Over 16,513,684 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?

Jacobs Wally's blog: "I love life"

created on 08/06/2008  |  http://fubar.com/i-love-life/b237060
Two days after going 1-2 in the all-around, Olympic champion Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson added to their collection on Sunday. Johnson won the silver on floor exercise, while Liukin took the bronze. Throw in the silvers they won in the team competition, and the Americans have three gymnastics medals each. The Chinese men, meanwhile, don’t leave the warm-up gym unless there’s some gold to be gotten. Xiao Qin took the gold on pommel horse, hardly a surprise considering he’s won the last three world titles in the event, while little Zou Kai took advantage of errors by favorites Diego Hypolito and Marian Dragulescu to win the floor exercise. China has won all four men’s gold medals up for grabs so far. Romania’s Sandra Izbasa won the women’s floor title while Hong Un Jong took gold on vault. The U.S. women didn’t come to the Beijing Games with quite the same pressure as the Chinese men, who have won seven of the last eight world titles, but had only one Olympic gold to go with it. Still, when you strut in as world champs and have the two best gymnasts, people expect you to bring home some jewelry. Johnson looked as if she might finally get her gold on floor, where she is the reigning world champion. Though she went first, when scores tend to be lower, she set quite a standard. Her opening tumbling run was monstrous, sending her soaring so far into the air she could have gotten points in trampoline. Yet she stuck her landing, hitting the mat with such a solid thud it could be heard around the arena. Johnson had a few missteps—a shaky landing here, a wobble on a dance move — but her smile grew brighter with each second. When she finished, she looked straight at a TV camera and waved. Her score of 15.5 was solid—only her floor score in the all-around final was better—and she took a seat next to coach Liang Chow to see if it would hold up. One by one, her rivals faltered. Brazil’s Daiane Dos Santos went out of bounds twice. Anna Pavlova of Russia landed her last tumbling pass on her knees. Cheng Fei, the 2006 world champion on floor, had a dismal showing, her feet slipping out from her on the landing of one tumbling run and stumbling on another. The mistakes left her so upset, she leaned against the vault podium, her back to the floor, her shoulders shaking. When she finally turned around, her face was wet with tears. With a 14.550, Cheng not only didn’t medal, she wasn’t even close to contention. Liukin’s routine was lyrical as always, but it didn’t have quite the same sparkle as she did in the all-around final. Her score of 15.425 put her and Johnson 1-2—again—but there was still one more competitor left. And once Izbasa began to tumble and twirl, Johnson knew the gold was gone. Tall like Liukin, the Romanian makes the most of her long lines. Her leaps were like a ballerina’s grand jete, and her flips were done with the ease of a cartwheel. She was in perfect sync with her music, and the audience was applauding as she finished. So, too, was Johnson. Izbasa is the second straight Romanian to win the Olympic floor title. She cried on the medals podium, and that was before her cell phone started buzzing with a call from Romanian president Traian Basescu. American Alicia Sacramone wasn’t feeling so hot after the vault. Neither was Cheng, even though she wound up with a bronze medal. Cheng is a three-time world champion on vault, and hadn’t been beaten on the event in three years. But she didn’t get enough height on her push off the board to complete her forward somersault with 11/2 twists, and landed the vault—her second—on her knees. Yet because her vaults are so difficult—both had start values of 6.5—she still wound up ahead of Sacramone, who made no major errors. Cheng’s mistake opened the door for the feel-good medal of the night. The Chinese men are so dominant, the only drama in Sunday night’s events was on pommel horse, where a tiebreaker determined the silver and bronze medalists. Xiao is normally flawless, his legs ramrod straight, his hands a blur as they move around the horse in perfect rhythm. But as he worked on one end of the horse, he actually made a mistake and his legs flew apart. That’s the kind of thing that would take most other gymnasts down, but Xiao kept right on going, straight for gold. Croatia’s Filip Ude and Louis Smith of Britain finished .15 points behind Xiao, both with 15.725. The tiebreaker—the execution score—gave Ude the silver and Smith the bronze. It was Croatia’s first-ever gymnastics medal and Britain’s first since the men’s team bronze in 1912. Hypolito and Dragulescu, who have won the last three world floor titles, were the heavy favorites to win gold. But Hypolito was way too short on his final landing and stumbled backward, ending his chances for a medal of any color. He looked shellshocked and his body shook as he sat on the sidelines. As he left the arena, someone he knew reached out to hug him and Hypolito’s brave front crumbled. He buried his head in the woman’s shoulder and sobbed. Olympic gold is the only medal Dragulescu has never won, and he came up short again after he nearly landed one of his tumbling runs on his backside. That left the door open for Zou, who zipped through a series of pretzel-like twists and lightning-quick somersaults. He ran off the podium when he was finished, pumping his fist at the crowd that was chanting “Jia You!”—an almost constant chant with so much Chinese success. Reference: www.sterlingtiffany.com
Leave a comment!
html comments NOT enabled!
NOTE: If you post content that is offensive, adult, or NSFW (Not Safe For Work), your account will be deleted.[?]

giphy icon
last post
15 years ago
posts
134
views
29,867
can view
everyone
can comment
everyone
atom/rss

other blogs by this author

 15 years ago
Ambrose wins Zippo 200
official fubar blogs
 8 years ago
fubar news by babyjesus  
 13 years ago
fubar.com ideas! by babyjesus  
 10 years ago
fubar'd Official Wishli... by SCRAPPER  
 10 years ago
Word of Esix by esixfiddy  

discover blogs on fubar

blog.php' rendered in 0.0912 seconds on machine '7'.