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derekjoe

Listed below are comments made by derekjoe between Saturday, 16th August 2008 and Saturday, 30th August 2008.

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London hopefuls become Village people 5:56pm on 30 Aug 2008 No.18

Seems you have two different pieces of opinions and also some misunderstandings. First, you think team ball games should be considered the same with other events. Secondly, you think rankings from 4 to 8 are totally meaningless, even silver and bronze medalists.

Here's my argument:

If you have 12 great swimmers and I have 12 great volleyball players, then what's the likely result shown on our medal table? You might have 6 medals and I could only have 1 at best? Is it fair?

And I should tell you I didn't do it for popularity reasons because maybe there're much more people care about the winner of 100m sprint than water-polo. It's just a moderate compensation to some sports that competed by more athletes but contain less medals.

I also knows well about the importance of the GOLD medal. I forgot to tell you that my points given from No.1 to No.8 is: 14, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. And if you know sth about last years' Athletics World Championship in Osaka, they used the total points system from No.1 to No.8 is 8 to 1 point. I think I've shown more preference for the winner than they do.

So why doesn't IOC use the total points system? Maybe because most sports are not as easy as Athletics to tell the ranking of top 8.

So like in Judo or Wrestling, if there are two athletes both rank 5, then each gets 4.5. That's how my system works. I've done a lot of considerations and calculations, please criticize me after more careful analysis.
London hopefuls become Village people 9:03pm on 27 Aug 2008 My ranking system:

A lot of debates on ranking by gold medals or total medals. Here's my point of view: by total points

I give first 8 of every event different points from 14 to 2, and double the digit in team ball games.

In this case:

1 USA 1570
2 CHN 1451
3 RUS 1134
4 AUS 755
5 GBR 732
6 GER 717
7 FRA 649
8 ITA 492
9 JPN 480
10 KOR 438

So in my way, American ranking does make senses, and apparently Team GB still needs to beat Australia in 2012.

As a Chinese, I still think US is the No.1 power in the Olympics, and so do a lot of Chinese people as well. China also need to keep on improving in the future.
When losing becomes a national tragedy 4:59pm on 27 Aug 2008 National Tragedy?

I clearly heard both Chinese commentators during the match called it 'A Beauty of Incompletion'.

You select two posts from 5% lunatics and two from 95% normal people, then you tell everyone you're neutral? Not to mention a lot more people in quiet tend to have moderates opinions.

Even though the Beebs have been so creative towards Chinese topics, Mr James Reynolds still has his way to become the drama king!
World view of Beijing 2:29pm on 27 Aug 2008 Yeah, a lot of 27-gold-based-on-judgement for these days. Seems it origins from American medias and widely taken by other countries now. I'd like to talk about some truth I know about it.

1, 9 golds from Gymnastics, that's a lot, maybe too much. But does anybody know how many China won in last year's world championship in Stuttgart? 8. They've always been great for these years. Only men's horizontal bar and floor exercise surprise people in Beijing, both won by 20 yo Zou Kai. For horizontal bar, he's got a difficuty of 7.2, others are all less than 7. And for floor exercise, both strong expects from Romania and Brazil had major faults in the final which are very obvious to audience.

2, 7 gold from diving, only 1 lost to Australia. But last time it's 6 in Athens, and don't forget the ridiculous zero point last dive occured in China's men's syn springboard in Athens. And the Chinese team have swiped all 8 for some times during last years' smaller events.

3, I can see some Irish anger came from boxing decisions. I've seen some matches and have to say there might be some generous points given to China. So in last year's world championship China won 1 gold and this time it's 2, big deal!

4, I don't really know how old He Kexin is, 14? Maybe. Totally child abuse. But look at 14 yo Tom Daley's muscles. And FYI, Chinese diver Lin Yue who won Synchronised platform didn't show up in single's event becaused he's been growing too fast in the last year which led to a unsteady form. And how old is he? 17. Three years older than Daley. Usually Eastern people do develop later than Westerners.

5, From the other sides, there're also disappointing dicisions given against China. In women's team sabre, Ukraine won 45-44 to China. In the last move both fencer hit her opponent, and the ref gave the point to Ukraine. In taekwondo, China's two time Oly champ Chen Zhong won her match, while minutes after the match she was told the decision had been changed and she did nothing but accepted the result. To sum up, decisions against China, nobody cares! And decisions favoured China, evil host!

6, Let's talk about Greece. They had 6,6,4 in Athens and 0,2,2 in Beijing. Anybody see that? Not really. Because Greece is politically clean or just not strong enough to be a threat? I can't tell.

ps, could anyone here tell me how many golds Team GB won in Athens which required judgements? I guess it must be much more than 1.
Chinese applaud Taiwan 'warlord' 1:46pm on 20 Aug 2008 To maloneranger

Many Chinese people are facing those criticism in quiet, a small part doesn't accept it and you say EVERYONE bluh bluh...

There's also 'no one in Taiwan...' in your post. I wonder how you did those statistics and what's your source. I suggest you not to be so self-assured a little bit.
Chinese applaud Taiwan 'warlord' 1:15pm on 20 Aug 2008 Come on, I_Love_China, I'm your countryman and I highly respect your sentiment towards our country. But you don't necessarily need to show it in such a propagandizing way.

The key whether Taiwan should be reunited with the mainland is held in Taiwanese people's hands. If they don't have such kind of thought, then everything we're doing here would be in vain.

So let's stop debating and fighting, keep on developing and communicating. Maybe someday the whole East Asia will be incoporated together just like Europeans are doing now, then the problems across the strait will no longer be a problem.

Btw, I had been in Scotland for 16 months, and the strong Scottish nationalism there surprised me a lot. I still remembered watching a crucial football game between England and Croatia in a pub in Edinburgh, I was the only one hailing for England, all Scotts there were doing the opposite. I don't think they really hate the English that much, they just feel overshadowed and want to show their own identity so badly. That's the same thing some Taiwanese people are doing, more tolerance should be given to them since we are from the stronger between two sides.
Tweddle's Olympic dream ended by 0.025 9:53pm on 18 Aug 2008 If I were the ref, I would give both Liukin and Yang the gold and both Tweddle and He the bronze. Even He Kexin herself think Yang performed better than her.

I don't know their real ages, but there's one story I can share with you. Last year in Edinburgh, I was told to show my ID for buying beers in a super-market named Somerfield. Since I'm already 27, I asked why naturally and they told me they needed to know if I was under 18. As an ethnic Chinese, believe it or not, we do have a younger face than Westerners when we're young. That might be the reason all Chinese gymnasts look like 13 yo.
How do you spot a future Olympic star? 9:22pm on 18 Aug 2008 It's not like those kids are conscribed into those schools and compulsorily trained forever. They are sent be their parents for diferent reasons. Some parents just hope their children to be stronger and healthier. Some more utilitarian ones hope to have a sports star who can make money for the family. But still, this is all voluntary, you can quit whenever you want, but when you're still in the school, you should listen to the coach.

I have a college room-mate who had been in such a sports school trained as a shooter. When he graduated from junior high, his family decided he should quit because he's not good enough while he's good at study. He also told us the long-time boring training is one of the reasons why he quit, but it did make him a more self-disciplined and composed person than us.

I think that's similar to some tennis schools in the US. Many young kids are sent to Florida every year by their zealous parents. Most famous tennis players start playing tennis at 6 or 7 yo. We may have a more colourful childhood, but there's always something to pay to become somebody.

About Liu Xiang, I think his problem is not being trained too much, but the opposite. He's been occupied too much in commercial activities these years. He has a team to deal with those stuff and they always hope he can make more money. After his success in Osaka last year, Liu elevated his self-confidence again. He believed he could started his regular training just 3 months before the Olympics and still won gold. That's why he never showed up in competitions for a long time. And in Eugene, Oregon earlier this year, he decided to take the first match of this year as a warming-up. But obviously he's not in good form and got injured due to lack of training. Since then he's stuck in the dilemma between training to get back in form and recovering from the injury. That's why the deteriorated injury finally made him quit. So it's money not training knock him down.
Chinese lose... at sabre fencing 6:13pm on 17 Aug 2008 I don't think vermillionbrush is Chinese, his English is too good to be a non-native speaker. I guess he's the kind of people trying to provoke Western netizens to be against China.

And about TaiyuanRen, I think whether he has a understanding problem or he is also provoking here. So obviously this article is telling a positive story about China.

To Ihobdrak, I highly respect your point of view about your people and land, just I don't think it's appropriate to talk here. After all this blog is all about sports and the Olympics.
It's the winning, not the taking part that counts 9:45pm on 16 Aug 2008 To Crowperson

About your comment on Chinese sports, I think I have some information to share with you.

First, I don't know from where you get this "coercion" point, maybe you just take it for granted from former East European examples. So I'd tell you, this is a fast-changing world, China is never the same with 30 years ago, and quite different from former East European countries. If you don't know that, then maybe you should go there and observe for some time. Don't believe everything you hear from some sinophobic media. Sometimes those people only believe what they want to believe. FYI, I can tell you some stories that you'll never know from those media. Du Li, who lost her first match in tears, told her coach she wanted to quit from the next match. Her coach told her to calm down and made the dicision later. Days later she decided to keep fighting and finally won her gold medal. In your coercion opinion, can you believe she has the right to decide? (You can find it from the post-match press conference)

Secondly, I don't think athletes play under pressure via coercion can make good results, and you can prove the contrary easily. We Chinese are also human beings. If we were told to win or to die, we would perform like carrying a huge burden on back. So I think champions are those who really know how to relax during games. So far Chinese athletes are performing well in Beijing, I think a punishment threat would have never done such work.

Finally, I do think "drug-taking is nothing new" in the West. But for China, can you name one Olympic medalist who's proved using drugs? This "drug-taking" line can only make your argument even more pathetic.

ps: I'm non-native English speaker, so sorry for any grammatical and spelling mistakes.

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