I love it all!!!!!

But gymnastics - especially this year, in part because of our home town girl :):) Shawn Johnson!!!!!!!!!! The golden girl so far everywhere!! Just hoping she brings Gold home in multiple events at the Olympics. She just finished her beam routine - oh, my it was SUPERB!!!!!!!!

I was just watching Shawn; she was awesome! I hope USA kicks butt in the final!

way, cool - did you just hear the 6 of them huddled together - this woman's gymnastic team seems to have great unity, even though they are struggling with injuries and mistakes. Too bad the Chinese beat them out in scores today, allowing the Chinese to go last

I did, and they seem to have bonded very well. I was a little under-whelmed by Bela Karolyi's comments afterward, though. Thought he came across kind of harsh.

Well I do think this new scoring is very confusing - so I will give him that, I'm not sure what he was referring to in the cheating. But Natasia's score on the beam absolutely made no sense though - way too low. Bela did seem to have something biting at him - you wonder what goes on behind the scene that we don't ever see or hear

So right you are. I also thought that score was unfair!

I think the cheating he was referring to was the possible underage chinese girls. I didn't know there was an age limit and when i saw the first chinese girl do floor i swear i though she was 10 years old. i know gymnasts look younger then normal girls their age, but those girls on the chinese team look really really young. Apparently the age limit is 16 and Bela is saying that those girls are not as old as they say they are.

He doesn't have a problem with the athletes themselves, but the fact that since they instilled this age limit countries have started cheating. He said they should get rid of the age limit. If the girls are good enough they should be able to compete no matter how young they are.

Bela Karolyi incensed about underage rules - Olympics - Yahoo! Sports

I love to watch the swimming as I have a daughter that swims competitively.

Oh, yes, I have a hard time believing that a couple of them are 16. How easy to make false documents when the government is involved. :(

I also have to say I was so excited to see three US women on the fencing team sweep the medals yesterday. I was at the state fair yesterday so I only saw it recapped late last night with Bob Costas. These were 3 smart girls - a Yale grad, a Notre Dame student and one entering Duke this month.

I have thought about taking a fencing class for years and just last week saw that a new class is starting soon. These girls inspired me!! I think I will sign up :)

Also, can I confess something :rolleyes: -- I have had a big crush on Bob Costas for years ;):p

I've been watching off and on all week end...love the Olympics!

The speculation regarding the Chinese girls was because of one girl in particular. Just last year it was being highly publicized all over the world how great she was at only 14...now a year later in the Olympics she's suddenly 16 and meets the age requirement.:confused: How does that work? They were saying that the required paperwork had been produced stating she was 16, but there had been alot of questions raised as to if it was forged, which now has them questioning the validity of the paper work for ALL the girls. The commentators were saying that as a result the Olympic board was already examining a more strict system for regulating 'proving' the age of competitors.

The new judging system where the performance and difficulty are scored separately is the result of the last Olymics where there were several scores giving inaccurately with the starting difficultly level having been misjudged and scored with too low a start value. It was an issue more than once the last time around and some of the errors were not discovered until after the medals has been awarded and nothing could really be done about it.Bela Karoli was saying that he disapproved of the new judging system because it was more confusing and seemed to be an easy way for biased scoring to be masked and that he thought in general there were unfair scores given to the US team.

Aside from that, what surprised me last night was the fact that Romania didn't even seem to be in the picture. Usually they are one of if not THE biggest threats and powerhouses in gymnastics and I only heard them mentioned once.:confused:

On another note...

How about the guys winning the gold in the 4x100 swimming event last night!? After the French team was bragging about how they were going to "smash them" and then the guys came in and beat them. :p And the look on the French team's face when they realized they'd been beat...PRICELESS! I was yelling for them during that race like it was a football game!

There were a couple comments that the Romanian strength in the sport has completely died out. They haven't been a main player in the last several years :(

It was TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!!

The DD's stay the same as for the individual dive. But, some of these dives were crazy, too!!!!! I think it was the German team closed out with forward double, double pike combinations and they were close to perfect!!!!!!