Tuesday, August 12, 2008

SETTLING INTERNATIONAL SUPREMACY WITH CHALK AND SPARKLY LEOTARDS: Tonight, the women's team competition in artistic gymnastics will dominate coverage. Taylor has a preview:
If the US women's team wanted to lower expectations on the qualifying round, they succeeded too much. In a possible voodoo or karma related event, Sam Peszek, who could have been a serious threat on vault and beam, hurt her ankle during warm ups. She'll only compete on uneven bars tonight. During qualifiers, she looked okay considering she'd just hurt herself, but definitely not ready to get every point US is going to need on bars. Then Alicia Sacramone landed out of bounds on floor, and because bad things happen in threes, Nastia Lukin destroyed her dismount on bars. You'd think that anyone else on the team would be shaken up after that, but Shawn Johnson barely blinked, much less wavered on all her routines. I'm rooting for Liukin to hit that bar routine in either tonight or the event finals (or, hope beyond hope, both), because it's absolutely amazing when put together.

Based on difficulty (the "A" score), the US team is already at a disadvantage. Chinese women have insane release moves on bars and powerful tumbling on floor but it's frustrating that they they don't seem to get deducted for rushing through the dance and flexiblity elements. Color commentator Elfi Schlegel found Jiang Yuyuan's chorerography "stunning". I saw a lot of incomplete moves on her way to reach that next tumbling pass. Chung Fei, though, is super sharp on floor, on beam, and specially on vault. If the US wins tonight, its going to be based on a lot of athletic schadenfreude (Ed. note: watch this video.)

Tonight, there might as well be no teams other than US and China. I'm not discounting some Cinderella story for bronze, but the broadcast will be all about the fight for gold. You better believe NBC has the quickest editors in their dramatic intro department whipping up the epic showdown music and abusing the slow-mo function. The team's handlers aren't helping. Bela Karolyi showed up in the International Broadcasting Center Sunday night/Monday morning to talk to Costas about the women's chances (something about them being under an umbrella?), and ended up accusing the Argentinian judge of anti-American bias after they scored Johnson's beam execution with an 8.8. Bela, Bela, Bela, she may have been underscored by one person, but anti-American bias? If that's the case, the Korean judge might as well be an honorary citizen. The Argentinian underscored everybody.

10:30pm EST (if it's scheduled for 10:30am Beijing time, I'm assuming, even though the NBC schedule seems to be completely off?): The fate of the Western world is on the line, duh.

Treat this as an open thread for your live comments on all of Tuesday night's events.

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