The Thrill and The Agony

I am an Olympic junkie.  Winter or summer, day or night, I am glued to Olympic coverage: television, magazines, and newspapers.   This time around, we are even making liberal use of live streaming.  My daughter is a college fencer.  Fencing is one of the more obscure Olympic sports, relegated to the Internet rather than the network.   The rules of fencing are so complex and weapon-specific that I think the commentators choose not to bother.  Thus, we have added computers to our Olympic control center so my daughter can follow the fates of her fencing acquaintances.  (My daughter faced one of the two women on the US sabre team in competition and beat her!)

Every moment during Olympic season carries a potential for controversy.  The other night was the women’s gymnastics preliminary round.  The news is atwitter with accounts of the current world champion who was denied her opportunity to compete in the all-around competition.  I must say, I have mixed feelings about this.

Certainly it is tragic to see anyone—particularly a young girl who has been well hyped—fail to achieve their athletic goal.  We feel her pain, knowing that in this sport, her window of opportunity will close before the next Olympic cycle comes around.  I also agree that the rules are unfair.  A process that limits each country to just two advancing athletes is flawed.  This is a championship to crown the best in the world.  Advancement to the all-around final is based on total scores in the preliminary round, with the top 24 advancing.  An athlete that can score among the top few should not be punished for the depth of her own country’s bench.  For Wieber to be eliminated while others with vastly lower qualifying scores advance is just bad policy.  This is a rule that must be changed.

On the other hand, the US team came to London to compete with a full awareness of these new rules.  All night long the commentators discussed the fact that three US women would be vying for two slots.  There was an assumption that Wieber—the current world all-around champion—would be a shoe in and that Raisman and Douglas would be duking it out for the second US slot.  Only after Wieber was revealed as the eliminated athlete did anger surface over the 2-athlete-per-country rule.  Had Raisman finished in third place (as expected), I wonder if Bela Karolyi would have felt such outrage.  NBC would have had no story.

I have a problem with people who argue a change in rules when they do not like an outcome.  In science, there is a whole discipline committed to ensuring that there is no bias in a process.  This is how you know that results are objective and fair.  In layman’s terms, the ends do not justify the means.   If an athlete’s resume was relevant in determining Olympic outcomes, the competitors would simply send in applications and video clips to be reviewed by a sequestered panel of judges.  If we allow each athlete to be judged by their historical personal best, it would not be the Olympics.

The Olympics is very much about the moment.  This is why we are all glued to the television, sopping up the personal interest stories, handicapping the competitors, and cheering our favorites.  We love to understand what motivates them to sacrifice everything for a chance of a lifetime.  We want to share in the triumph when an underdog digs deep and delivers the performance of a lifetime.  For every elated victor who sings to their national flag atop the podium, there are dozens of athletes who are collateral damage.  Once the torch lights the cauldron there are no guarantees.

Gymnastics is a sport of tenths of points.  Jordan Wieber made mistakes, giving up precious points on more than one apparatus—a bobble here and a step there.  I do not recall the expert commentators complaining that she was underscored, or that her deductions were not justified.  On the other hand, Ali Raisman came prepared to deliver her best possible performances, knowing only that every clean program and stuck landing would help her team.  Raisman did her job; Wieber did not.  The rules were clear.  

I hope the controversy surrounding this dies down.  Ali Raisman deserves her moment, and the respect that comes with besting the world champion.  I will be cheering the two US underdogs, hoping that while they try to beat each other they remember to beat everyone else as well.

Tomorrow's blog:  Thickly Settled