Ye Shiwen has been so perfect everyone assumes she's on drugs. After 4 wins in the Women's Laser Radial, Annalise Murphy looked set to spend the rest of the year peeing in plastic tubs, but showed the presence of mind to dissuade the testers by sailing like a normal person this afternoon. Just when we thought it was a complete procession, finishes of eighth and 19th brought us all down to earth, and served a timely reminder of how quickly things can change. Though Murphy still tops the standings, her lead has been trimmed to just two points, with 4 races before the medal race. James Espey (pictured left) made sure of a similarly inauspicious performance, standing 45th right now. O'Leary and Burrows fell to 12th in the Star class, while the 49er of Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern tumbled to 19th.
More mediocrity was to follow, with David McCann's finish of 27th in the men's Time Trial. Predictably, the Britlanders went ape-poopy as Bradley Wiggins, the bemutton-chopped winner of the Tour de France grabbed gold, but the real winner was the bloke whose chain snapped as he left the ramp. And then his back wheel fell off. Sometimes I guess it's just not your day.
Another man who knew it was simply not his day was our representative on the rapids, as Eoin Rheinisch - who came close to a medal in Beijing - crashed out of the canoeing slalom at the semi-final stage, finishing 14th at the Lee Valley course. With only 10 men qualifying for the final, Rhino found himself well outside the mark, having incurred a 50 second penalty for passing a gate coming towards the end of the course.
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| John Joe Nevin celebrates his 15-10 victory in the octo-finals |
One man who has never passed a gate is John Joe Nevin, and he once again displayed the class and style which has many - including this here blog - tipping him for glory. Nevin led from start to finish on his way to a 15-10 win over Kanat Abutalipov, and was given further encouragement in finding the world number one Anvar Yunusov dumped unceremoniously from the competition, beaten by Fierro Valdez. Nevin will guarantee a medal by beating Valdez on Sunday;
going by performances so
far, the only question is
what colour it will be.
Here, what do you think about the scoring of Olympic boxing? You know far more about fightin' that I, but I certainly thought, perhaps aided by BBC commentary, that John Joe deserved to win round 2 by more than he did round 1 earlier today. And the referee seemed a bit crap too. Just me?
ReplyDeleteBoxing in general is a clusterfuck when it comes to scoring. I've seen a couple of unbelievable calls this tournament - and one only has to look towards our absent Joe Ward to see what sort of nonsense can go on. In fairness, I didn't see a massive disparity between the second round and the scoring thereof - maybe a point or two, but frankly that's often the case. Referee was a little poor though - chappy was happy to bullock forward (particularly towards the end) and that normally gets controlled a little better in the 'Lympics. Still, a 15-10 win? Can't complain too much.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/02/olympics-boxing-satoshi-shimizu-appeal
ReplyDelete