the American women would hold onto a crown they have owned since 2004, or break the direct line of succession from household first-name stars Carly, Nastia, Gabby and Simone.
Now there’s a new part of that lineage: Sunisa. It’s Sunisa.

Lee, an 18-year-old from Little Canada, Minn., is believed to be the first Hmong-American on an Olympic gymnastics team. She had established herself in 2019 as the second-best all-around gymnast in the United States behind Biles—before the Games’ postponement cast her medal prospects into doubt. Then she fought her way back all the way to the top of the Olympic podium, through a series of unthinkable events.
Rebeca Andrade of Brazil finished second. Angelina Melnikova of the Russian Olympic Committee was third.
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Sunisa Lee competes on balance beam.​

PHOTO: JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES
The pandemic edition of the Olympic Games was always expected to produce some of the wildest outcomes, even if nobody expected the reigning champion to be watching from the front row.

Nobody had gone head-to-head at a major international meet since October 2019—and some competitors weren’t even eligible to compete because of their age until the clock on the Games changed. Some competitors revealed surprise new skills honed over months in hiding. Others had found their carefully crafted four-year plans upended both by the delay of the Games and their ability to train at all plunged into chaos.
Lee experienced both, and an ankle injury. She had to slowly build herself back up to even have a chance of making the U.S. team in 2021, and her ability to compete forcefully on all four apparatus remained uncertain until she finished second to Biles at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in late June, guaranteeing her a berth to Tokyo.

Then in Tokyo, she found herself on the U.S. four-woman team that pushed ahead to take a silver medal in the team competition after Biles’ withdrawal, a rattling moment, she said after. It required her to compete on the floor exercise, which she had not been scheduled to do and had barely warmed up that day, the American gymnasts recalled.

She won by peaking at precisely the right moment: the individual all-around final. She performed a solid double-twisting Yurchenko vault to open. She hit her most difficult bars routine, earning a difficulty score of 6.8. A slightly shaky beam routine gave her a score that for a brief moment suggested she could be overtaken in the final rotation, on the floor exercise. Instead she roared ahead of Melnikova, and Andrade could not match her.

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Simone Biles watches teammate Sunisa Lee performing on the uneven bars during the all-around final.​

PHOTO: ASHLEY LANDIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The biggest upset of the night remained the one that was unthinkable even as the Olympic torch was lit: the gymnast who had dominated the sport for half of some of these competitors’ lifetimes had withdrawn, citing a state of mind that did not allow her to safely or effectively continue.
Biles had developed a near-total lock on the all-around title, with her combination of extraordinary difficulty and superior execution, three phenomenally strong events and a fourth that could still put her among the best specialists in the world. She had not been defeated in all-around competition since 2013, and her lead over any possible rivals had widened so far by 2019 that it was widely accepted by many of the world’s top gymnasts that they were competing for the silver medal.

In the end, her own analysis that the only person who could beat Biles was Biles came true. Biles pulled herself out of competition while the team final was already underway, a seemingly disoriented vault the first public sign of serious problems she had been having in practice. A day later, she said that she would withdraw from the all-around competition too.

American Jade Carey’s finish in the qualifying round allowed her to take Biles’s place. Carey finished eighth.

And Biles’s withdrawal gave Lee the chance to emerge as the best gymnast in the United States, and the world, in her own right.
landscape

With Simone Biles withdrawing from the all-around finals, Jade Carey stepped in to take Biles’ place, joining Sunisa Lee.​

PHOTO: MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS

Lee is also a strong candidate to take gold on the uneven bars in the Olympic event finals. She has not just one bars routine with eye-poppingly difficult sequences of release moves, she has several, typically making a gametime decision on which to deploy. She is known for posting online many of the bars skills she is working on, to great enthusiasm from gym fans and mixed feelings from her coach Jess Graba.

But Lee was powered to the podium here by keeping her floor exercise and vault in the range of difficulty where she could remain a medal-contender — despite her ankle injury during the pandemic that had further upended her training and left her future on the two most foot-pounding apparatus in doubt.

In another unexpected pandemic turn, Lee could still keep her scholarship to attend Auburn University — the first Olympic all-around champion who can sign endorsement deals as America’s newest sweetheart while remaining eligible to compete in NCAA events, due to that association’s about-face this summer in the face of state pressure.
 
From a long time friend, colleague and overall quality thinker. This a more a statement on our culture than anything.

Robert Bidinotto

THE NON-PARTICIPATION TROPHY.

Okay, let me be very precise about this, so that nobody misunderstands me (unless they really want to).

Simone Biles is a tremendous athlete and long-time gymnastics champion. Like countless millions, I have been a big fan of hers, and I was rooting for her this Olympics. For years, no young woman has been able to come close to what she has been able to accomplish. Her ability and skill is jaw-dropping, and her dominance of the sport has been unrivaled. She is by most accounts the greatest female gymnast of all time, and she deserves all the acclaim for her legendary career. She certainly has nothing further to prove.

A few days ago, by her own telling, the pressure got to her, and she dropped out of the Olympics competition in the middle of a shaky performance. That is sad, but understandable, and inevitable for any athlete at some point. She had every right to make the choice not to continue to participate.

In a normal world -- a morally normal world -- everyone would have said what I did in the preceding paragraph. And then we would have turned our attention to the other phenomenal athletes, who had been doing incredible things...but in Simone Biles's shadow, due to the overwhelming attention the media had given to her. Those athletes -- despite the same great personal pressures and overwhelming competitive stresses -- did choose to participate. And many of them have turned in magnificent efforts and medal-winning performances.

Yet Simone Biles is still getting a disproportionate share of media and public attention. I am seeing wall-to-wall coverage of her explanations for non-participation. Much worse, I am seeing and hearing almost universal declarations about what a "role model" she is, even a "heroine," for having the "right priorities" and not participating.

This morning, for example, I saw that, in Biles's absence, U.S. Olympic gymnast Suni Lee stepped up to win the all-around gymnastics gold medal with a series of amazing performances. Yet immediately after reporting that, the Fox News team pivoted to talk about...Simon Biles. A female commentator gushed about Biles, about what a role model she was, about her strength of character....

Wait a damned minute.

Can we please stop and think about what's going on here?

It used to be that we gave out medals, awards, and recognition to kids for exceptional performance. That was meant to teach them vital life lessons: that results matter, and that outstanding effort and stellar performance earned you great rewards.

But in recent decades, our egalitarian cultural mavens decided that judging and rewarding people by hard work and merit was "unfair." Outcomes in life should be "equal" -- thus decoupled from effort and performance. Everyone deserved all the rewards and pleasures of life as a matter of right, merely for being born.

And so we began giving kids what was rightly mocked as "participation trophies": medals and recognitions, not for actual achievement, but merely for showing up. As if showing up but not putting in exceptional effort was to be applauded.

Now, the near-universal public acclaim given to Biles for dropping out has dropped us yet another rung down the egalitarian ladder. We are now giving out what amounts to "NON-participation trophies." Public applause and recognition for not showing up to do your job.

To be clear, I am not talking about Simone Biles here. I am talking about us. I am not talking about merely a decline in our standards, but their utter obliteration.

We are expunging admiration for achievement, and replacing it with sympathy for failure.

During the same period when Simone Biles was being lionized in the media for not participating in her sport, other U.S. Olympians were participating -- and achieving heroically. Swimmer Kathleen Ledecky has so far won a gold and two silvers -- one of the latter for a magnificent come-from-behind effort in the final leg of the Women's 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay, which came within a whisker of winning her team the gold. Swimmer Robert Finke, in fifth place during the final turn in the 800-meter freestyle, turned on the gas during the final 50 meters, incredibly passing the four best swimmers in the world to capture the gold. Suni Lee stepped up to fill the void left by Simon Biles to win the all-around women's individual gymnastics gold. And there have been many more, medalists and non-medalists.

To emphasize, once again: this commentary is not about Simone Biles. It's about us. It's about upholding standards and expectations. Sports are a metaphor for life itself, where standards of merit matter -- where results matter -- and where rewards and acclaim therefore ought to go to those who earn them.

For the sake of our survival, it's time we stop focusing on those who merely show up, or on those who choose not to participate, or who participate poorly.

It's time instead to recognize and celebrate those heroes and heroines who take the path of self-responsibility -- who confront the risks and embrace the effort necessary to achieve -- and who then achieve mightily.
 
Darth Despot said:
If a gymnast loses confidence in her body, its a really bad idea to compete.

edit... after reading the article, it sounds kinda like the yips, except you don't end up on a backboard when you miss a putt.
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I read a detailed study of the "yips" in putting and it was compared closely to "Chuck Knoblauch disease" in baseball where, for instance, a 2nd baseman suddenly seems to lose the
ability to make a simple throw to 1st base that they'd done without a problem their whole life. The Red Sox had a pitcher named Matt Young who had the same issue throwing to 1st and
it was really strange to watch him helpless to do such a basic thing. Of course, he got murdered by the fans for it. And opposing teams exploited his issue.

The study determined that, in certain cases, an athlete can grow so scared and anxious over certain things, say, a 4-foot putt -- that they actually briefly black out right in the
middle of trying to do it in order to prevent emotional damage to the psyche. Their brain actually shuts down for a split second. Of course, that causes snowballing
fear of embarrassment, etc. etc. and the issue can end careers if the player doesn't get help. I've thought of that study a hundred times since I read it, like when I am
trying to sink a 4-foot putt or watching sports. The subconscious mind is very powerful and most people never learn much of anything about it, which is too bad, because it affects
all of us a great deal more than most realize. I was fortunate enough to take classes on the topic and I believe it is a very useful life skill that has helped me understand myself better.

I have no problem with Simone Biles. Clearly, handling pressure is big part of sports, but she's still just a kid who has been both deified by the public and molested in private. God only knows
what is rattling around in that poor kid's head. Go on a long vacation somewhere and start planning the rest of your life which won't require you to win any more gold medals or depend
on a wheelchair.
 
Hawg73 said:
I read a detailed study of the "yips" in putting and it was compared closely to "Chuck Knoblauch disease" in baseball where, for instance, a 2nd baseman suddenly seems to lose the
ability to make a simple throw to 1st base that they'd done without a problem their whole life. The Red Sox had a pitcher named Matt Young who had the same issue throwing to 1st and
it was really strange to watch him helpless to do such a basic thing. Of course, he got murdered by the fans for it. And opposing teams exploited his issue.

The study determined that, in certain cases, an athlete can grow so scared and anxious over certain things, say, a 4-foot putt -- that they actually briefly black out right in the
middle of trying to do it in order to prevent emotional damage to the psyche. Their brain actually shuts down for a split second. Of course, that causes snowballing
fear of embarrassment, etc. etc. and the issue can end careers if the player doesn't get help. I've thought of that study a hundred times since I read it, like when I am
trying to sink a 4-foot putt or watching sports. The subconscious mind is very powerful and most people never learn much of anything about it, which is too bad, because it affects
all of us a great deal more than most realize. I was fortunate enough to take classes on the topic and I believe it is a very useful life skill that has helped me understand myself better.

I have no problem with Simone Biles. Clearly, handling pressure is big part of sports, but she's still just a kid who has been both deified by the public and molested in private. God only knows
what is rattling around in that poor kid's head. Go on a long vacation somewhere and start planning the rest of your life which won't require you to win any more gold medals or depend
on a wheelchair.
Click to expand...
I agree on the sympathy for Biles. She failed on the biggest stage and that is a miserable thing to do. But the PRAISE is ridiculous. See next post for the perfect example of how I feel about this...
 
By Matt Walsh


DailyWire.com








From the way that Olympic gymnast Simone Biles is being praised this week, you might think that the decorated superstar put on a heroic display during the team competition in Tokyo and led her squad to a gold medal.


Prominent politicians like Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush have made public statements applauding her. The White House Press Secretary expressed “gratitude and support.” Deadspin gushed over “the most impressive move of her career.” Former Olympians joined in the group hug. Articles have been written extolling her bravery and declaring that her achievements this week have sent a “powerful message” to the world. CNN called her performance “impactful.” She has been hailed for her strength and for “setting an amazing example” and being a great athlete and role model. Women’s advocacy groups have thanked her.








It was all perhaps the most effusive praise that has ever been heaped on a quitter.


That is what Simone Biles did to earn this exuberant applause. She gave up. After struggling in the qualifying rounds, and botching her first event in the women’s team finals, Biles decided to withdraw from the meet. The best gymnast on the squad, one of the most celebrated U.S. Olympic athletes of all time, chose to abandon her team in the middle of the finals. Her teammates would finish second behind Russia, while Biles went on to receive even more acclaim than a gold medal would have earned her.


There was some talk early on suggesting that Biles had been physically injured. But that was not the case. Biles has since explained that she left the competition in order to focus on her “mental health” and her “mindfulness.” She complained that the Olympics haven’t been “fun” this year. “This Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself when I came in — and I felt like I was still doing it for other people,” she said. Returning to this theme later, she said that it’s important to “put mental health first” because if you don’t then “you’re not going to enjoy your sport.” She complained about the “pressure” that she’s under.








On one hand, there is nothing terribly surprising about the reasons she gives for quitting. People quit things all the time, and they almost always do it because the thing they are quitting is too difficult and not very fun. This is the universal rationale of all quitters everywhere, for all time. In this case, there is no doubt that the difficult thing was very difficult indeed. The pressure she experiences as a world famous athlete on a global stage must be quite burdensome on both an emotional and physical level. This is what makes quitting understandable. But the one thing that it cannot be is admirable.


If Simone Biles had bailed on her team and apologized after the fact, and the public had reacted appropriately to the news, then there wouldn’t be much to else to say on the matter. It is hard to compete in the Olympics. It is hard to live up to high expectations. Lots of people quit when things are hard. We all have, at one time or another. That is why, when someone quits, we normally shake our heads and say, “That’s a shame,” and then we move on with our lives. Nobody is suggesting that athletes who quit ought to be tarred and feathered in the street. It is enough to be disappointed and be done with it.


The problem is that now we are exhorted not simply to understand why someone quits, but to actively applaud them for doing so. What makes the Simone Biles story troubling is not that the women’s gymnastic team had to settle for a silver medal, but that our cultural powers that be want us to celebrate cowardice. As always, it is not enough to merely tolerate another person’s decision or to be compassionate towards their struggles. We are meant, now, to rise to our feet and joyously cheer what all people throughout history, and most people living in the world today, would consider shameful and unfortunate. It is one thing to say: “Simone Biles quit, but let’s have some empathy.” It is quite another to say: “Simone Biles quit. Isn’t that so brave?”








No, no it is not brave. It may be human, it may be relatable, but it is the opposite of brave. To be brave is to refuse to quit precisely when most people would. That is why we admire people who persevere: because they are rare. Quitters are a dime a dozen. Cowardice is in no short supply in our world, and it will become even more common now that we have rebranded it as courage. Indeed, if we will grant to cowardice the rewards of courage without the effort and sacrifice, why bother with courage at all?


The many defenders of Simone Biles have said that she is right — a role model, in fact — for prioritizing her “mental health” above all else. In the era of the Psychological Man, when there is nothing more important than the self’s opinion of itself, it is perhaps no surprise that we should congratulate a woman for explicitly putting herself before her team and her country. And yet, still, one wonders how consistently this new moral code would be applied. Would Tom Brady receive such a worshipful reaction if he left in the third quarter of a playoff game because he “wasn’t having fun” and needed to work on his “mindfulness”?


Such a thing is almost unthinkable because it has never happened and probably never would. But there have been cases of sulking professional athletes leaving the field or the court a few seconds early because they were frustrated and sad during a bad loss. We’ve seen this move from LeBron James, for example, perhaps the greatest sulker in all of sports. There are usually a few people willing to defend this kind of behavior from male athletes, but they’ve never been celebrated like a returning war hero the way Simone Biles has been, and Naomi Osaka before her.








Perhaps we will get there one day, though. Maybe we are fast approaching a time when the greatest athletes will be those who manage to feel the best about themselves while competing. At that point, we will not need them to perform any athletic feats at all. They can simply stand in a circle and whisper sweet nothings to themselves. Everyone wins in the end. It may not make for much of a spectator sport, but at least we will know that nobody’s mental health has been damaged.
 
aloyouis said:
I agree on the sympathy for Biles. She failed on the biggest stage and that is a miserable thing to do. But the PRAISE is ridiculous. See next post for the perfect example of how I feel about this...
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I'm not saying she's a hero and I can agree that the fawning praise is over the top, but she's young, famous, female, black AND a victim so let's say I'm not surprised that Hoda and Co. are
milking this drama cow with both hands. It's all about KINDNESS, isn't it?

I don't even know who said what here, and I'm not telling people what to think about her quitting. I was just trying to make the point that sometimes the
human brain goes sideways on us and, in her particular case, I think it's understandable, so I personally am not going to call her a wuss for bailing.

The other aspect that is worth considering is what America does to glorify the tiny, little adorable gym pixies beyond all common sense and reason and few have
gotten the SuperStar treatment more intensely than this kid.

Maybe it says something about me as a guy of a certain age, but the female gymnasts start so young that I feel sympathy for them more than somebody like Meghan Rapinoe
who I would've blasted for quitting on her team. She's a big girl now, as she always likes to remind everybody.
 
I've been catching up on the women's rugby this morning. Very entertaining. Exciting sport even without really knowing all the rules. Figi looks fantastic. And I watched NZ destroy the Russians pretty easily.
 
What a race in the ladies 100M. A Jamaica 1-2-3 with Elaine Thomson-Herah winning with a time of 10.6! A new Olympic record. An immaculate race and Thomson-Herah was just so fluid in her running and she had Fraser-Price by midway and then pulled away.

Watching this on the BBC, they have the great Michael Johnson as a pundit. One of the best pundits you'll find in any sport.
 
Undertaker #59* said:
I've been catching up on the women's rugby this morning. Very entertaining. Exciting sport even without really knowing all the rules. Figi looks fantastic. And I watched NZ destroy the Russians pretty easily.
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One of the most important skills in Rugby is the ability to get "down under."

Cheers
 
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