Nastia Luikin and Shawn Johnson just went 1-2 in the women’s individual all-around gymnastics competition, which apparently none of you back home saw tonight.
It was running just late enough in the day (midnight-ish, EDT) that it won’t be shown in the States till Friday night.
(NOTE: I’m told this isn’t so … that it was shown live on NBC. My mistake. Must have done the math badly in calculating time zones.)
Anyway, this is how it went down:
Johnson had a great vault (15.875) and led after the first rotation. But Yang nailed her uneven bars routine (a 16.725, highest score of the day, any apparatus) and moved into first, with Liukin second and Johnson falling back to fifth.
Liukin moved into the lead for the first time after the third rotation, the beam. Her score of 16.125 led the field while Yang fell back with a 15.750.
That brought the show down to the floor, where American gold medal hopes went to die in the team competition the other night. (Hello, Alicia Sacramone.)
Yang was up first and moved into the lead with a score of 15.000, which is nice but not daunting. (Two of the girls deep in the final standings had better scores, on the floor.)
That brought up Liukin, and she was quite nice; watch her first tumble run, in particular, if you want to see something really difficult done really, really well. She got a score of 15.525 and held first place.
That brought up Johnson to end the meet, and she was bouncy and ebullient and perky and all those things she always is, and also quite good. She got the same 15.525 score as did Liukin, which was enough to jump Johnson over Yang … but not enough to catch Liukin, who won by 0.6 of a point, which really is quite a lot in these things.
So, our pixies are back on track. And now they have a shot at four more medals, two on Sunday, one Monday, one Tuesday in the revamped (and lengthened) Olympics gymnastics schedule.
Had today’s all-around been broken down into individual competition … Liukin would have gotten two golds (beam, floor) and a silver (bars) and Johnson would have picked up two golds (vault and floor, sharing it with Liukin) and a silver (beam).
Anyway, China now has not won every gold in gymnastics. They’re down to 3-of-4.
9 responses so far ↓
1 ncv // Aug 14, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Paul, I live in the Central Time Zone and watched the whole thing live on NBC.
2 Jacob Pomrenke // Aug 15, 2008 at 3:21 AM
EDT and CDT are getting some of the big events — swimming and gymnastics, notably — live on primetime. Those of us out West can read about every Phelps gold medal around 7 p.m. … but then we have to wait three hours for NBC to show it. Argh.
They had the entire schedule flipped around so that EDT/CDT could get these events live, but they’re neglecting the West … badly. It’s excruciating, for some of us. Just as bad as Sydney or Torino.
Oh well. At least there’s live team handball for us at midnight (and soccer/men’s basketball, too, if you want to stay up.)
3 ian // Aug 15, 2008 at 5:00 AM
I hated the Athens time difference when I worked in sports on the West coast. great for deadline, horrible for watching on TV. being here in the midwest, I’ve been watching almost everything live with the 13 hour difference and the scheduling… and it still doesn’t end as late as a Yankees-Red Sox game on Fox.
4 cindy // Aug 15, 2008 at 7:22 AM
Hey can anyone say TIVO. It’s great. yeah, you don’t get to see it live, but being on the West Coast you know the outcome anyway — and besides you can fast forward past the oh so many commercials.
5 Chuck Hickey // Aug 15, 2008 at 9:55 AM
Three hours difference is bad, but here in the forgotten time zone, it’s a mere ONE HOUR delay. Seriously, one friggin’ hour.
There was talk that if Phelps goes for an eighth gold on Saturday night that all time zones would see the race live. But, of course, the Nothing But Commericals (and Costas) network shot that down.
I mean, why do the right thing?
NBC just doesn’t get it. People will watch things live, and having lived in the West for most of my life, we’re used to live events starting at 4 p.m., 5 p.m. So just show it. People will watch it.
6 ian // Aug 15, 2008 at 10:19 AM
I know they have a lot of commercials, but I went back and checked, and they showed the last 32 minutes of the gymnastics without a break last night. unheard of.
And yeah, growing up on the West coast, we got used to events starting at 5. Why change it now?
7 Jacob Pomrenke // Aug 15, 2008 at 12:00 PM
TIVO (or plain-old DVR, as I have) is an incredible invention. I’ve been taking full advantage of it for these Olympics (and everything else!)
8 cindy // Aug 16, 2008 at 11:43 AM
NBC DOES get it. It’s about money. Showing it at 5 p.m. won’t register in the West Coast prime time ratings. And currently NBC is hurting in the ratings. This is about ratings, not news. You got to wonder how many more people would watch if it were live, but the network doesn’t care.
9 George Alfano // Aug 16, 2008 at 5:58 PM
If you were the president of an NBC station on the west coast, would you rather show the events at 5:00 pm when most of LA and San Francisco are on a freeway, or would you serve your advertisers – and viewers – by showing them in prime time?
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