Since I had neither homework nor gym Wednesday, I pretty much wasted my entire evening on the Internet (as you would probably guess) Youtubing gymnastics videos. Well... only my family would call it "wasting", hahaha. But as I was curious about the 2000 Olympic Games with all the news about China being stripped of their bronze medal, I decided to watch the women's team finals. What a disappointment for the Russians. They didn't show great sportsmanship either for taking home the silver, with Svetlana Khorkina taking off her medal and crumpling it in her hands as they were walking out.
After watching the team finals, I gave up the computer for a while and then came back a little bit later to find my self once again on Youtube, but this time: the All Around Finals. To my surprise, I was watching one of the most craziest Olympic finals I have ever seen. Kinda hard to believe with so many upsets and weird issues all at the same time. First Elise Ray missed both her hands on the vault her first run and neither of the two following had good landings. Then Svetlana Khorkina, pretty much the predetermined AA champion, lands on her knees twice on her vault, costing her any shot at the medals. It wasn't until half way through the competition that someone spoke up about the vault not feeling right. 5cm too short. Way to go, Australia. It may seem like a small margin but with the vaults these athletes were pulling, 5cm is the difference between landing on you feet or landing on your face. The girls that had already gone were offered a re-vault where they would have to erase their old score and compete again. Unfortunately for both Elise and Svetlana, a redo wouldn't have done them any good as they both fell on another event following vault. Elise slipped her foot on a layout series on beam and Svetlana missed a release move on bars. I can bet though, that both those routines were definitely influenced by the disaster on vault. As for the new gymnasts who rose to the top of the leader board after Svetlana was knocked off, they found themselves wound up in the crazy night too. It was almost like if you got anywhere near the top of the board, it was your turn to trip, crash or fall. In the end it came down to who would make the least amount of mistakes, where Romanian consistency ruled. The other two Americans, Kristin Maloney and Amy Chow, didn't perform spectacularly either, not that they were contenders to begin with. A few stumbles from Kristin on her passes on floor and a huge wobble from Amy knocked both of them out off the board. When the competition came to a close, Simona Amanar of Romania ended up with the gold, her teammate Maria Olaru took the silver and Xuan Liu of China followed with the bronze - not a fairytale ending for Svetlana or anyone. All in all, what a crazy night!
~Got Grace?
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U do know that Andrea Radacan actually won but was also stripped of her medal after they found her doctor gave her some cold medicine that was not allowed on the drug test. A few years later the ingredient found in that cold medicine is no longer a band substance at the Olympic games.
ReplyDelete2000 was a crummy Olympic games but it was that Olympic year that I fell in LOVE with elite gymnastics, the Olympics and gymnastics in general.
Yeah, I read about that. That sucks. She apparently is trying to get her medal back since it is now a legal drug.
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