Five-Ringed Circus: Day Four A water-polo incident, an openly-thrown match, and the Chinese swimmer story rages...

Humble pie, side of crow, sent to my address, please.  The girls kicked ass, enjoy your tour, yadda yadda yadda...

Bleh.

Anyhow:

• China still leads the medal count after four days.   Both nations have 23 medals, China has 13 golds to the USA's 9.  China will add at least two more to this, as they have gold and silver in their national sport, table tennis, in a match which half a billion people will watch when it takes place.  It will be the seventh consecutive gold medal in women's table-tennis for the Chinese.  Table-tennis and badminton will probably be where China will rack upwards of 16 medals uncontested by the United States.  (Of course, if you must, the track and field competition starts soon, where China will not be much a factor.)
• The IOC, on the same day that China's Ye Shiwen won the 200m individual medley in the fastest time ever recorded outside of a polyurethane "super-suit"/technical suit (which rewrote the record books so blatantly, they were banned at the end of 2009!), stated openly that Shiwen's drug test taken after the 400m IM was clean.  In fact, IOC Spokesman Mark Adams went so far as to state that people like me "need to get real here.''

Oh really, Mr. Adams?  So it is in no way suspicious when, in the same event, the women's champion outsplits the men's champion at the same comparable time in the competition in their respective events?  (For those who missed it, Shiwen's split for the final 50 meters of her race was faster than Ryan Lochte's split for the same final 50 meters of his race when he won the Olympic gold medal in the same event.)

If you honestly want me to believe that Ye Shiwen is clean, I've got about the same lovely piece of swampland to sell you (in Omaha, NE) that I would for believing the same of Michael Phelps!

• Speaking of the badminton, we have an open match-fixing scandal to report.  The badminton tournament has been plunged into controversy as the final group match of two doubles teams was being thrown by both teams to prearrange better draws for each.  This enraged the fans and the match referee so much that he stopped the match and warned both sides officially.  It is unknown whether the Chinese and South Korean teams involved will be sanctioned or even expelled, but this simply was similar to the practice which used to take place in similar group-stage situations in soccer tournaments.
• The water polo tournament was the scene of another controversy today as Croatia defeated Spain in pool play 8-7.  Ivan Perez Vargas of Spain thought he had scored the tying goal with five seconds left, and the replays appeared to agree with him.  The referees disallowed the goal, and Spain vehemently protested it's loss.  This may well simply make Spain's road in the knockout phase a bit harder, but they are still pipped to advance.
• One from yesterday:  A scoring snafu (or something else?) changed the order of finish on the mens' gymnastics team results.  At the end of all the scoring, China had won, Britain was second, Ukraine was third, and Japan was fourth.  Then, all of a sudden, a protest had been lodged on the pommel horse score of the all-around favorite, Japan's superstar Kohei Uchimura.  The mistake was so egregious that, when the scores were recalculated, Japan had sprung all the way to second, Britain third, Ukraine off the podium!

The matter in question is whether the clumsy exit (Kohei has had significant problems in these Games, and this was no exception!) from the horse was a dismount (which would only grant a penalty) or a fall (which would nullify his routine completely).  After several minutes (and, almost assuredly, because of his status within the sport), it was ruled that he had (though badly) dismounted, instead of fallen.  The Ukraine coach was not pleased:

“When you think about athletics (track and field), 100 meters is just 100 meters — it’s how you ran it,” said Ukraine coach Yuliy Kuksenkov. “Sometimes in gymnastics, it’s 95 meters or 105 meters.”

• In closing for this post, in the "Theatre of the Absurd" Department:  Paul McCartney was, in fact, compensated for his performance at the Opening Ceremonies.
• He was paid one stinking British Pound.
• I don't think he minds the experience.  :)