12/21/24
August 20, 2004
The diva does not acknowledge defeat: "I know exactly what I'm going to say: I'm still Olympic champion." "If the judges were Greek, I would have no difficulty winning the gold medal. They are the ones who are going to have to live with their conscience."
Poor sport? Or the truth?
Definitely poor sport. I would be surprised to read of even a half-assed apology. Burwell nailed it spot on: Well, here's the deal, Svetlana, if an untrained gymnastics dilettante like me can tell that you were weaving about on the beam like a drunken sailor on shore leave, don't you think all those internationally experienced Olympic judges you just disparaged might have noticed, too? She should have spent less time brooding off of the mat, and spent more time concentrating on it.
posted by lilnemo at 02:55 PM on August 20, 2004
As for the Koreans, I couldn't say whether there was any impropriety in their scoring. It didn't appear so. The scores they received on the vault didn't seem excessively low given the degree of difficulty involved. This is ultimately the problem with judging sports with subjective scoring systems.
posted by lilnemo at 02:59 PM on August 20, 2004
Even if she had a legitimate complaint, there's a way to handle yourself with some class. Her attitude at the press conference was deplorable.
posted by justgary at 03:00 PM on August 20, 2004
The Americans contested results in the pool, too. Poor sports all around.
posted by dusted at 03:03 PM on August 20, 2004
I think Sveta's great. Really, I do. And I understand why she's Jacques Rogge's favourite gymnast. In a sport where America now hysterically celebrates its 'new Mary Lou' -- another semi-pubescent kiddiwink with no discernable personality and no friends outside the gym -- Sveta was something else. She got robbed in Sydney, and now that's part of her myth. I want divas in women's gymnastics, please. Because it's the only way to justify it as anything other than state-sponsored child abuse. Or a human circus.
posted by etagloh at 03:06 PM on August 20, 2004
I'm fine with contested, and each situation should be looked at to see if there is merit. It's the press conference thing where I think the poor sportsmanship comes in.
posted by justgary at 03:07 PM on August 20, 2004
another semi-pubescent kiddiwink with no discernable personality and no friends outside the gym I know what you're saying. They all seem the same, like robots generated by advertisers. But really, I doubt you can say she has no personality or friends outside the gym unless you know her. Besides, if you start making it about appearance or personality, you've gone from sport to beauty contest. Regardless, I've fine with personality, but you can have it without being classless. If your personality consist of obnoxiousness and acting like a child that didn't get your way, I'll take the robot.
posted by justgary at 03:15 PM on August 20, 2004
Khorkina may have more condescending attitude in one spindly leg than Barry Bonds has in his entire thickly muscled body. Regardless of where you stand on her attitude, that sentence is priceless.
posted by dusted at 04:45 PM on August 20, 2004
You'd think someone who has been involved in the sport since before the collapse of communism might have figured out by now that they are in a sport where scoring is mostly pulled out of the judge's asses. This is why I can't watch it for more than a few minutes- they are incredible athletes doing pretty incredible things in a ridiculous parody of 'sport.'
posted by tieguy at 06:47 PM on August 20, 2004
Timer or tape, kids. Timer or tape.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 10:36 PM on August 20, 2004
But really, I doubt you can say she has no personality or friends outside the gym unless you know her. Well, Bob Costas did the excruciating 'shout out to your friends' along with the horrific 'how's school? boyfriends?' thing. And little Carly was all gym-gyminny gym-gym-geree. But you're right: that's irrelevant here, and I shouldn't have raised it. It's that it's rare to find a gymnast at work that doesn't resemble a performing animal. Automata. It's perhaps easier for the men to get away with showing a bit of self because they're actually working outside of pseudo-sexual choreography. But I'd say 'disdainful' rather than 'condescending' for Sveta, shaving shades of meaning there. She'll be missed, because I've never quite seen anyone quite so riven between desire and disdain. Perhaps that's because the customary embitteredness for most gymnasts comes after retirement, not while you're still pretty much near the top of your game.
posted by etagloh at 03:42 AM on August 21, 2004
But you're right: that's irrelevant here, and I shouldn't have raised it. It's that it's rare to find a gymnast at work that doesn't resemble a performing animal. Automata. It's perhaps easier for the men to get away with showing a bit of self because they're actually working outside of pseudo-sexual choreography. In any sport, the extent to which an athlete has a life is in inverse proportion to the level at which that athlete performs/competes. Hell, even at the high school level the soccer team kids have soccer team friends -- these are the people that they spend a couple of hours with after school every day, that they probably share rides with and so on, so there's nothing surprising about that. So-called "women's" gymnastics still has its troubling aspects, but set your way-back machine to ten years ago or so. The "women" there were "semi-pubescent" at most; can you say Dominique Moceanu? And it seems to me that the floor routines were more blatantly and grotesquely sexualized. Now, as messed up as it still is in some ways, at least you've got Annia Hatch and Mohini Bhardwaj.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 06:35 AM on August 21, 2004
I liked it better when there was a little more variation in the routines. Now it's all flippity-bippity and graceless. Sveta was my favorite because she at least looked unique in her routines. I couldn't pick Patterson out of a line-up of gymnasts. And the South Korean medal protest may have a shitload of merit.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 01:57 PM on August 21, 2004
Svetlana looked unique because she was 25, tall, and as thin as a rope. There was nothing unique about her final floor exercise, and though the sport is subjective, even untrained eyes could see that patterson had a far better performance. The right person clearly won, and if you can't pick patterson out of a line up you probably just didn't watch much of it.
posted by justgary at 04:21 PM on August 21, 2004
No - I thought she had more grace. Less mechanical in her movements. And my suggestion was that Patterson looked like the usual gym-munchkin. And I thought that Sveta's final floor performance was unique - in that it would be the last time we saw her perform in the Olympic games. And she was smiling. It was nice. I certainly wasn't claiming that she should have won.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 06:38 PM on August 21, 2004
Timer or tape, kids. Timer or tape. lil_brown_bat, we don't agree very often, but this is one of those rare times. If it has a judge, it's not a real sport.
posted by dusted at 02:52 AM on August 22, 2004
She may have been a little attention whore (which might have compelled her to hang on in the sport when her body grew a little past her ability to perform as well as she thought she could), but she was damned good television. And this tantrum, as poor-form as it is, got her sport an extra headline or two. Which I'm guessing counts for something. Sveta doesn't care if you hate her. Just keep looking at her. Forever. From here, I'm guessing a celebrity relationship (without checking, I have no doubt she's done this already, but if not: Pavel Bure, check your voicemail), some guest-spots in modeling shows, and co-hosting AM Moscow with her non-victorious tennis-doll counterpart. And no, I cannot say Dominique Moceanu.
posted by chicobangs at 10:22 AM on August 24, 2004
And the night before the Koreans, who got silver and bronze while American Hamm won gold, protested their scores. Not to mention comments similar to Svetlana about unfair scoring for American Hamm. I thought it was the Americans who were known to be bad sports?