perfect 10

Now that you’ve read review 1 and review 2, it’s time to move on to the third and final installment of my 2007 World Championships reviews. I’ve given you my take on the good & the bad and now we’ll talk about …

THE OUTRAGEOUS

This list is actually not that long. I thought it would be longer so I added an extra section at the end titled Things that made me go hmmmm.

• Steliana Nistor winning the silver medal in the All Around. I will grant that she is an amazing athlete and admittedly one of the top in the world. But her scores were so completely outrageous that her All Around placement must be mentioned on this list. I just can’t believe that she is second best in the entire world. I know that Barbosa and Ferrari both fell and I’m usually not a fan of athletes falling and still placing ahead of someone that hit four for four. But I might have to make an exception in this case. If you don’t think her scores were a little out there, check out her beam routine from the All Around Final. This scored a 15.55.

  Second best? In the world? I’m not buying it.

• WCSN’s coverage. Do not get me wrong here. I do not wish to sound ungrateful. I could not see complete coverage without WCSN and it’s definitely better than nothing. I will take it. But it’s a rough watch. You can’t fast forward or rewind without some serious delays or total disconnection. I couldn’t even pause it to go grab some dinner because it would disconnect me and finding my place again was almost impossible. I’d like to watch the Men’s Competition but I can’t take the frustration. I know that they stream it to save on bandwidth and to keep it from being posted on youtube but I really wish it was downloadable. That would make it just about perfect.
• NBC’s coverage was equally outrageous. Again, I’m grateful for whatever we can get but I think this statement sums it up. After Johnson, Liukin and Barbosa vaulted in the All Around, Al Trautwig said “And that wraps up rotation one.” Three vaults and that’s all we get for rotation one? I know they were trying to squeeze a lot in but we didn’t even see the silver medalist or one of the bronze medalists (Nistor & Ferrari) until rotation 4!

And now a couple things that made me go hmmmm…

• Bart’s contradiction… during the WCSN coverage, Bart Conner contradicted himself a couple times. In an early round of competition (Women’s Team Final, I think) he mentioned that he liked the 3 up, 3 count format because although the best team doesn’t necessarily win, whoever is best that day comes out on top and he likes how that spices things up on game day. Fair enough. But then later, he was lamenting Li Shanshan’s Beam fall in the Event Finals and said that it was hard to watch “when they’re that good and don’t get their rightful medals.” If it had been a final from the days of old when your scores from preliminaries carried over, Shanshan would have come out on top despite her fall in finals. But with the new system of “new life” in the Final where everyone starts from scratch, the best athlete doesn’t necessarily win. Whoever is best that day comes out on top, which Bart earlier said he likes. So does he want the best to win or the best on that day? You can’t have it both ways, Bart, but I see where you’re coming from. Both systems have their ups and downs.
• What’s going on with Beth Tweddle? Like Vanessa Ferrari she seemed a bit flat in Stuttgart. But she really rocked her Bars set in the Finals. It’s too bad she didn’t get some hardware for that one. She’s still one of the best on that event.

So that concludes my review of the Stuttgart World Championships.   Did any of you have any further thoughts?  Or things I should add to either of the above lists?