{"id":8497,"date":"2012-07-30T10:36:47","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T17:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8497"},"modified":"2012-07-30T10:36:47","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T17:36:47","slug":"an-injustice-of-olympic-proportions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/30\/an-injustice-of-olympic-proportions\/","title":{"rendered":"An Injustice of Olympic Proportions"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may remember that I am a huge fan of Olympics sports and have been ever since I was a child, so when I\u2019m not blogging or attending to other immediate needs, I\u2019m watching the games.  I became aware of an injustice that transcends party lines.  Simply put, an athlete who deserves to compete is being excluded.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"30Jordyn-wieber\"\u2026And on a day when near-perfection was demanded, reigning world all-around champion Jordyn Wieber was merely better than most. As a result, she missed the cut for the London Olympics all-around final, finishing third behind teammates Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas.<\/p>\n

"She has trained her entire life for this day, and to have it turn out anything less than she deserves is going to be devastating," Wieber’s coach, John Geddert, said in a statement issued by the team.<\/p>\n

Wieber offered only tears, walking past reporters with her head bowed, still weeping long after the scoreboard showed that Raisman’s bold and well-executed floor routine, the final event in Sunday’s qualifications at North Greenwich Arena, had vaulted her ahead of Wieber and Douglas in the final standings.<\/p>\n

Because countries can enter just two gymnasts in the all-around final, the fact that Wieber finished third among U.S. gymnasts (0.233 of a point behind Douglas) and fourth overall, offered no solace<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As a team, the United States ruled the day, finishing with 181.863 points to Russia’s 180.429. Defending Olympic champion China was third (176.637)\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Seattle Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Other than her two teammates, only one other gymnast had a higher qualifying score than Jordyn, so she was fourth overall, but the new rule limiting each nation to two qualifiers in the all around means that twenty one gymnasts with lower scores than hers will get to compete, but she will not.<\/font><\/p>\n

In my opinion, the rule is unjust.  The twenty four qualifiers to compete for the all around event should be the gymnasts with the top scores, regardless of where they come from.  For the gymnast with the fourth highest score to be excluded is an injustice of Olympic proportions.  The rule should be changed.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may remember that I am a huge fan of Olympics sports and have been ever since I was a child, so when I\u2019m not blogging or attending to other immediate needs, I\u2019m watching the games.  I became aware of an injustice that transcends party lines.  Simply put, an athlete who deserves to compete is […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plus","category-141-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}