Games of the XXIX Olympiad
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CajunMama
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad - Day 11
Gold Medal contender drops out of olympics. Mr. Cormier was from here in lafayette, my home town. Tragedy has marred his life and this is such a sad ending to achieving one of his goals.
Story here
OLYMPICS: Kidney ailment ends Cormier's quest for gold; Cormier responding to treatment following organ failure in Beijing
Bob Heist • bheist@theadvertiser.com • August 21, 2008
Shock. Disbelief. Despair.
Those were the easy words to come up with to describe the latest disappointment to rock the life of Olympic wrestler Daniel Cormier.
No one, though, could quite articulate a broken heart.
"I'm sick," said Cormier's high school coach at Northside, Stephen "Tank" Lotief. "I'm sick. How do you put this into words?"
On Wednesday night, the six-time U.S. national champion was supposed to be wearing a blue singlet in bout 121 of the Beijing Olympics in freestyle wrestling, facing Cuba's Michel Batiste in the preliminary round at 211.5 pounds.
Instead, Cormier was lying in a bed taking intravenous medication for kidney failure that had rushed him to a Beijing hospital less than 24 hours before.
A gold medal hopeful, Cormier successfully made weight Tuesday, but later in the evening experienced severe physical reactions while trying to rehydrate his body. He was first treated at the Poly Clinic in the Athlete Village and later at a local hospital.
Accompanied by his wife, Robin, and mother, Audrey Cormier Benoit, when Cormier was first seen by hospital doctors, they determined his kidney function was at just 30 percent.
In an exclusive telephone interview with The Daily Advertiser on Wednesday afternoon, Cormier was holding out hope that he might be able to compete and improve on a fourth-place finish at the 2004 Athens Games.
His body, which rejected fluids for hours after weighing in, though, didn't cooperate.
"For 10 years I've been taking my body where it didn't want to go, going up and down (in weight)," Cormier, 29, said from his hospital bed in Beijing. "I guess my body had enough."
Robin confirmed that Daniel was responding well to IV medication and that early reports he would have to undergo dialysis were unfounded.
"Dialysis was mentioned at first because his kidneys were operating so poorly, but U.S. (Olympic Team) doctors were against it, and Daniel was against it," she said. "The numbers are dropping and it looks like he'll have normal (kidney) function."
News of Cormier being unable to compete is the latest in a string of well-documented disappointments that have followed the greatest wrestler in Louisiana history.
They include:
On Thanksgiving Day 1986, at age 7, his father, Joseph, was shot and killed during an argument with the father of his second wife. As a junior at Northside High School, a close friend was killed in an automobile accident; the next year a cousin died in another one.
On Jan. 27, 2001, Cormier's best friend at Oklahoma State, Daniel Lawson, was one of 10 people who died in a plane crash involving the Cowboys basketball team.
On June 14, 2003, his 3 1/2-month-old daughter Kaedyn was killed when a tractor-trailer slammed into the car she was riding in outside Austin, Texas.
And now this for the three-time state champion at Northside, two-time JUCO champion at Colby (Kan.) Community College, NCAA Division I runner-up at Oklahoma State, six-time U.S. national champion, 2007 World medalist and two-time Olympian.
"This is hard to believe. I just can't believe this," said Dr. Nick Accardo, an orthopedic surgeon in Franklin that's been involved with Cormier's life and his career since the ninth grade. "This is terrible news."
The only American wrestler to medal at the World Championships in September after earning a bronze, Cormier was a strong gold medal contender, and had become an intriguing media story after overcoming so much turmoil in his personal life.
But his second Olympic dream will end like the first - with one of the world's top wrestlers leaving the Games minus a medal.
Official word came Wednesday at 8:50 p.m. CDT that Cormier had withdrawn from the competition in a U.S. Olympic Committee memo.
"It's a disappointment. I can't compare it to anything," Cormier said. "I trained so hard and had big dreams and was on track to do special things in Beijing ...
"I'm pretty down. What can you say?"
Story here
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International Olympic Committee launches probe into He Kexin's age
From The Times
August 22, 2008
The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into mounting allegations that Chinese authorities covered up the true age of their gold-medal winning gymnastics star because she was too young to compete.
An IOC official told The Times that because of "discrepancies" that have come to light about the age of He Kexin, the host nation’s darling who won gold in both team and individual events, an official inquiry has been launched that could result in the gymnast being stripped of her medals.
The investigation was triggered as a US computer expert claimed yesterday to have uncovered Chinese government documents that he says prove she is only 14 - making her ineligible to compete in the Olympics - rather than 16, as officials in Beijing insist is her age.
Mike Walker, a computer security expert, told The Times how he tracked down two documents that he says had been removed from a Chinese government website. The documents, he said, stated that He’s birth date was January 1 1994 - making her 14 - and not January 1 1992, which is printed in her passport.
He’s true age has been a subject of swirling controversy since the Games began. Questions over her eligibility intensified after she edged out the US gymnast Nastia Liukin for the gold medal in the uneven bars on Monday, and was part of the team gold triumph last week. She also edged Britain’s Beth Tweddle out of the medals.
Bela Karolyi, the former gymnastics coach whose wife, Martha, coaches the US women’s team, has repeatedly accused the Chinese of fielding underage female gymnasts. The ages of two other team members have also aroused suspicion: Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin. Time magazine reported that government records, that have since disappeared, showed both girls to be 14. Gymnasts must be 16 to compete.
The minimum age for female gymnasts was increased from 14 to 15 in 1981, and up to 16 in 1997, to protect the physical and mental health of young athletes.
Nadia Comaneci was 14 when she won her fist Olympic gold medal in 1976. Yet despite her stardom, there were criticisms that young girls were being pushed too hard at an age when their bodies and bones were still growing, causing permanent damage. Ironically her coach was Mr Karolyi.
There were also concerns about their mental health, because of the pressure of competing on the world stage at such a young age, and that they were vulnerable to exploitation and even physical abuse by coaches.
"They are obviously kids," Mr Karolyi said. "Twelve, 14 max - and they’re telling the world they are 16? What arrogance." Although the US team has deliberately steered clear of the controversy, his wife suggested after the US team’s loss to China that the Chinese gymnasts were still losing their baby teeth. "One of the girls has a missing tooth," she said.
Mary Lou Retton, the US Olympic gymnastics gold-medallist in the 1984 Games, told the New York Times last month: "The girls are so little, so young. They say they are 16, but I don’t know." The IOC has been accused of deliberately ignoring the issue because it feared offending China.
Yet Giselle Davies, an IOC spokesperson, said tonight that because of troubling new developments, the committee had instructed the International Gymnastics Federation, the sport’s governing body, to investigate.
"More information has come to light that did point to discrepancies," Ms Davies said. "We have asked the gymnastics federation to look into it further with the national Chinese federation. If there is a question mark, and we have a concern - which we do - we ask the governing body of any sport to look into...as to why there is a discrepancy."
The man who uncovered the allegations about the underage athlete told The Times that he was not even a sports a fan, but decided to investigate the issue to determine if Chinese authorities were lying. He eventually discovered that two Excel spreadsheets on the Chinese government’s official sports website - http://www.sport.gov.cn - that mentioned her name had recently being removed.
"There was a conclusion here," Mr Walker said. "These documents existed, on a state-wide website, and now they don’t exist, and this change has taken place recently. I was interested because these were documents that no-one could find. If there’s information to be found on the internet I’m a citizen journalist - it was a challenge."
He turned to a Chinese search engine, Baidu. In its cache he found both documents. "The listing in there, quite clearly, is He Kexin’s birth date, January 1, 1994," Mr Walker said.
That makes her 14 years and 220 days old and too young to compete. The lists were compiled by the General Administration of Sport of China.
How aggressive and sustained the IOC-ordered investigation will be remains to be seen. If it did ultimately result in the stripping of gold medals from one of China’s favourite athletes, it would be an Olympic scandal with reverberations far beyond the sport itself.
In July the New York Times published references to articles in the Beijing press in which He was referred to as only 14 years old.
Chinese officials responded immediately by providing the newspaper with a passport copy indicating He had been born on January 1, 1992, but still doubts lingered, not least because the athlete looks barely past puberty.
When asked about her recently - and before He’s gold medal wins - IOC president Jacques Rogge claimed it was not his organisation’s role to check the age of competitors. "The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes," he said.
Under his blog name Stryde Hax, Mr Walker wrote: "Much of the coverage regarding Kexin’s age has only mentioned ‘allegations’ of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state...rise to a level of evidence higher than ‘allegation’. How official are these documents? Pretty dang official - they were issued by the General Administration of Sport of China."
He insists that she is old enough to compete. Asked by journalists about the debate, she said: "My real age is 16. I don’t care what other people say. I want other people to know that 16 is my real age."
Both China and the US came into the Games determined to show the other who was boss. Although China is generally recognised as the leading nation, with a tally tonight of 46 gold medals to the USA’s 27, Americans claim to interpret success by the total number of medals won, which puts their team ahead with 86 to 83. With the scores that close, every last piece of metal is precious – meaning this row could follow He firmly into adulthood.
From The Times
August 22, 2008
The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into mounting allegations that Chinese authorities covered up the true age of their gold-medal winning gymnastics star because she was too young to compete.
An IOC official told The Times that because of "discrepancies" that have come to light about the age of He Kexin, the host nation’s darling who won gold in both team and individual events, an official inquiry has been launched that could result in the gymnast being stripped of her medals.
The investigation was triggered as a US computer expert claimed yesterday to have uncovered Chinese government documents that he says prove she is only 14 - making her ineligible to compete in the Olympics - rather than 16, as officials in Beijing insist is her age.
Mike Walker, a computer security expert, told The Times how he tracked down two documents that he says had been removed from a Chinese government website. The documents, he said, stated that He’s birth date was January 1 1994 - making her 14 - and not January 1 1992, which is printed in her passport.
He’s true age has been a subject of swirling controversy since the Games began. Questions over her eligibility intensified after she edged out the US gymnast Nastia Liukin for the gold medal in the uneven bars on Monday, and was part of the team gold triumph last week. She also edged Britain’s Beth Tweddle out of the medals.
Bela Karolyi, the former gymnastics coach whose wife, Martha, coaches the US women’s team, has repeatedly accused the Chinese of fielding underage female gymnasts. The ages of two other team members have also aroused suspicion: Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin. Time magazine reported that government records, that have since disappeared, showed both girls to be 14. Gymnasts must be 16 to compete.
The minimum age for female gymnasts was increased from 14 to 15 in 1981, and up to 16 in 1997, to protect the physical and mental health of young athletes.
Nadia Comaneci was 14 when she won her fist Olympic gold medal in 1976. Yet despite her stardom, there were criticisms that young girls were being pushed too hard at an age when their bodies and bones were still growing, causing permanent damage. Ironically her coach was Mr Karolyi.
There were also concerns about their mental health, because of the pressure of competing on the world stage at such a young age, and that they were vulnerable to exploitation and even physical abuse by coaches.
"They are obviously kids," Mr Karolyi said. "Twelve, 14 max - and they’re telling the world they are 16? What arrogance." Although the US team has deliberately steered clear of the controversy, his wife suggested after the US team’s loss to China that the Chinese gymnasts were still losing their baby teeth. "One of the girls has a missing tooth," she said.
Mary Lou Retton, the US Olympic gymnastics gold-medallist in the 1984 Games, told the New York Times last month: "The girls are so little, so young. They say they are 16, but I don’t know." The IOC has been accused of deliberately ignoring the issue because it feared offending China.
Yet Giselle Davies, an IOC spokesperson, said tonight that because of troubling new developments, the committee had instructed the International Gymnastics Federation, the sport’s governing body, to investigate.
"More information has come to light that did point to discrepancies," Ms Davies said. "We have asked the gymnastics federation to look into it further with the national Chinese federation. If there is a question mark, and we have a concern - which we do - we ask the governing body of any sport to look into...as to why there is a discrepancy."
The man who uncovered the allegations about the underage athlete told The Times that he was not even a sports a fan, but decided to investigate the issue to determine if Chinese authorities were lying. He eventually discovered that two Excel spreadsheets on the Chinese government’s official sports website - http://www.sport.gov.cn - that mentioned her name had recently being removed.
"There was a conclusion here," Mr Walker said. "These documents existed, on a state-wide website, and now they don’t exist, and this change has taken place recently. I was interested because these were documents that no-one could find. If there’s information to be found on the internet I’m a citizen journalist - it was a challenge."
He turned to a Chinese search engine, Baidu. In its cache he found both documents. "The listing in there, quite clearly, is He Kexin’s birth date, January 1, 1994," Mr Walker said.
That makes her 14 years and 220 days old and too young to compete. The lists were compiled by the General Administration of Sport of China.
How aggressive and sustained the IOC-ordered investigation will be remains to be seen. If it did ultimately result in the stripping of gold medals from one of China’s favourite athletes, it would be an Olympic scandal with reverberations far beyond the sport itself.
In July the New York Times published references to articles in the Beijing press in which He was referred to as only 14 years old.
Chinese officials responded immediately by providing the newspaper with a passport copy indicating He had been born on January 1, 1992, but still doubts lingered, not least because the athlete looks barely past puberty.
When asked about her recently - and before He’s gold medal wins - IOC president Jacques Rogge claimed it was not his organisation’s role to check the age of competitors. "The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes," he said.
Under his blog name Stryde Hax, Mr Walker wrote: "Much of the coverage regarding Kexin’s age has only mentioned ‘allegations’ of fraud, and the IOC has ignored the matter completely. I believe that these primary documents, issued by the Chinese state...rise to a level of evidence higher than ‘allegation’. How official are these documents? Pretty dang official - they were issued by the General Administration of Sport of China."
He insists that she is old enough to compete. Asked by journalists about the debate, she said: "My real age is 16. I don’t care what other people say. I want other people to know that 16 is my real age."
Both China and the US came into the Games determined to show the other who was boss. Although China is generally recognised as the leading nation, with a tally tonight of 46 gold medals to the USA’s 27, Americans claim to interpret success by the total number of medals won, which puts their team ahead with 86 to 83. With the scores that close, every last piece of metal is precious – meaning this row could follow He firmly into adulthood.
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Category 5
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad - Day 14
What a joke. The gymnastics results IMO will always be tainted. The IOC has failed those who follow the olympics, as well as the integrity of the games.
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijin ... &type=lgns
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijin ... &type=lgns
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad - Day 14
Stories like this http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=175855 makes stuff like this 
disappear, though. . .
disappear, though. . .Afghanistan win first ever Olympic medal
BEIJING (AP) -- Afghanistan won their first Olympic medal Wednesday, when Rohullah Nikpai defeated world champion Juan Antonio Ramos of Spain to take the bronze in the men's under 58-kilogram taekwondo competition.
Flashy kicker Nikpai, who has been practicing the Korean martial art since he was 10, defeated Ramos 4-1 in their bronze medal playoff, outscoring his limping opponent.
Nikpai was placed second in the World Taekwondo Federation's world qualifying event in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam last year.
The Games medal brings him a $50,000 prize from a mobile phone company in Afghanistan.
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Re: Re:
Press reports here state that Bolt has been eating lots of yam. Ackee apparently also played a part. I suspect he's also been drinking manish water (don't ask, just Google it).vbhoutex wrote:abajan wrote:Jamaica owns this Olympics 100M! First it was the Bolt of lightning (who could have run it in 9.5 secs IMO). Then the women got the top 3 spots (1 Gold and 2 tied for Silver). Amazing stuff, man.
There's gonna be one heck of a welcome home party in Jamaica!
I want to know what they are feeding those runners!!!!!!
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad - Day 14
Women's Basketball Gold Medal Game 92-65 USA over Australia
Men's Basketball Gold Medal Game USA vs. Spain Live 2:30 am EDT
Women's Soccer Gold Medal Game 1-0 USA over Brazil
Men's Baseball Bronze medal Game 8-4 USA over Japan (btw, South Korea beat Cuba for the gold)
Men's and Women's 4x400m: Well, let's just say the USA didn't drop any batons this time. . . . both won gold . . . and the Bahamians taught the Brits a lesson about taunting. . .
Women's Volleyball Gold Medal Game: 3-1 Brazil over USA
Men's Basketball Gold Medal Game USA vs. Spain Live 2:30 am EDT
Women's Soccer Gold Medal Game 1-0 USA over Brazil
Men's Baseball Bronze medal Game 8-4 USA over Japan (btw, South Korea beat Cuba for the gold)
Men's and Women's 4x400m: Well, let's just say the USA didn't drop any batons this time. . . . both won gold . . . and the Bahamians taught the Brits a lesson about taunting. . .
Women's Volleyball Gold Medal Game: 3-1 Brazil over USA
Last edited by lurkey on Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Brent
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad - Day 14
BEIJING (AP) -- Cuba's Angel Matos deliberately kicked a referee square in the face after he was disqualified in a bronze-medal match, prompting the World Taekwondo Federation to recommend he be banned for life.
"We didn't expect anything like what you have witnessed to occur," said WTF secretary general Yang Jin-suk. "I am at a loss for words."
Yang also recommended Matos' coach be banned.
Matos was winning 3-2, with 1:02 left in the second round, when he fell to the mat after being hit by his opponent, Kazakhstan's Arman Chilmanov. Matos was sitting there, awaiting medical attention, when he was disqualified for taking too much injury time. Fighters get one minute, and Matos was disqualified when his time ran out.
Matos angrily questioned the call, pushed a judge, then pushed and kicked referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden, who will require stitches in his lip. Matos spat on the floor and was escorted out.
"This is an insult to the Olympic vision, an insult to the spirit of taekwondo and, in my opinion, an insult to mankind," Yang said.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/taekwondo/ne ... anned+life
"We didn't expect anything like what you have witnessed to occur," said WTF secretary general Yang Jin-suk. "I am at a loss for words."
Yang also recommended Matos' coach be banned.
Matos was winning 3-2, with 1:02 left in the second round, when he fell to the mat after being hit by his opponent, Kazakhstan's Arman Chilmanov. Matos was sitting there, awaiting medical attention, when he was disqualified for taking too much injury time. Fighters get one minute, and Matos was disqualified when his time ran out.
Matos angrily questioned the call, pushed a judge, then pushed and kicked referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden, who will require stitches in his lip. Matos spat on the floor and was escorted out.
"This is an insult to the Olympic vision, an insult to the spirit of taekwondo and, in my opinion, an insult to mankind," Yang said.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/taekwondo/ne ... anned+life
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad - Day 14
Brent wrote:BEIJING (AP) -- Cuba's Angel Matos deliberately kicked a referee square in the face after he was disqualified in a bronze-medal match, prompting the World Taekwondo Federation to recommend he be banned for life.
"We didn't expect anything like what you have witnessed to occur," said WTF secretary general Yang Jin-suk. "I am at a loss for words."
Yang also recommended Matos' coach be banned.
Matos was winning 3-2, with 1:02 left in the second round, when he fell to the mat after being hit by his opponent, Kazakhstan's Arman Chilmanov. Matos was sitting there, awaiting medical attention, when he was disqualified for taking too much injury time. Fighters get one minute, and Matos was disqualified when his time ran out.
Matos angrily questioned the call, pushed a judge, then pushed and kicked referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden, who will require stitches in his lip. Matos spat on the floor and was escorted out.
"This is an insult to the Olympic vision, an insult to the spirit of taekwondo and, in my opinion, an insult to mankind," Yang said.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/taekwondo/ne ... anned+life
He has been banned for life by the World Taekwondo Federation.
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HurricaneBill
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad - Final day
Brent wrote:REDEEM TEAM GETS GOLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
go bed, Brent. . .. .
lol, they got Coach K with a version of the Gatorade dump
off to find the closing ceremonies soon. .. . I'm not waiting until 8:00 to watch this. . .
Congrats to the men's volleyball team. . .
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streetsoldier
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streetsoldier wrote:It's all over...We have the most total medals, but China comes in second with 100, of which 51 are gold(?).
I expect the IOC to be VERY busy researching the stats and judging from this Olympiad.
51 golds is the most one country has had in the post-Soviet era.
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Brent
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad
To me, this was MUCH better than Athens 2004. I don't know if I was just more interested overall, if it was the fact there was lots of live stuff in primetime(as opposed to 4 years ago), or if it just was better. For all the negativity surrounding these games since the spring, I was very pleased with how things went. The air quality was cleared up thanks to mother nature early on in the games so smog wasn't a big issue, and the U.S. had it's best Olympics since the 1984 L.A. games(which it should be noted the Soviet Union boycotted). It also will go down(pending this weekend's ratings but I'm sure it will) as the most watched Olympics ever in the U.S. The controversy of the age of Chinese gymnasts will I'm sure leave a dark cloud, but there was just so much good stuff that happened.
That being said, I'm glad it's over. Looking forward to getting back to normal with TV.
That being said, I'm glad it's over. Looking forward to getting back to normal with TV.
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Re: Games of the XXIX Olympiad
Brent wrote:
That being said, I'm glad it's over. Looking forward to getting back to normal with TV.
Not before having to suffer through the conventions, unfortunately . . .
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