Olympic Wrestling Future
- Thread starter RoarLions1
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I agree with all that. Even putting the corruption to the side for a moment you're still left with, at the very least, inept, inconsistent officiating and a scoring system so byzantine that the wrestlers often don't know whether they're behind or ahead. Points come from nowhere and can't even be explained. At least three times I witnessed a single point given as a result of scrambles occurring at the center of the mat, from neutral, where a single non-caution non-reverse point isn't actually possible. Almost every US high school match is refereed more competently than what we saw all last week at the Olympics. It should probably be the other way around. And yeah, the Mongolian coaches did wrestling no favors at all with that act.
Did the international wrestling officials and judges come from the same pool of international boxing judges and officials? I was watching one gold medal boxing match and began cussing at the tv when the result was announced (it wasn't even an American in the final)!! I am no boxing expert but clearly the wrong guy won the gold. Watching the wrestling matches....I was sometimes befuddled, confused, and pissed off!! The writer of the Intermat article appears spot on...IMO. I get it....humans are involved in judging and officiating and errors can be made but this is the olympics we need to do better.
PS...In addition to the Mongolians...some of the "begging" and pleading by wrestlers and coaches in front of the judges to change calls was childish. However, after some of the horrible calls I get it.
PS...In addition to the Mongolians...some of the "begging" and pleading by wrestlers and coaches in front of the judges to change calls was childish. However, after some of the horrible calls I get it.
Although I agree freestyle has plenty of problems so does folkstyle and many of them are similar. Passivity in free and stalling in folk come to mind. Refs to involved or not enough involved. Scoring in free is confusing and sometimes quite arbitrary but we hear the same complaints about folk. See Stieber win over Oliver, Hendricks over pretty much anyone, etc. Perry, Delgado, I could go on but maybe everyone gets the point, or maybe not. As to the Mongolian coaches (and the Uzbek coaches IMHO) behavior see the Brands brothers, Tom Ryan and on and on.
Well, then add back in the corruption because that taints all the suspect calls you see in int'l freestyle, regardless whether corruption was the actual cause. I'm never left wondering in folk whether a ref is on the take. Occasional ineptitude in folk? Sure, but bad calls are going to happen even in pro sports where they pay the refs/umps substantial salaries. And this sport is relatively cash poor.
What I described above (the three phantom points) has most likely never happened in folk--it'd be the equivalent of a football referee awarding 4 points for a touchdown just because. And in the Super Bowl. And until the Brands Brothers and Ryan cross the partial nudity barrier, their conduct wasn't comparable to the Mongolian coaches this weekend. Hell, even Bobby Knight kept his shirt on all those years.
I agree with the problems you identified in folk as problems but I see them as manageable whereas with int'l freestyle I have next to zero faith that they'll be addressed. And I'd care much less if the two weren't joined at the hip--if wrestling gets axed from the Olympics, it'll be harder to attract kids to folk here. It didn't seem like too much to hope a few weeks ago that the IOC would allow back a few weight classes but after this past week the sport undermined its own argument.
Yes...Brands brothers and friends can get excited but I've never seen them jumping up and down in their boxers
Eternal optimist here...I believe wrestling will continue to be part of the Olympics, but do believe this partisan/corruption thing needs addressed. Heck, boxing is still in, and look at its history.
Great lead-in for some photoshopping!!Yes...Brands brothers and friends can get excited but I've never seen them jumping up and down in their boxers
I have been thinking much the same thing this past week. Having watched most of the wresting coverage, I am disgusted by our sport at the international level. When there is open discussion of matches being thrown for $$$, officials who are sooooo incredibly inconsistent that it can only be corruption, and the extreme subjectivity of most of the rules, I can understand it if the IOC just punts on our incredibly great sport.
While watching diving, gymnastics and other sports that have very subjective components, it struck me that their sport has figured out how to mostly get beyond these same issues we have. 20-30 years ago it was common to see athletes in gynmastics and diving get completely hosed by a set of corrupt officials and I really didn't see any of that this Olympics. Whatever has been done at the international level in these sports needs to be done in wrestling.
While watching diving, gymnastics and other sports that have very subjective components, it struck me that their sport has figured out how to mostly get beyond these same issues we have. 20-30 years ago it was common to see athletes in gynmastics and diving get completely hosed by a set of corrupt officials and I really didn't see any of that this Olympics. Whatever has been done at the international level in these sports needs to be done in wrestling.
Have they gotten beyond it or are they simply better at hiding it? Wrestling officials make their decisions mat side with cameras and microphones rolling. Its why we're so convinced that the Gomez/Navruzov situation was corruption. Many sports, including those you mentioned, don't show their judges, we only see the scores they produce. Maybe there aren't obvious hose jobs going on, but would you notice if there were influences that changed outcomes? I hate saying, don't let it be close or the officials could take it from you because thats both unfair and unrealistic, but those are the matches we are seeing corruption influence. Its a tie match late (Gomez). Its a low-scoring, tight match (Lebedev/Bonne in 2015, or the Greco final or 57 kg freestyle) late.
Our sport has issues we need to clean up, but I don't buy that we're more corrupt than other sports at the International level. We certainly need to move the review jury away from the on mat officials though (there is supposed to be no discussion between the two at all so why even have them there).
Yeah, I'm not sure how to fix it. In a lot of countries and cultures, bribes and corruption are so pervasive and a constant part of everyday life.
This. Larger judging panel with more diversity and throwing out the outlier scores. Also believe they have tightened up the scoring system by defining point values for moves and having the participants notify the judges beforehand what will be included in their routines / dives so the judges know what to look for. I don't think I recall a single incident in either gymnastics or diving where the announcers, coaches, or fans went ballistic over scoring. It happened so many times in wrestling I stopped counting. From my observation, there is no comparison between what is going on in wrestling/boxing and gymnastics/diving.
Not sure how that'd work in freestyle wrestling.
Frank to ref and panel: "Okay, so I'm going to go out there with heavy hands, real heavy, it's going to drive my guy ballistic. If he hasn't poked me in the eye by the :45 mark, it's because you missed it. Now sometime early in the second period I'm going to get bit, and you've gotta be there with the caution point because it won't be easy to see. I'll yell to indicate but you gotta be on top of this."
Well, in the Gomez example, two out of the three on mat officials had to agree on the wrong call and then the three replay officials had to as well (though it certainly looked like one did not agree). So, we're at 5 officials that had a part in it and we haven't mentioned that there is no way to know which officials will be on which matches until just before the action takes place. This should not be an easy system to corrupt either. And yet...
Yes...Brands brothers and friends can get excited but I've never seen them jumping up and down in their boxers
They still have time.
One thing that could work in freestyle is to add "best hair" as the sole tiebreaker criterion. Score 1-10 among 7 judges, drop the 2 highest and lowest scores. Anyone with a killer 'do would know he is the leader when the score is tied. Conversely, anyone with a plain-vanilla haircut would know to get busy and press the action . . .
Are you telling me that Cael would be tiebreaker challenged?
My post-olympic thoughts:
Growing up, Olympic Gold was always THE achievement. It's what everyone strives for as a wrestler. After this weekend, how anyone can view it as that was has to be tempered. Gomez...just terrible. My eyes have been open as to how the world works for a while now, but to see it in basically the last untouchable bastion left is really sad.
Snyder - what a freaking beast. Amazing, amazing job and such a great representation of this country. The US has owned this weight and looks like that won't change for a bit. JB might be right...
JB - off-weekend. it happens. A shame, but it happens.
Tervel, another solid 5th. What a warrior in it this long and still putting up the numbers. Ohio State has to be the favorite for any upperweights right now. Although I'll still take Cael and Co in the mid-uppers.
Dennis - what can you do
Cox - awesome performance, get some hardware young man. Amazing debut and the future is bright.
Molinaro - what can you say. Pure warrior performance. Put on an awesome tournament and defied all expectations. Can't be prouder of this dude. Keep training and get it next go around!
Also, hopefully this will open the eyes of some recruits that PSU can train talent to the hightest level in the lightweights. Or if they did know it, open the eyes of the message boards
Lochte - dumb.
Bring back curling
Growing up, Olympic Gold was always THE achievement. It's what everyone strives for as a wrestler. After this weekend, how anyone can view it as that was has to be tempered. Gomez...just terrible. My eyes have been open as to how the world works for a while now, but to see it in basically the last untouchable bastion left is really sad.
Snyder - what a freaking beast. Amazing, amazing job and such a great representation of this country. The US has owned this weight and looks like that won't change for a bit. JB might be right...
JB - off-weekend. it happens. A shame, but it happens.
Tervel, another solid 5th. What a warrior in it this long and still putting up the numbers. Ohio State has to be the favorite for any upperweights right now. Although I'll still take Cael and Co in the mid-uppers.
Dennis - what can you do
Cox - awesome performance, get some hardware young man. Amazing debut and the future is bright.
Molinaro - what can you say. Pure warrior performance. Put on an awesome tournament and defied all expectations. Can't be prouder of this dude. Keep training and get it next go around!
Also, hopefully this will open the eyes of some recruits that PSU can train talent to the hightest level in the lightweights. Or if they did know it, open the eyes of the message boards
Lochte - dumb.
Bring back curling
How about killer facial hair? That might even make this plan ... impressive.
Good idea. Except now you would need a tiebreaker for the two hair criteria. How about Best Tan?
Wait a minute, this isn't going to work. Snyder would go 0 for 3 by our rules. Back to the drawing board . . .
Turns out Lochte and friends were in fact the victims. Yes, they did a dumb thing to put themselves in position to be victimized, and they did exaggerate their story.
But the bottom line is that the local cops extorted them. The cops knew that that by law the swimmers would each have to pay > USD 10,000 to exit Brazil without going to court.
Stuff like this isn't exactly uncommon in third world countries. Still ...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...as-station-security-guards-incident/89228124/
Hmm. I am respectfully not understanding the word "extorted". If, as you say, the law says the swimmer had a choice of going to court or paying $10000, then what should the local cops have done differently, if they had wanted to avoid being called extortionists?
The prosecutor offered that deal I imagine, but he/she would have had full knowledge of the underlying facts, which by then clearly indicated that the swimmers were extorted (by the legal and common usage definition) by the local security guards and that there was no evidence of the alleged bathroom vandalism beyond the ripped poster (which allegation wasn't pinned on Feigen). In other words, the leverage held by the prosecutor wasn't the underlying case, which at trial wouldn't have merited a $10k damages figure, but that the defendant was a high-profile visiting foreigner scheduled to depart. That's not per se criminal "extortion," no, but Feigen is certainly justified in viewing it as such.
Ah. So the prosecutor could/should have asked for a fine of less than $10k. Got it. Sorry for being slow.
Prosecutor had no case, so yeah, $10k for anyone who wasn't Ryan Lochte was a good day. Obviously this stopped being about the law when the headlines started so this discussion is academic. But it's still extortion from where Feigen sits and he's not wrong.
