How can a Chinese olympic vault girl who landed on her knees beat Sacramone who at least landed on her feet? ?

Question

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not all GO-AMERICA!!! with the olympic gymnastics. Sometimes you can clearly see where the ChiCom athletes have better form, better lines, crisper more professional looking routines than the American girls... But in the womens' vault the ChiCom girl landed on her knees on the 2nd vault and STILL beat the American girl. The American girl had 2 decent vaults but with a little hop-step on each landing.

I'm no gymnastics expert but you'd think that falling on your knees would get you a lower score then the girl who landed on her feet. Not to mention that you could see the Chinese girl making mistakes all through the knee-fall vault.

Even that skeevy Mustachio guy who was Nadia Komenichi's coach said Sacramone got robbed. I feel bad for the gymnasts because the human judging is/seems SO biased. Even a blind man can see the bias. Are the judges just kissing China's @$$ because they are hosting the show?

Answer 1

It wasn't just a crappy landing...The Chinese chic messed up the whole vault. If you don't think so watch it again; crooked when she left the vault ( minus some points) , bad form (minus more points), landed out of bounds(minus even more points), landed on her knees(minus a s**t load more points) You can talk start value all you want...all these deductions add up to one thing Bulls**t in China

Answer 2

I agree...Alicia Sacramone was ROBBED...It doesn't appear than anyone noticed this but my husband and did. On Cheng Fei's first vault, she landed out of bounds! We replayed it several times using our DVR and it's pretty clear that she landed out on her first vault. I think everyone was so impressed by the vault itself, they didn't pay any attention to where she landed! Combine that with the deduction for landing on her knees and the potential deduction for execution on initiating her vault and Alicia Sacramone would have had the bronze. My husband and I have been discussing the scoring throughout the gymnastics competition. It would seem that the judges are biased towards the Chinese athletes. Cheng Fei was overscored on the vault.

Answer 3

Just because the chigirl had a higher default does not automatically mean she will get a higher score no matter what.  She still should have had to make a landing on her feet.

They do harder routines in case someone does a higher routine.  If two gymnasts do the same difficulty, then the better vaults win.  If two gymnasts have different difficulties, then if they both land on their feet, the higher difficulty should win.

Answer 4

I don't support either country but that was just messed. Sacramone deserved the bronze, that Chinese girl landed on her knees I mean wtf. Man the olympics are rigged.

Answer 5

Not only that, but we re-wound the whole thing when my husband got home so he could watch it, and he saw during rewind that the China girl also landed out of bounds on the first vault, then quickly hopped to her left and back into bounds... that out of bounds was never deducted... and we watched it in slow motion about 5 times to see if she truly did land out of bounds, and to us, it looked like she did... her right foot was over the line on landing...not just on the line.  I feel really bad for the girl who got the red light too, not a good thing to have happen at the Olympics.  I thought the German girl was GREAT!  And what a great story to go with her.  I just don't get the whole thing this year, why can't things just be fairly judged all around?  Is that too much to ask?

Answer 6

even she landed with her head, she only got 0.8 reduction, its the rule

Answer 7

It's called DIFFICULTY. Cheng has 2 vaults that is more difficult than Sacramone and that is why the FALL gave Cheng 3rd.

If you want to blame thee judges for not giving Sacramone the Bronze go ahead...but the blame goes to Marta for not teaching her to do more difficult routines.

Answer 8

Do you guys know the scoring system is different.... The announcers mentioned it many times as well as the article on the recap.

Answer 9

NOw makes me wonder if  china deserves all those medals? rig scoring system-fake passport, fake fireworks, and they even faked the singing girl in red dress... and the story about those underage girls, hehehe kinda like telling us that child labor does exist.. and about the difficulty discussion... like in basketball between layup and a dunk they still both score 2 points, even the dunk is more difficult as long as you made the basket its still 2 pts., one choses a difficult move, to be rewarded the points one must land it, - i think the scoring for china is like if you land on your feet its a sure gold if not its just a bronze..

ALICIA SACRAMONE got ripoff

Answer 10

The Chinese girl may have done a more difficult vault with start value but the penalty taken off was way less than someone else who also had a bad landing- that part is supposed to be a standard deduction and not part of the other  2 parts of the score. If people would be given a pass for landing on their knees and stepping out of bounds if they did a more difficult vault, I am sure they would all jump at the chance. (Oh, she even had an error with take off, so it was off from the start).  

Answer 11

No. She did a much easier routine than the Chinese which matters a lot. Chang Fei did a lot of twisting while Alicia's was very simple. Clean landing is not everything, besides Alicia's landing wasn't that clean either. You earn a lot of points if you do difficult routine.

Commentators are so biased esp. that Bela guy coz he is the Manager of US gymnastics team.

Answer 12

This is proof that this scoring system needs to be sh*tcanned.  Start value shouldn't mean much when you totally mess up the whole vault and land on your knees.  I imagine an American that did the same thing would have received a 14.

Answer 13

here we go again... Cheng fei did get the score she deserved:

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing...

“The difficulty of the two vaults added up together was a huge difference between third and fourth place,” he said. “(Cheng’s) execution scores were as low as 8.5, which tells me that the necessary deductions were made. It might look strange at first sight, but if you look at the rules and the regulations, everything is as it should be.”

and the "mustachio guy" is annoying, he always makes up excuses for americans, and most things he says is wrong due to his old age.

Answer 14

It's too bad that judging is biased on a competitor's prior performance (3 world gold medals) and not strictly on the routine being performed.  I quit watching gymnastics after that major shaft.  If we want to give olympic medals based on prior world rankings, lets just forget doing the routines and have a medal ceremony.  

You'd think judges would have learned from the ice skating debacle a few years ago.  A total turn off and unfortunately that's why I tend to favor quantitative everts.  

It was a pretty shabby vault with mistakes throughout the routine, not just the landing.  If everything besides the landing was excellent - give her the medal.  But it wasn't!  Don't judges have replays????  

The chinese athletes are doing a great job, too bad the judges aren't.

Answer 15

its a new judging system, it also depends on difficulty, the chineese had much more difficulty then the US and besides for that she executed it all well

Answer 16

She got robbed.  That is all there is to it.  The whole vault is ridiculous.  You have a gold that went out of bounds twice and a bronze that landed on her knees.  How is that the best?

Answer 17

Even with a higher degree of difficulty, the Chinese girl was over scored.  She had a 8.550 on that last vault.  If you take in the fact that a fall to her knees is an auto 0.8 deduction, she had another .650 of deductions.  As Tim Daggett and Bela Karolyi pointed out, she had a substantial number of other deductions (perhaps over 1.0) that should have been taken and weren't.

So either the judges missed the other flaws or they didn't give her auto .8 deduction for a fall and perhaps a .3 deduction for a hop.  

Host countries usually get the home cooking (we did in Atlanta).  I'm more peeved by the IOC failing to investigate the discrepancies between the 2008 issued passports and all the prior age records for their 14 year old gymnasts.

Answer 18

anyone who is saying that just because the Chinese girls routine was harder is absolutely wrong... her routines added up to .9 higher than the Americans.  Although this is a significant amount, she should have been deducted 1.6 points for botching the handplant on the vault which is an automatic .8 deduction and the botched landing which is also a .8 deduction.  This is coming from a coach in Amateur gymnastics and I have been rooting for China this entire olympics.  This is by no means the Chinese fault but it is the judges and they should be punished in some way for this disastrous mistake that took a medal away from a deserving candidate

Answer 19

They're probably giving special "gifts" to the judges to ensure that their athletes get special treatment. But you know what? I really don't care about who wins so long as its not China. Its obvious that they're going through great lengths (underage athletes, rigged judging) to ensure they come out on top.  

Answer 20

I agree that Chung's first vault deserved the high score it got, but I also believe that something is wrong with a scoring system that allows a gymnast to land on her hands and knees and still medal.  Chung clearly got penalized for her vault and landing, but in my opinion it wasn't enough.  Either the judges didn't deduct for the other errors that have already been mentioned (position of hands on the horse, etc.), or there should be a difference between landing poorly on your feet, and a landing where the gymnast falls forward on their hands.

I'm not wild about Liuken losing the gold medal on the uneven bars to the tie-breaker, but I don't think having a mechanism for breaking ties is a bad thing.  When you break it down, she lost the gold by a tenth of a point from one judge.

Answer 21

I don't buy the "difficulty" explanation. Let's just look at Cheng's execution score for the second vault.  The execution score for her second vault is 8.55. This is way too high for multiple mistakes that she made - .8 mandatory for fall, add to it bad form, not touching vault with both hands, etc., and you get more than 1.5 in deduction. Since the "perfect" execution score is 10, and since her first vault where she didn't make these mistakes didn't get a 10 execution, it's mathematically impossible for them to have taken all the deductions and yet arrive to 8.55 execution.

I think it is incompetence more than bias...

Answer 22

I've never written on these blogs before, but after hearing what's being said I felt I had to write something. I'm one of the people in the minority here, but let's be fair. Everyone seems to be focused on Cheng Fei's second vault, but let's recognize that her first vault earned the highest score of all the women competing in the individual event vault competition, giving her a 16.075. She and Hong Un-jong of North Korea were the only two women who had routines with difficulty levels of 6.5 for each vault. Alicia Sacramone's two vaults only had difficulty levels of 6.3 and 5.8, respectively. The way the scoring goes, they start with the highest score you can receive if everything was done perfectly and make deductions from there. Cheng Fei got a 15.050 on her second vault, which was almost a 14, but because her first vault was so much better, it pulled her average score up, thereby making her overall total score just .025 higher than Alicia's. Alicia's performance, although very good, was not perfect, which was what she needed to make her vaults, which were not as difficult, earn her the Bronze Medal. If she had nailed them, there would be no argument.

There is no bias towards the Chinese athletes! They take the judges who are from the country the athletes represent out of the equation. If the scores had been in favor of the American athletes do you think there would be this much controversy! You don't hear Yang Wei complaining that he didn't even receive a medal  in the Individual Pommel Horse competition, and he's the Men's All-Around Gymnastics Gold Medal Winner! He had a pretty flawless routine, but his difficulty level was only 6.2, and Louis Smith from Britain, who had a break in form twice when his legs separated slightly still ended up with the Bronze because his difficulty level was 6.7. Or in the case of Jiang Yuyuan on the floor exercise, who didn't get a medal even with a flawless routine because hers was not as powerful a performance as the others who did get medals. Her start value was 6.3. Shawn Johnson's floor exercise had a start value of 6.4. She had a very slight misstep, but she still got a silver medal because overall her performance was much stronger, even with the small error, and she deserved it! So, scoring aside, Alicia did an awesome job and she represented her country very well, and she should be extremely proud of that!

Answer 23

As a former gymnast my difficulty numbers often saved my scores.  However, I find it disturbing that this put difficulty sooooo far over execution.  I, and everyone I know, would rather watch a thousand 5.8s landed on their feet than watch a sloppy 6.8 landed on their knees, on their heads, their guts, off the mat, etc.  What's the use???  I'm sure Ms. Sacramone could have done a 6.5 if execution/completion wasn't such a big deal.

Answer 24

She didn't beat the american. The chines girl had a violation and with landing on her knees really lowered her score. Besides the american was already in first place because only two girl had gone and she had a better score than the chinese girl.

Answer 25

That's called Difficulties factor. Landing is not everything.

Answer 26

When you're in the Olympics and it's the world stage, performing against world-class athletes, you've got to pull out all the stops and not hold back!

Or at least if you know your routine is not as difficult, it's got to be sooo perfectly executed that there's no way anyone can say anything about it.

Kudos to Alexander Artemev! Tim Daggett even said that he could've played it safe and had a clean routine on the pommel horse, but he was setting his sights higher. Where else you gonna go for the gusto! Sometimes you gotta reach higher to get what you want.

Answer 27

   Yes, the difficulty of Cheng Fei's vault was more difficult and they did deduct the points from the landing, however...when she comes on to the horse she is not square, her hands are skewed, her legs were apart, those all should be deductions but weren't.  If the judges deducted the points they should have, there is no way she should have been awarded the bronze.  I seen a commentator talk about it and had to go back on the dvr to see what he was talking about, and yes he was right!

Answer 28

I totally agree.  I'm a layperson, so not an expert by any means, but I don't think the whole new scoring system is a very good one.  The start value of an exercise might be higher, but the technical deductions should still be comparable from person to person, and in a number of cases they haven't been.

Answer 29

It the scoring that's the most to blame. I think execution should be more important than (not equal to) start values.

If someone had seen those two performances without commentators, scores, and without knowing who represented what country, I am ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY positive that they would say Alica was better.

Answer 30

Cheng Fei's routine was more difficult than Alicia's, so even though she got points off for a bad landing she started out with a higher degree of difficulty which gave her more starting points.  Plus, Sacramone didn't stick her landing either.  She didn't fall, but it wasn't a perfect landing.

You are all making a big deal about the LANDING.  So does that mean all the gymnasts just do one flip to stick the landing, and automatically get a perfect score?  No, there are other factors leading into the final score, including difficulty and form.

Answer 31

It is hard for a layperson to understand the diffculty of vaults. Most people judged by landing only. Here is the score I borrowed form another post by Asphyxia:

Sacramone:

Vault 1: A: 6.30 B: 9.450 - Total: 15.750

Vault 2: A: 5.80 B: 9.525 - Total: 15.325

Final score : 15.537

Cheng Fei:

Vault 1: A: 6.50 B: 9.575 - Total: 16.075

Vault 2: A: 6.50 B: 8.550 - Total: 15.050

Final Score: 15.567

A is diffculty, B is execution.

Chung Fei already had a lot of marks deducted by her unsuccessful landing. If landing is really that important as many Sacramone supporters suggested, I am sure most atheles will do, e.g. 1 somersault instead of 2, 1 body twist instead of 2 to secure a perfect landing.

The result is: it will get very very boring because everyone are doing easy vaults.

Sacramone played safe and did easy vaults, she  paid the price by not getting any medal. Fair play.

Also, it is not fair to weight diffculty too low, For example, 1 somersault perfect landing has a huge different with 2 somersaults perfect landing, as 1 more somersault could be 5+ times more diffcult than 1. if we weight too heavy on perfect landing, it will be very unfair.