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From: pal@crystal.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re:Re: Wexelblat's reply to my reply to Atkins
Message-ID: <355@crystal.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 9-Aug-84 14:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: crystal.355
Posted: Thu Aug  9 14:59:59 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Aug-84 00:19:51 EDT
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 46

Some clarifications on my previous article, prompted by David Wexelblat's
followup (excerpted below).
> [ME] 	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 ?
>  
>  [Wexelblat] One small problem with the question of Szabo's defeat.
>  [...explanation of scoring elided...]
>  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.

Sorry if I didn't make this clear: I am *NOT* saying that Szabo deserved to
win.  In fact, my point was just the opposite -- Upsets are not due solely to
biased judging, the athlete's performances occasionally (:-)) have something to
do with the outcome.  When that outcome is the victory of a "Commie" over a US
athlete, however, there seem to be too many people (for my taste, at least) who
cannot accept that it may have been a fair outcome.  I do not regard such an
attitude as exemplary sportspersonship.
Since, as Mr. Wexelblat points out, the outcome referred to above COULD NOT
have been due to biased judging by a single judge, it is perhaps a poor
example.  However, the scoring method described only makes my point stronger:
How then can the ABC commentators allege that bias (of a single judge)
affected scores?
>  
>  
> [ME] 	"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)
>  
>  Wrong again!  The event you are thinking of is the balance beam.

Mea Culpa!  I *WAS* referring to the balance beam.  Sorry for the mistake.
>  
>  					David Wexelblat
>  					(...decvax!ittvax!wxlvax!dwex)
>  
Anil Pal
crystal!pal
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison

P.S. Although this may not have been apparent from my article, I DO know the
names of the gymnastic events for man and women, and the scoring system.