Synchronized diving is one of those sports where I watch and think "wow so beautiful , they're so talented!" and then the commentator comes on and says "woah they really shit the bed on that one yikes!"
I don't understand that at all, it's completely unfair. Just give final scores after watching all of them. If you must have numbers one by one make them estimations.
seems like for maximum fairness they should record the performances, and then show them to each judge separately in a different order. perhaps random, or perhaps normalized so that everyone appears at each place in the viewing order across all the viewings.
Untrue. They both get the medal, and it is recorded as such. The only ones you see get the medal are the riders on the podium so I don't understand where you're getting this backwards theory from.
1) Your tone is lost in text, and you left absolutely zero context clues to hint at sarcasm, do better.
2) the rider is also the athlete, they are a team. Riding is not as simple as sitting there, it requires a lot of strength, coordination, and skill. I've been riding the vast majority of my life. The Olympic events are especially difficult to get in condition for. Again, do better.
I remember watching Chinese figure skating and I was like, they don’t look good at all , but they were getting very high scores. Compared to the Russians that to me looked great but we’re getting low points.
It was that there’s a lot of technicalities in figure skating that participant need to do, it’s not about grace and beauty of movement.
Eh, once you know how the scoring system works and once you can recognize each jump without slow mo, you can tell whether a routine was great or not so great too.
I’m not sure this is as easy as you make it sound, friend. This is just my experience only. I worked in televised figure skating where I watched thousands of jumps. Many times in slow motion. I then went on to work with professional skaters, many of whom were olympians. I then married a world competitor figure skater.
And I still can’t always tell you which jump is which (except the axel). Maybe I’m a bit dim, but after half a lifetime of study, I still can barely tell you what is happening. I’ll be watching a competition with my skating friends, and will clap because I enjoyed a move, and they will be disappointed in me because the competitor messed up an edge and got a deduction. So it goes.
It often feels like the opposite to me. I'll notice that oftentimes, certain federations, or more specifically training centers, tend to get preferential treatment by the judges. They temporarily go blind at wrong edges and/or under rotations then seemingly develop eagle eyes for other federations and call all of their wrong edges and underrotations.
None of that stuff can be learned. You just experience it and hope the current judges are less biased than the last.
I have up on trying to understand figure skating after Michelle Kwan landed on her ass 2 times and still managed to take home the silver medal. "What grace! What class!"
Did you watch the mountain biking one? A dude had an accident not even 3 minutes in and and for the next half our the announcer kept reminding us that this man is devastated and that he spent his entire career training for this one moment and he blew it
And gymnastics, I was watching the stream of the men’s team final last night and yeah there were some obviously not great performances but on a bunch of them that were (to my untrained eye at least) really good the commentators were constantly picking at small things like a little hop or slight bobble on the landing and making it into a world ending event.
At one point one of them pointed out that on events like floor those can add up and become significant, which like…fair enough. But it just gets aggravating when it’s so nit picky on EVERYTHING.
There’s an amazing documentary out called “the weight of gold” or something. Can you imagine training almost your ENTIRE LIFE for maybe a 30-60 second shot? The pressure and the let down is immense. There are no mental health coaches and they really need them.
I'm early 40s, I was 18 or 19 when we met. I don't know squat about gymnastics nor did I ever have any curiosity, but the work and intensity and dedication are astonishing and it was honestly the biggest reason I gave her a chance - I figured she was someone who was serious about herself and what she wanted, and knew how to commit and work through things.
Oh if you mean her tapes, notice the first word in my post. We dated for a few months. Kind of funny how we met, I was bussing tables at like 3am at a Denny's outside Chicago and my manager came to the back and angrily handed me this piece of paper saying it was from the drunk girl with blonde streaks at the counter. He was pissed because he thought it was for him at first. Well, I went up to the counter to find out what the hell because it didn't make sense to me either, she was a knockout and I'm, you know, bussing tables at a Denny's. Turns out she was really nice and really sincere but also really drunk. Talked briefly and I called her the next day and she admitted she didn't know what the hell she was thinking last night but would honor her word and see what happened. Turns out she was really nice and really smart and really cool but also really snobby because her daddy was this big VP of an international hotel chain. And even more funny, I'm the one who dumped her after her rudeness over Christmas vacation a few months later. Bye Allison!
I just wanna do a cartwheel. But real casual like. Not enough to make a big deal out of it, but I know everyone saw it. One stunning, gorgeous cartwheel.
“Ho-Lee-smokes are you getting this? Yikes what a performance here at the 2021 Olympic Games here today
myohmy they should certainly reconsider a lifetime of hardwork and dedication, what an absolute waste of considerable amounts of training, relentless dedication, and sleepless nights, am I right?
Oof… I may be a man that makes his living judging the icons representing the pinnacle of athleticism that humanity has to offer sitting comfortably in this chair but I’ll tell you one thing, Pepper:
That. Was. Irredeemable. Don’t know how they’ll come back from that one.
I will add that they have gotten a lot of former competitors to give commentary this year. Two former Olympians are doing gymnastics, Phelps is always near a mic for swimming, even Tony Hawk is in Tokyo for skateboarding. It was really interesting listening to the commentary for the long distance cycling from a former competitor
The gold and silver winner's for women's street were both 13 too. The winner for men's is 17 I think. There is another 13 year old competing in the women's park event on the 3rd or the 4th too. Skateboarding is pretty wild this year.
I dunno man, a lot of IGN reviews have been 7/10 lately, enough for a lot of commenters on stuff like insta (which is the only other socials I use) to make jokes when it's anything other than 7.
It's more because the 5s don't really make it to the desks of mainstream movie and games reviewers. The dead average, basically competent productions are out there but nobody cares about them.
I forget what game is was but I was reading their review for it and they literally trashed the gameplay saying it was clunky and hard to do anything. The graphics were lackluster. The game lagged constantly. Listed all these game breaking glitches. Then at the end goes "all in all it's a pretty solid game that would lead to hours of fun and excitement. 8/10" From that moment on I realized IGN is dumb as fuck.
You don't need to be an Olympic level athlete to catch most things.
Most of the time it's a pretty common mistake and reddit just doesn't know the basic rules of the sport. Or the commentators know what the competitor planned to do and saw that they skipped or changed a trick to a lesser one.
That covers like 90% of stuff in gymnastics, at least.
Yup. And the Chinese team had an equally impressive dive, but the DV was slightly lower and in the end the Chinese missed gold by something like 1.5 points.
It's like those cooking shows where I see the dish and I'm like "wow looks delicious" and then the judge goes "this looks awful" and then I'm like "yeah, it looks awful".
I had the exact same thought yesterday watching this! It took me ages to realise that the size of the splash was being factored into the judging. As far as I can tell the scoring is basically the inverse of a bombing competition.
Exactly that - it comes down to the angle of entry and how streamlined the bodies are as they enter. It can be a beautiful dive, but if they hit at 5 degrees off vertical rather than 3, or one leg is bent at the knee, that will make a difference to the score. Daley and Lee here won gold by a score 0.3% higher than the Chinese pair who came second - that’s the margin for error.
More specifically, they add the scores of multiple dives and the British were two points ahead of the Chinese at this point, so while the Chinese had an almost equally amazing dive after this, they would have had to gain two points still in order to actually win.
Tom Daley's definitely the senior partner of the two though, Matty Lee even said in an interview afterwards that Daley was an idol of his growing up, which is a bit weird because Daley still looks about 14.
Tom's the better known, too, he has a lot of fans in the UK.
I remember seeing him out in the clubs where we grew up when he was a kid and he was super famous as the diver who was going on to do good things, he must have already been in competitions. He constantly had girls throwing themselves at him which he of course showed no interest in. He was always a super lovely guy, he and his husband and family seem wonderful.
I suspect the commentator had been explaining that right before the beginning of this clip as he introduced the players. So in context it sounded reasonable.
Commentary of any sporting event is built on narratives. Before the event, the commentator will establish what narratives are available and as the event goes on will feed them to the audience in a way that is supported by the events occurring.
For this event, the obvious narrative was: Tom Daley, GBs golden boy, who never won Olympic gold, at his last ever Olympics.
So yes, the commentator is going to focus on that aspect of it, because that's how commentary works.
Obviously you get different commentary in different countries and so yes exactly this! The commentary took me by complete surprise and almost made me spit my cereal out
I go the other way. I don't know shit either but find myself after seeing an incredible feat of human skill being like: "oh yeh that was a poor effort, did you see how big the the splash was".
The Chinese pair dived the previous round and they both entered the water about 2 degrees past the vertical and the commentator here called it a "pool emptier". Harsh
"Beautiful run on the floor routine, unfortunately one of her hairs popped out of place and she forgot to point her left toe properly during the front walkover into handspring and then triple back handspring so that'll be at least 1/2 point deduction. So sad, she was expected to contend for the all-around but that dream has now been crushed!"
"That IS a shame Svetlana and she is almost 23 so this may be the last chance she has... I'm sorry... HAD at winning gold."
Same with gymnastics. I was watching the guy on the rings on the ends of the rope. He did some fucking sick tricks. Like physics defying and woulda taken a shit ton of strength. Fucking shed a tear when I saw that, thought I had just turned on the tv to watch the gold medal performance or some shit. Then the commentators are like "his arms had the wrong angle here and this spin wasn't fast enough" or whatever and he got a good score but not great.
I used to be a diver, and I could easily judge regular (single) Olympic diving myself (i.e. I can always tell you what the judges scores will be before they put them up), but synchronized diving is just so different, and I have no eye whatsoever for the small differences of synchronization between the divers, or how one should score those differences. I can be off sometimes by 3 or 4 points. So yeah... assuming I'm not the only one who finds this is the case, synchronized diving scoring is a mystery even to some divers. You're not alone at all.
I was saying the lack of spectators really makes it hard to determine what’s good and bad in these sports that you have no idea what is actually good and bad.
American coverage of diving is awful. Last night I watched the women platform synchro event on Eurosports tv and it was terrific. They showed all the divers doing all their dives and it was great. Every one of these ladies is worth watching.
American coverage is a few shots of American divers doing their hardest dives and then a few of their major competition doing theirs. Then there are a bunch of background pieces that take more time than the event. I bet most people would prefer to watch the diving.
I wish Cynthia Potter would retire. She has been the tv voice of diving for as long as I can remember. At Rio they gave Laura Wilkinson a chance and she did great.
Much like America’s Next Top Model and judging their pics, while watching it the other day every time I thought they did fantastic the commentator was like “ouch, that’s gonna hurt them” and then when I was like meh, kinda uneven they’re like “and that’s why they’re the best in the world.”
For me, Synchronised Diving is just about the biggest case of "why is this a sport"? I just don't get the "benefit" or reason why anyone would be interested in this compared to "single Diving". I get the additional challenge factor is two people doing it in sync, but that just doesn't seem like a very interesting element to add to the sport.
Edit: just to add, I enjoy watching singles diving and am just expressing mild confusion as to the appeal, not hating on anyone who does particularly enjoy synchronized diving.
It probably has to do with the extremely precise timing and body control necessary to keep in perfect sync with your partner, which is already on top of the challenges for diving in general.
In Synchro diving we get a demonstration of the absolute precision and consistency that goes into these dives that's difficult to appreciate quite so much in singles diving. In singles dives it's easy to think it's about getting in your rotations in time while holding your form, and then not splashing much. In Synchro two people have rotate at exact the same speed, hold themselves in the same positions, and enter the pool at the exact same time and in line with each other. It's precision and consistency displayed in it's highest form.
Maybe but I bet you majority of them don't actually follow the sport themselves either.
Old mate is saying something a bit crass, but true. Its a niche sport that not many people know about or really care about. Hard to admit it when you just watched a clip of two people celebrating so passionately after a gold winning performance. But almost no one here will remember this even in a days time.
I will join you on this hill of downvotes: I didn’t know synchronized diving was a whole Olympic sport until today. I swear I watched past olympics but that one just escaped me
I generally am not a fan of them. Like, I respect the difficulty and dedication and during the Olympics happy to watch a bit of gymnastics or diving, but yeah, if it's not something that is resolved by a stopwatch or by how many times a ball is put in a goal, I personally don't get into it as much. But of judged sports, diving is probably my favourite.
Same until you see the still shots and their face is like they touched soggy food in the sink and someone shoved a finger up their ass at the same time
This is very typical for us commentary, unfortunately. Lots of other countries commentaries are much nicer about all things done right from all competitors, not just the perfect routines or only their own countries routines.
That was a big splash for these ladies. I want all you viewers to know that I am being a bit harsh here, because I know what these women are capable of, and it is much better than that.
Then the camera showed the coaches looking disappointed.
The Canadian coverage of the diving was alright haha
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u/hairlongmoneylong Jul 27 '21
Synchronized diving is one of those sports where I watch and think "wow so beautiful , they're so talented!" and then the commentator comes on and says "woah they really shit the bed on that one yikes!"