Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!wxlvax!dwex From: dwex@wxlvax.UUCP (David Wexelblat) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: Brian Atkin"s article re bias Message-ID: <330@wxlvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 7-Aug-84 12:51:34 EDT Article-I.D.: wxlvax.330 Posted: Tue Aug 7 12:51:34 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 9-Aug-84 00:49:38 EDT References: crystal.353 Lines: 46 w.r.t Brian Atkins' (opus!atkins) comments on sportscasting (670@opus): (> lines denote quotes from Mr. Atkins' article) > W.r.t your flame on Kirt Thomas' remark on soviet judges, > look at the major upsets on Olympic history in which an > eastern block athlete was the winner. Then look at the > major examples of bad judging by an eastern judge in the > same time span (judging that was obviously bad, from more > than one nation's viewpoint). Behold! There are an incredible > amount of coincidences, arn't there. No there arn't (sic) (At least not in this paragraph, or elsewhere in the article, for that matter) Behold what? Cite some concrete examples, please. Or will you accept that the upset of Ecaterina Szabo in the Women's gymnastics was purely due to the presence of a US judge ? One small problem with the question of Szabo's defeat. Retton got a 10 to win the all-around. If you knew anything about how gymnastics is scored, you would know that she had to have gotten 10's from at least 3 of the 4 judges. (For those that don't know, there are four judges. The top and bottom scores are dropped, and the middle two are averaged.) The only way for her to get a ten was for threee judges to give her tens, as one of them would be dropped. That means the other two had to be 10's to give an average of 10. The fourth score didn't matter. The reason Szabo lost was that she got a 9.3 on the uneven bars in the team competition. She screwed up her landing. She deserved that score. Retton didn't screw up any events, therefore deserved to win. "ABC people" wouldn't happen to include Kathy Rigby McCoy, would it? She was the one I found most offensive, making accusations about the judges with very little substance that I could see. She also couldn't understand why the US women got low scores in the team competition parallel bars routine. Perhaps she didn't notice that most of them nearly fell off the bar (at least one actually did) At least you are willing to admit that your sources are poor. Wrong again! The event you are thinking of is the balance beam. On th uneven bars (not correct name -- parallel bars is the men's event) Julianne MacNamarra got a 10, and Mary Lou Retton got a 9.95. The Romanians screwed up on the uneven bars. David Wexelblat (...decvax!ittvax!wxlvax!dwex)