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Leftist states and eastern bloc countries have always dominated weight lifting. I don't see any scheming.
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On August 01 2012 09:54 vindKtiv wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2012 09:13 andrewlt wrote:
I'm surprised people have not yet caught on to the strategy of the Chinese and North Koreans. It's the low hanging fruit strategy. They're going after the less popular sports with weaker fields that give out a lot of medals. Sure, China is historically strong in certain more popular sports and they're trying to be competitive in many others. However, it is in the less popular ones where they are really cleaning up.
Also, some of the lower weight classes in certain sports are virtually extinct in first world countries. Seriously, "strategy"? Do you actually think that the Chinese government have any more of a "strategy" in the Olympics than any western country? Do you honestly think that the Chinese government is consciously putting in extra resources to create athletes for "less popular sports" in a petty attempt to gain worldwide acknowledgement?
I believe these things. I think a lot of people do. It's been apparent if you've been paying attention to the Olympics the past decade.
There's nothing wrong with it either. There is no doubt that China is more controlling over its image and publicity than other countries (just note how they control their internet over there --- they care about their image). Olympics is great publicity for cultivating nationalism. There is nothing wrong with a country organizing and creating incentives for athletes, to groom them for the Olympics.
It really isn't much of a conspiracy theory, at least not nearly as much as you make it sound. To some extent, it isn't a theory at all. China does make a concerted effort to groom Olympic athletes, and they take that medal count seriously.
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some sports are harder to do when you get older, in some other you win if you are older...
it depends
for most of teamsports the best age is between 25-28. athletics is just right and they have enough experience... etc pp
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michael phelps finally pulls it together and gets a gold, breaking the record for most medals.
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Damn a 24 year old female Romanian gymnast. She's like 120 in gymnast years.
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On August 01 2012 12:53 DannyJ wrote:
Damn a 24 year old female Romanian gymnast. She's like 120 in gymnast years.
They were discussing earlier how during the World finals there was a 36 year old german gymnast O_o.
But yea rewatching team USA win that gold in team gymnastics was great.
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That finish between Le Clou and Phelps was epic. Really thought Phelps had it, but Le Clou somehow managed to pull it out in the end. Really liked him watching during the heats, thought he was a pretty solid swimmer.
Glad Phelps won his medal though. Great athlete, and a true contribution to his sport.
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Watching a fellow Michigander in Jordyn Wieber going from the ultimate low that she must have felt during the qualification, to the ultimate high that she felt winning the gold with her teammates is probably going to be the one lasting memory I'm going to have from the entire Olympics in London and we're only four days in. The smiles on her face performing her Floor Routine were truly priceless.
Also, how about that "perfect" vault from the USA too?
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On August 01 2012 12:12 andrewlt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2012 11:37 vindKtiv wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 01 2012 10:40 sAsImre wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2012 09:54 vindKtiv wrote:On August 01 2012 09:13 andrewlt wrote:
I'm surprised people have not yet caught on to the strategy of the Chinese and North Koreans. It's the low hanging fruit strategy. They're going after the less popular sports with weaker fields that give out a lot of medals. Sure, China is historically strong in certain more popular sports and they're trying to be competitive in many others. However, it is in the less popular ones where they are really cleaning up.
Also, some of the lower weight classes in certain sports are virtually extinct in first world countries. Seriously, "strategy"? Do you actually think that the Chinese government have any more of a "strategy" in the Olympics than any western country? Do you honestly think that the Chinese government is consciously putting in extra resources to create athletes for "less popular sports" in a petty attempt to gain worldwide acknowledgement? Do you believe so much into propaganda that you need to revert to conspiracy theories in order to rationalize the fact that China is currently neck-and-neck with the United States? Do you so buy into the idea that NK is a backassward and inferior country that the fact that they won one medal makes you dismiss a whole weightclass? The athletes won because they trained harder and wanted it more. The fact that you dismiss their personal triumphs as "strategy" by NK/China to gain medals is disgusting. Not only is that insulting to the NK/Chinese athletes, it is insulting to every single other athlete in their event that you would dismiss their event as "less popular sports with weaker fields." Pray tell me, what exactly constitues as a "less popular sport with weaker fields"? Because every event I see has cutthroat competition worthy of winning with plenty of stories. Just because NBC decided to mainly give focus to the American competitors (arguably understandable) doesn't mean that there was no story behind Chinese/NK medal wins. The Chinese/NK athletes aren't faceless robots churned out by the government to steal your medals from the Olympics, they are human too. I'm sorry if you honestly didn't mean "strategy" as in actual strategy, but your post comes off as ignorantly nationalistic. Too many people see China and NK as the "enemy" during the Olympics and it is kind of ridiculous. Just watch some good athletes and have fun, there is no need to politicize everything  . you know that 99% of the time a nation becomes good in a certain discipline it's a political decision a decade ago? Sport is heavily politicized like it or not and every countries has its own strategy, usually around either strengthening its main points (NZ in rugby, Georgia at the olympics ect...) or improving its weak point (France in natation/handball, spain in tennis) every country has a wide amount of potential olympic winners, politics/sport infrastructures job is just to grew this talent. Sadly i doubt you can read french but there is a beginning on the topic: http://www.slate.fr/france/59971/natation-handball-medailles-francehere about the selection of potentials: http://www.slate.fr/life/59381/jeux-olympiques-detection-champions Dude I agree 100% with you. I'm trying to say exactly what you are trying to say: that every decision is politicized, not just the Chinese government's. The original post I was quoting implied that it was exclusive to China and North Korea, that they had a "strategy" for the "low hanging fruit." I was just trying to say that it is kind of ignorant to say that it is exclusive to China/NK, and the idea that they are going for the "low hanging fruit" is stupid because there are "low hanging fruit" in the first place. I agree that politics are heavily involved, but that doesn't mean that we should dismiss individual achievements.
Wow... Just wow...
Don't just assume that other people that list "United States" as their location on TL is some white trash from rural America. My family came from China. I grew up in the Philippines and went to the US on my own. This isn't propaganda. This is simply me having lived in closer proximity to China than most people in the US. That and having the perspective of how three different countries with different wealth levels choose their Olympians.
You're ignoring that every country sends and chooses its athletes in a different way. For much of the Western world, athletes choose their own sport. The best athletes gravitate towards the sports that are more popular in their home countries. Furthermore, those athletes are mostly funded with sponsorships. Even ignoring NBA stars, there's a huge difference between some Olympians who can train full time and some who actually have real jobs and can only train part time. Other countries do it differently. They are not as dependent on sponsorships as many Western athletes are.
Here's something you might not know about China's program. For years, China chooses which athletes concentrate in which sport. They have liberalized their program a lot since then, but many kids are still steered towards the sports that the apparatus thinks they will do better in, not the ones they like. You can find no better example than China's basketball team. China's strength is still in their front line. That's because many athletes with prototypical guard sizes are being steered towards other sports.
Do some reading before you criticize other people. Find articles from non-US sources. There are enough English dailies between Asian countries that are good at the English language like the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore or Chinese territories like Taiwan and Hong Kong. It's all there to see.
I think I came off as too insulting in my last post, so sorry if it seemed that way. I wasn't trying to be insulting. Now where to start? First of all, just because you "came" from China doesn't mean you are free from bias when talking about China like you think it does. For the record, I "came" from China too. Second of all, just because you grew up in the Phillipines does not mean you are free from the ignorance that you believe pervades "rural America." "Rural America" is not as ignorant as you believe, nor are you as enlightened as you believe  . I agree 100% with with the difference in choosing candidates. But the part where we differ is where you say there is a difference in athletic program. You might know a lot about the Chinese program, but you might want to "do some reading" about the western athletic program as well. Do you honestly think that the Olympic gymnasts of the United States chose to be gymnasts after reaching a certain age where they can make adult choices? Most of them still aren't at the age to make adult choices, their parents chose them to do gymnastics and they turned out to be some of the best. And when they wanted to quit, do you think their parents let them? They wouldn't be at the Olympics if they quit when they wanted would they? I'm not at all arguing that the Chinese Olympic program is good. It is not at all good in anyway. I'm arguing that it isn't all flowers in the US either, so if you are going to knock on China/NK, you might as well knock on every other country as well. The thing is, while it might be the government that chooses who to train and send in China, it is the parents who choose their kids to train and send in the United States. You are going to subject a kid to pain if you want him/her to be an Olympic athlete, the only difference between China/NK and the western world is who inflicts the pain: the government or the parents. You never just "choose" to undertake the rigorous training to become an Olympic athlete, because by the time you reach the age where you can make a serious choice, you are already too old. And by the way, your basketball example? Where are the "prototypical" guard sizes in the US national basketball team? Each player is a perfect specimen with a body tailored to their position. All the people that didn't make it are languishing in the D-leagues and most don't even make it past high school or college. A huge part about being an athlete is, if you don't have the right body size you won't make it to the Olympics. If the government won't steer you towards a different sport, reality will. Your going to get pain from the child either way, and you are going to have to do some forcing either way and if a government isn't going to steer you towards something else then competition will. So what is the major difference? And if there is no major difference, why are you dismissing the achievements of NK/China? Being an athlete is an extremely hard thing to do and that is why we celebrate it. So when you dismiss the achievements of the NK/Chinese athletes? That's pretty damn disgusting. Spoilered because it was getting too long. You're responding to something I didn't imply. And for the record, I only brought up "rural America" because your post seemed to imply I was another one of those clueless nationalistic white people. I guess we're even in that regard. For basketball, point guards are normally around low 6 feet to mid 6 feet. People of that height can excel in multiple sports. The government steering in China resulted in a team that had talented players in the forward/center positions but the guard positions were a bit of an afterthought. Some athletes who could have been good guards got steered to other sports. They realized that problem eventually but the talent on their national squad is still a bit light on guards. I don't get why you keep insisting I'm dismissing the achievements of NK/Chinese athletes. I was only trying to explain to people posting in the last few pages why countries such as NK/China dominate in sports such as weightlifting, which isn't that popular in China. I don't about NK, but then again, who does? It isn't like badminton and table tennis, which are relatively more popular in China. China will dominate those two latter sports even if they adopt the Western model. Don't put too much emphasis on the very arbitrary cutoff point of 18 years old. Children, especially in Western nations, do have some choice before that arbitrary cutoff age and other people can still influence you past that age. I think you have too dark a view of the programs that create these athletes. The vast majority do enjoy the sport they chose or got steered to to some degree. Even in China, a little kid can pretend to suck if they really didn't want to do the sport they were being steered to.
I just don't understand why they try to steer people based on physique rather than just general interest. I know that it's important to a lot of sports, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be good at it when they switch over. I guess it really depends on how young they are when they're trained, but what if they steer them into it and they're no good? Then they've potentially wasted their life. I like that they're funding some obscure sports, but is it really the most efficient way of going about it? If you're around 6 ft tall you're probably well into your teens by then.
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On August 01 2012 13:41 Itsmedudeman wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2012 12:12 andrewlt wrote:On August 01 2012 11:37 vindKtiv wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 01 2012 10:40 sAsImre wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2012 09:54 vindKtiv wrote:On August 01 2012 09:13 andrewlt wrote:
I'm surprised people have not yet caught on to the strategy of the Chinese and North Koreans. It's the low hanging fruit strategy. They're going after the less popular sports with weaker fields that give out a lot of medals. Sure, China is historically strong in certain more popular sports and they're trying to be competitive in many others. However, it is in the less popular ones where they are really cleaning up.
Also, some of the lower weight classes in certain sports are virtually extinct in first world countries. Seriously, "strategy"? Do you actually think that the Chinese government have any more of a "strategy" in the Olympics than any western country? Do you honestly think that the Chinese government is consciously putting in extra resources to create athletes for "less popular sports" in a petty attempt to gain worldwide acknowledgement? Do you believe so much into propaganda that you need to revert to conspiracy theories in order to rationalize the fact that China is currently neck-and-neck with the United States? Do you so buy into the idea that NK is a backassward and inferior country that the fact that they won one medal makes you dismiss a whole weightclass? The athletes won because they trained harder and wanted it more. The fact that you dismiss their personal triumphs as "strategy" by NK/China to gain medals is disgusting. Not only is that insulting to the NK/Chinese athletes, it is insulting to every single other athlete in their event that you would dismiss their event as "less popular sports with weaker fields." Pray tell me, what exactly constitues as a "less popular sport with weaker fields"? Because every event I see has cutthroat competition worthy of winning with plenty of stories. Just because NBC decided to mainly give focus to the American competitors (arguably understandable) doesn't mean that there was no story behind Chinese/NK medal wins. The Chinese/NK athletes aren't faceless robots churned out by the government to steal your medals from the Olympics, they are human too. I'm sorry if you honestly didn't mean "strategy" as in actual strategy, but your post comes off as ignorantly nationalistic. Too many people see China and NK as the "enemy" during the Olympics and it is kind of ridiculous. Just watch some good athletes and have fun, there is no need to politicize everything . you know that 99% of the time a nation becomes good in a certain discipline it's a political decision a decade ago? Sport is heavily politicized like it or not and every countries has its own strategy, usually around either strengthening its main points (NZ in rugby, Georgia at the olympics ect...) or improving its weak point (France in natation/handball, spain in tennis) every country has a wide amount of potential olympic winners, politics/sport infrastructures job is just to grew this talent. Sadly i doubt you can read french but there is a beginning on the topic: http://www.slate.fr/france/59971/natation-handball-medailles-francehere about the selection of potentials: http://www.slate.fr/life/59381/jeux-olympiques-detection-champions Dude I agree 100% with you. I'm trying to say exactly what you are trying to say: that every decision is politicized, not just the Chinese government's. The original post I was quoting implied that it was exclusive to China and North Korea, that they had a "strategy" for the "low hanging fruit." I was just trying to say that it is kind of ignorant to say that it is exclusive to China/NK, and the idea that they are going for the "low hanging fruit" is stupid because there are "low hanging fruit" in the first place. I agree that politics are heavily involved, but that doesn't mean that we should dismiss individual achievements.
Wow... Just wow...
Don't just assume that other people that list "United States" as their location on TL is some white trash from rural America. My family came from China. I grew up in the Philippines and went to the US on my own. This isn't propaganda. This is simply me having lived in closer proximity to China than most people in the US. That and having the perspective of how three different countries with different wealth levels choose their Olympians.
You're ignoring that every country sends and chooses its athletes in a different way. For much of the Western world, athletes choose their own sport. The best athletes gravitate towards the sports that are more popular in their home countries. Furthermore, those athletes are mostly funded with sponsorships. Even ignoring NBA stars, there's a huge difference between some Olympians who can train full time and some who actually have real jobs and can only train part time. Other countries do it differently. They are not as dependent on sponsorships as many Western athletes are.
Here's something you might not know about China's program. For years, China chooses which athletes concentrate in which sport. They have liberalized their program a lot since then, but many kids are still steered towards the sports that the apparatus thinks they will do better in, not the ones they like. You can find no better example than China's basketball team. China's strength is still in their front line. That's because many athletes with prototypical guard sizes are being steered towards other sports.
Do some reading before you criticize other people. Find articles from non-US sources. There are enough English dailies between Asian countries that are good at the English language like the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore or Chinese territories like Taiwan and Hong Kong. It's all there to see.
I think I came off as too insulting in my last post, so sorry if it seemed that way. I wasn't trying to be insulting. Now where to start? First of all, just because you "came" from China doesn't mean you are free from bias when talking about China like you think it does. For the record, I "came" from China too. Second of all, just because you grew up in the Phillipines does not mean you are free from the ignorance that you believe pervades "rural America." "Rural America" is not as ignorant as you believe, nor are you as enlightened as you believe . I agree 100% with with the difference in choosing candidates. But the part where we differ is where you say there is a difference in athletic program. You might know a lot about the Chinese program, but you might want to "do some reading" about the western athletic program as well. Do you honestly think that the Olympic gymnasts of the United States chose to be gymnasts after reaching a certain age where they can make adult choices? Most of them still aren't at the age to make adult choices, their parents chose them to do gymnastics and they turned out to be some of the best. And when they wanted to quit, do you think their parents let them? They wouldn't be at the Olympics if they quit when they wanted would they? I'm not at all arguing that the Chinese Olympic program is good. It is not at all good in anyway. I'm arguing that it isn't all flowers in the US either, so if you are going to knock on China/NK, you might as well knock on every other country as well. The thing is, while it might be the government that chooses who to train and send in China, it is the parents who choose their kids to train and send in the United States. You are going to subject a kid to pain if you want him/her to be an Olympic athlete, the only difference between China/NK and the western world is who inflicts the pain: the government or the parents. You never just "choose" to undertake the rigorous training to become an Olympic athlete, because by the time you reach the age where you can make a serious choice, you are already too old. And by the way, your basketball example? Where are the "prototypical" guard sizes in the US national basketball team? Each player is a perfect specimen with a body tailored to their position. All the people that didn't make it are languishing in the D-leagues and most don't even make it past high school or college. A huge part about being an athlete is, if you don't have the right body size you won't make it to the Olympics. If the government won't steer you towards a different sport, reality will. Your going to get pain from the child either way, and you are going to have to do some forcing either way and if a government isn't going to steer you towards something else then competition will. So what is the major difference? And if there is no major difference, why are you dismissing the achievements of NK/China? Being an athlete is an extremely hard thing to do and that is why we celebrate it. So when you dismiss the achievements of the NK/Chinese athletes? That's pretty damn disgusting. Spoilered because it was getting too long. You're responding to something I didn't imply. And for the record, I only brought up "rural America" because your post seemed to imply I was another one of those clueless nationalistic white people. I guess we're even in that regard. For basketball, point guards are normally around low 6 feet to mid 6 feet. People of that height can excel in multiple sports. The government steering in China resulted in a team that had talented players in the forward/center positions but the guard positions were a bit of an afterthought. Some athletes who could have been good guards got steered to other sports. They realized that problem eventually but the talent on their national squad is still a bit light on guards. I don't get why you keep insisting I'm dismissing the achievements of NK/Chinese athletes. I was only trying to explain to people posting in the last few pages why countries such as NK/China dominate in sports such as weightlifting, which isn't that popular in China. I don't about NK, but then again, who does? It isn't like badminton and table tennis, which are relatively more popular in China. China will dominate those two latter sports even if they adopt the Western model. Don't put too much emphasis on the very arbitrary cutoff point of 18 years old. Children, especially in Western nations, do have some choice before that arbitrary cutoff age and other people can still influence you past that age. I think you have too dark a view of the programs that create these athletes. The vast majority do enjoy the sport they chose or got steered to to some degree. Even in China, a little kid can pretend to suck if they really didn't want to do the sport they were being steered to. I just don't understand why they try to steer people based on physique rather than just general interest. I know that it's important to a lot of sports, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be good at it when they switch over. I guess it really depends on how young they are when they're trained, but what if they steer them into it and they're no good? Then they've potentially wasted their life. I like that they're funding some obscure sports, but is it really the most efficient way of going about it? If you're around 6 ft tall you're probably well into your teens by then.
10,000 hours of training can overcome most deficiencies in your performance. The only thing it can't change is your genetics. So I would definitely prefer to have someone that is genetically gifted and try to sculpt them into a gold medalist than to have someone that just has a knack for a sport and can get really good really fast but will eventually hit a ceiling that they will be unable to overcome because they just weren't gifted physically.
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I have to say the coolest moment so far for me was watching Ariel Hsing take on her idol the #2 seed and play her strong in table tennis. She is pretty amazing for splitting her time between school and training, who knows what she could do if she trained similar times to the other top player. It seems that she is going to be phasing out table tennis to focus on academics and college tho so I wish her good luck in that.
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On August 01 2012 09:13 andrewlt wrote:
I'm surprised people have not yet caught on to the strategy of the Chinese and North Koreans. It's the low hanging fruit strategy. They're going after the less popular sports with weaker fields that give out a lot of medals. Sure, China is historically strong in certain more popular sports and they're trying to be competitive in many others. However, it is in the less popular ones where they are really cleaning up.
Also, some of the lower weight classes in certain sports are virtually extinct in first world countries.
This was actually talked about in the last Olympics that China had the Gold '08 strategy or something like that and they were going to emphasize events that the US wasn't historically dominant in. This is not news or anything, it was widely acknowledged in the open press by China leading up to 08 games.
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That is absolutely mind-boggling. Amazing.
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Wow that's some cool history. I think the most impressive thing about Phelps' run is that he did it now. The Olympics in 2012 are infinitely more competitive than they were all those years ago when those old greats won their medals. The gymnast he beat to gain the medal total would have no chance in hell of getting medals across 3 olympics, let alone 2, in todays world. You need to be 16-18 years old tops to have a shot at women's gymnastics.
I don't think anyone will be able to break his record in our lifetime, especially in a competitive sport like swimming.
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I don't care about 2004 or 2012. For me Phelps is already the greatest Sportsman of all time for his 2008 achievements.
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On August 01 2012 15:56 sharkie wrote:
I don't care about 2004 or 2012. For me Phelps is already the greatest Sportsman of all time for his 2008 achievements.
Tell me you're joking please.
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On August 01 2012 13:03 sung_moon wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2012 12:53 DannyJ wrote:
Damn a 24 year old female Romanian gymnast. She's like 120 in gymnast years. They were discussing earlier how during the World finals there was a 36 year old german gymnast O_o. But yea rewatching team USA win that gold in team gymnastics was great.
She's 37 actually. She won gold with the soviet-union-team in 1992. And now she made it to the vault final again, where she won silver in peking. After becoming a mother like 10 years ago.
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On August 01 2012 15:41 Seiferz wrote:I don't think anyone will be able to break his record in our lifetime, especially in a competitive sport like swimming.
Isn't swimming only sport where one can even achieve such an amount of medals? Swimmer can possibly win more gold medals in one year than most of the others can during their olympic career.
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I marvel at Phelps and what he has done, but it's hard to ignore the argument that medal count shouldn't be the sole measurement for the "greatest olympian ever." The best hypothetical swimmer in the world could have 10 golds (or however many swimming golds there is to be had) in one olympics, while the hypothetical best handball player (or other discipline with little medals) could only have 1. In other words, the # of medals is sort of arbitarily decided by the olympics people who decide how many medal events should exist for a discipline. And then you sort of end up with an arbitrary "greatest olympian." I think you got to consider other factors such as longevity, maybe impact.
Edit: Guy above me beat me to it.
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EPT
