Oh gymnastics. Right now there's a camera in American gymnast Nastia Liukin's face, and she looks like she'd like to wrap it around a pummel horse. She was tied with China's He Kexin, and after two tiebreakers (as reliable as rock, paper, scissors, apparently) they were still tied to the thousandth - 16.725.
Liukin's actually handling it well--she says she has no problems with the scoring system; or the Australian judge, who marked Liukin three-tenths of a point lower than He for a routine with the same start value; or the fact that He is allegedly only 14, two years younger than the minimum Olympic age; or that if she had won, she would have matched the two golds her father won in Seoul in 1988. It's every other talking head that is screaming right now.
Good god. And now some coach is giving the US pole vaulter, Jenn Stuczynski, a speech that I think is supposed to be a 'congrats you got silver, good for you, that's amazing' but came out more like 'You big failure. No one gives Nike ads to losers' in his tone. I don't think he knows the camera can pick him up.
Stuczynski looks like she's going to cry. Perhaps it's because the Russian winner, Yelena Isinbaev, scoffed at the suggestion that Stuczynkski was a competitor.
In the LA Times:
"Asked if she were annoyed by media suggestions that U.S. vaulter Jenn Stuczynski was a challenger after her U.S. record vault of 16 feet, 3/4 inch (4.90 meters) this season, Isinbaeva was utterly dismissive.
'I can stay quiet when they are right, but when they are wrong, why should I stay quiet?' Isinbaeva asked. 'They said 'Wooooo' when she jumped 4.90, but I jumped this height four years ago. It is nothing special.'"
There are no medals for modesty or graciousness, my friends.
