Olympic Coverage

Reviews and commentary on books, films, etc.
selewis
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22 riders, 10 jumps: 1.5 m square ox; vert (1.55m); in & out combo (ox, ox); solid panel; panel 1.6m; 1 2 triple (ox ox vert); liverpool oxer ( 2m spread); triplebar; narrow vert 1.6m; oxer 1.55 x1.9.

Schultz/ SWE 17+

Williams AUS 20 +

Ludger Beerbaum GER 0+

Schroder NED 12+

Henselwood CAN (WD)

Greenbergh UKR 4+

Djupvik NOR 4+

M Beerbaum GER 4 +

Guerdat SUI 4+

Pessoa BRA 0+

Ward US 0+

Alexander AUS 4+

Benedicto BRA 8

Hoorn NED 4

Endressen NOR 16

Stockdale GB 16

Madden US 4

Houtzager NED 4

It has started raining about 3/4 of the way through the clears, bummer: the thought plickens...

Bengtsson SWE double clear (after raining) the Swedes go uncharacteristically nuts

Maher GB 20

Lansink BEL 8 (ah, well)

Lamaze CAN DC (Oh Canada!)



Jump Off for all 3 spots. Bengtsson Lamaze for gold and the six 4 faulters for bronze...
selewis
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L Beerbaum 4+

M Beerbaum 0+

Pessoa 0+

Ward 4+ cuts through flower bed for time which would have worked, but, alas, crashes through last fence

Hoorn 8

Madden 0-ditto on flower bed

Houtzager 8- takes flower bed too

Madden bronze (on time)

Bengtsson a careful round but 4 at last fence

A slow clear and Canada takes it...

Lamaze....Yeeehaaw!

Gotta git. Congrats Lamaze et al.
selewis
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Home again, with a few hours to mull over this year's horse olympics. First off it's great that the Chinese chose to field a complete slate of horse events- minus the pentathlon which is no loss from the standpoint of good horsemanship- hopefully future hosts will follow suit. In the TDE, the shortened endurance phase, with no roads and track or steeplechase, has had a big effect on the sport. This change opened the door for Germany and other continental nations to do better in this event as it suits their style of riding and bigger horses and they did well accordingly.

Dressage I'm least competent to weigh in on, but what the heck. The Europeans captured all the top spots but I wouldn't say that they have a monopoly on the sport as in the past. The US, GB, and Russia put in some nice rides and had riders near the top. It also seemed to me that most of the riders were sitting taller and quieter in the saddle than has been the vogue of late. Maybe the influence of Balkenhol in the US, and other classical riders is bringing the pendulum back to the center again in dressage.

There were some new faces in SJ but a lot of old familiar ones too: Ian Millar (61) has ridden for Canada in every Olympics since Munich; Nick Skelton and John Whittaker (approaching 90?) for GB; Jos Lansink has been around awhile and finished near the top. I haven't been following SJ closely for a while but wonder what happened to the German riders this year, horseflesh? Not that it's any great shame to only be in the top dozen or so riders in the world. Though not reflected in the medals count, Brazil also had a good team. Things just didn't go their way.

While the TDE is getting technical and twisty, more and more like show jumping every year, it seemed that the SJ courses were very traditional: Not a lot of clutter around the jumps, only one skinny gate that I recall, few tight turns(for SJ), one water per round but numerous liverpools -that didn't cause many problems in the rides that I saw- the allowed times were very generous and except in the jump-off were not much of a factor, the jumps were huge as one would expect (walking the course some of the riders looked like Kilroy peering over the tops of them). I didn't get to see much of the team competition and so lost the tenor of it but I had a look at the courses and they were airy, as were all the courses. Canada was at a great disadvantage; with only three riders they had no drop score: just getting to the end was an impressive feat, but they still took second. Congratulations to the US team who beat them without their fourth rider needing to ride.

In the individual the finish was very close. Mclain Ward's ploy of cutting through the flower boxes to shave time was a brilliant surprise and almost earned him the bronze but by the time he reached the last fence, a block wall, he was going so fast that he took out the top half of it with the front half of his horse. As they say in the sport, 'speed kills'-a gutsy try though. I don't know if he shared his plans with fellow US rider Beezie Madden BEFORE the jump-off, but she adopted it and laid down a fast clear round that those who came after her had to try to beat, without success. Bengtsson had a tough job in the jump-off for 1st place. Going first he had to go clean and fast to put the pressure on Lamaze. Unfortunately he only got the fast part accomplished, leaving one rail on the ground. Lamaze then had choices, to chance it by going slow and clear, but take the risk that if he dropped a rail it would put him in second- at least he didn't have to tear around the jumps to try and beat a fast clear. As it was he moved around at a moderate clip, considering, and left them all up under the time.
It's great that Canada did so well: Congratulations, félicitations.
selewis
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Afterthought: Throughout the years the Ind SJ final has always been the last competition of the summer Olympics. I'm not sure exactly when this practice was dropped but it was not the case at these games. Along with the loss of uniformed riders another tradition bites the dust.
Pat Holscher
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http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/fro ... l?digest=1

His horse tested positive for a controlled substance.
selewis
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Pat Holscher wrote:http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/fro ... l?digest=1

His horse tested positive for a controlled substance.
Thanks Pat. I noticed a headline at the nbc site referring to this but hadn't read the details. Whether from naivety or gullibility, generally when I run across this sort of thing I assume it's an innocent mistake, hard to believe that anyone would try to get away with it. For example, nothing will ever convince me that Lance Armstrong cheated in the Tour de France. Here too, I lean that way. But there's a lot of sad precedent to the contrary.

S
selewis
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Whoops.
Correction: there is a modern pentathlon being held at the Peking Olympics. Sorry. And sorry for the mistake. Hopefully the horsemanship will be of a higher calibre than that seen in previous years.
selewis
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Oh my. As bad as ever. I watched the first three riders in the men's. It's not much fun seeing game horses getting jabbed in the mouth and rapped at every jump (those they generously choose to carry their incompetent riders over or through) and then smacked for very sensibly refusing to do it again. The first rider carried his stick upside down for more whacking leverage(?)- or he just doesn't know any better. Three rounds is more than enough for this kid. It's sad that any horse owner would loan his good horse to enable this event. What's worse, every horse has to carry two or three riders. There may be some decent riders somewhere in the lists but it's not worth suffering through the rest to find them. Shame on the Chinese, the Olympic committee and anyone else connected with this needless cruelty. The horse doesn't know or care that it's not intentional.

Harsh choice of words, I know. And I'm not saying that it is criminal abuse or even rises to the level that one might overlook at any popular trail head of weekend riders. But the lack of minimum standards is unjustifiable. These are athletes after all; they're presumed to be coordinated; if they can't put in enough time learning to ride well enough to make it around a 3' course they don't deserve the Olympic imprimatur. The joy of seeing the riders getting their just deserts being launched arse over tea kettle into the rails isn't compensation enough for having to endure the uncomprehending looks of horses getting punished while trying their best.

Bah.
CRB
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Modern Pentathlon

In their defense, it is a tough sport, and not very popular, (more popular in Europe) I think there were only 4 competitions in the States this year. It’s hard to get good at anything with out competing, practice is fine but not the same as competition. And I read that they had a camp at my alma mater, NMMI this summer, well minus the horse part…..go figure. Have a camp to learn the sport and leave out a whole section, My alma mater saw fit to empty the stables in 1997. ( So no more polo either)

I competed back in the 60’s and 70's, and nearly all competitors came from running and swimming backgrounds. At the time I was one of the few that came from a riding shooting background. I haven’t been around the sport for 30+ years but even back then I met coaches that thought the riding was not important….They considered swimming the most important, and the hardest to teach, so they wanted swimmers. Of course they were terrible riders and good swimmers so that may have been the problem.
selewis
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CRB; Reading your defense- and rereading my comments- I'm tempted to relent a bit, not in substance but perhaps in respect to severity. Folks know I often wax a bit vituperative off the cuff: Surely it's not the worst thing in the world for a horse to get bumped a bit, or I'd be doing hard time myself.

Interesting that you've competed in this curious event. The little footage I've seen of it from the early days when the competitors were drafted from the military reveals a better calibre of horsemanship. Maybe not as high on average as that found in the other horse events but much better than that seen recently.

Sandy
CRB
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From what I remember the original rules for MP were shooting military side arm at 25 m, swim 300 m, fencing epee, 4K run and 5k cross country ride.

But then the teams were all from the military in those days so you can imagine the riding was at a level far and above todays, (The military was in charge of the US team till the mid 50's) but the event was held over 4 days, now its all in one day.
Pat Holscher
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All I can say is that I would have appreciated more equestrian events, shooting events, and the like, and less discussion on pre teen Chinese gymnasts. If there was an emoticon for snoozing, I'd insert it here on that coverage.

Just my grumpy opinion.
CRB
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The Oxygen network carried all the equestrian events, which was ok if you have cable or if your cable network carries it.

I wish the directors knew more about the sports they cover, the editing cuts for the cross country coverage are annoying.
selewis
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I can sympathize with anyone who saw only the TV coverage. I didn't catch any of it except 15 minutes of dressage one morning but I've suffered great disappointments in years past- like Charlie Brown hoping to kick the ball at the start of every football season. Rats.

In 1992 there was extensive, I'd say complete, coverage of the equestrian events if one subscribed to them via cable. It was a very good year. But apparently somewhat of a bust for the network sponsoring it because the experiment was never repeated. Every Olympics since then has been filled with dashed hopes for anyone hoping to really follow the horse events. Even the tapes that were made available have always been severely edited and the commentary has been dubbed in after the event- making for a surreal atmosphere that has been almost laughable at times because you know that the speaker knows how things ended up and is faking all his reactions. Until this year.

With the advent of computer technology everything was covered in real time. Kudos to NBC for the decision to make all of their camera work available to streaming video. The screen was small and my back was sore all week from bending over my desk- but at least it was there. I was really happy. TDEer Imtiaz Anees typed in some commentary which amounted to little more than keeping the viewer apprised of the next rider but it did give you text that you could refer back to for scores and the like data. I didn't find this to be a great loss though: It would have been great to hear play by play from someone like Melanie Taylor but more often than not commentary is inane or uninformed and even infuriating at times.

Once again, Thank You NBC. All is forgiven.

Sandy
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