You mean you want them to start wearing briefs again?

The LZR Racer Concept, from Speedo.com:

"To design the ultimate suit offering a fabric with the lowest friction drag, constructed to compress the swimmer into the smoothest, streamlined shape and designed to ensure the full range of movement to win."

What a high-priced competition suit, from the Aquablade to the LZR, aims to do is reduce drag, squish your body into the smallest space possible, and give you that little mental edge when you compete.

If you don't do the work, you don't get the results. Wearing a Fastskin (or now, the LZR) is not going to give you your personal best time. Practicing twice a day every day for months will. The reason for wearing the LZR is to give you the edge to squeeze every last bit of result out of your training. What do the top swimmers say is the biggest help they get from the LZR? Mental edge. Just like shaving down is 1% physical and 99% mental, the LZR -- despite being partially engineered by NASA -- is more mental than physical when it comes to swimming.

The only people out there condemning the new technology that's being used to engineer these "space age" suits are those who follow swimming once every 4 years. I heard something about an "unfair advantage" and I laughed out loud. Speedo sent 2,500 LZR suits to Omaha be given out to swimmers at Trials. Even athletes sponsored by other companies, such as TYR and Nike, are choosing to wear the LZRs. Unfair advantage? Maybe if only the Speedo athletes could wear them, but that's not the case. Maybe if only the American athletes could wear them, but again, that's not the case.

As a swimmer, I'm familiar with the purposes of these fancy-pants competition suits. I understand the technology they use and most importantly I understand that no LZR is going to make a world record-breaker out of a guy (or girl) who doesn't put the hours in the pool chasing that black line every day.

Let's look at that again, but this time slower

I'm gonna start out by saying that in general, I am against instant replay in sports. Even when faced with Americans losing medals in the Olympic Games, I am 100% against instant replay in gymnastics and swimming. Yang Tae-Young, Paul Hamm, Kosuke Kitajima, and Brendan Hansen cannot change my mind. I'm still hesistant about figure skating instant replay, but that sport's judging is so corrupt that it seems like the only way to go. I've watched swimming and gymnastics for eight years now and I've seen rules change, scoring change, and instant replay be considered.

With swimming, I'm positive that if you slow anyone's stroke down you can find some reason to disqualify them. The things they SHOULD be disqualified for are easy to see with the naked eye. (French official, Kitajima's dolphin kick was visible from the stands).

The Hamm-Young debacle was a product of corrupt judging, not the scorers being unable to see what was going on. If this weren't the case, Jordan Jovtchev would be the reigning gold medallist on rings and Aleksei Nemov would have SOME kinda medal on high bar from Athens. As it stands, the Greek crowd could cheer their gymnast to gold and force a scoring change for Nemov, but nothing more than that.

That said, I am 100% for instant replay in baseball for foul/fair home run calls. What's it going to hurt? Sure, there's been a rash of fouled-up home run calls in the last week, but how many more will happen this season? Odds are, not many. Everyone's complained about balls and strikes for as long as baseball's been around -- and still no one's suggesting we should implement technology to make it "fairer." Joe Morgan suggests a slippery slope argument, though he doesn't call it that. He also makes the case that "strikes and balls decide the game more often than home runs," so why not use technology there? He says that because everyone is worried about that very thing -- enough so that it'll never be discussed.

But the difference between a strike and a ball is a walk or a strikeout (in the most extreme cases, a run walked in). The difference between a fair home run and a foul ball is always a run or a strike. With the rash of bad calls and apologetic umpires, you can't possibly think those guys don't want a little help out there -- if only to take the heat off.

Furthermore, strike zones change depending on the player and the umpire, and as long as it's consistent (-ly bad, or good) for both teams, there's nothing to argue about.

And as an A's fan, I was angry at the out call on Crosby yesterday, but I did not once wish for instant replay. I just wanted that umpire to look at the call after the game and feel bad.

---
Random labels are due to the sad misfortune that I have to watch the Angels and White Sox play on national television yet again. Oh, nice. Way to go, Carlos Quentin. Way to walk off on the Angels. Now can we be done with this series?

Apparently this is still an issue.

Paul Hamm won the individual all-around gold in Athens fair and square.

If anything, we should have been up in arms about Paul winning the silver in the high bar event final and Aleksei Nemov with his six release moves not even medalling* -- or what about Dimosthenes Tambakos and his step on the dismount taking the rings gold over Jordan Jovtchev and his higher-in-difficulty and perfectly clean routine**? Both of those events had me seething.

However, there are still people out there on the Internet who think Paul is selfish and arrogant for keeping the gold.

I'm writing this entry to make a point: uninformed individuals feed the fire of controversy. They cost people money and reputation.

If you don't remember the event (or don't follow men's gymnastics as well as I do), I'll briefly re-hash it for you.

1. Paul Hamm led the individual all-around (an individual competition consisting of six events [for men]: floor exercise, rings, pommel horse, vault, parallel bars, and high bar) after three rotations. In his fourth rotation he competed on the vault and crashed, scoring a 9.1something. This is terrible. He dropped to 12th.
2. He scored a 9.837 on parallel bars and other gymnasts ahead of him started to suck. Yang Wei fell on high bar. Ioan Suciu messed up on parallel bars as did his fellow countryman, Marian Dragulescu. American Brett McClure got the shaft on rings (another controversy not pursued***).
3. In the last rotation and as the last gymnast of the competition, Paul scored another 9.837 and won gold. (Incidentally, he thought better than a 9.825 would just give him bronze.)
4. The NBC coverage showed Yang Tae-Young crouched with his hands over his head.
5. Sometime later after the contest South Korea files a protest. First misstep: this protest, unless against the integrity of the judging (see: 2002 pairs competition in Salt Lake), should not have been heard. The protest was (as you may remember) about the SV (start value) of Yang Tae-Young's parallel bars routine. He competed on p-bars in the fifth rotation. There was an entire rotation to file the protest before the competition ended.
6. The tape of the p-bars routine was reviewed. Second misstep: video replay was NOT allowed in gymnastics competition (like it isn't in swimming). In stupidly reviewing the tape, they find that Y T-Y's routine was indeed a 10.0 SV, not 9.9 as he was given. (SVs refer to the maximum score a gymnast can earn based on what elements they have in their routine; their deductions are taken from that score.)
7. Everyone freaks out.
8. Paul is interviewed, says he won't give up the medal.
9. FIG says he should give it up.
10. USAG throws a fit.
11. IOC stays out of it.
12. Nothing is solved.
13. But then, the key to the puzzle finds its way to the coffee table. Miles Avery, Olympic coach and Paul's coach at OSU, says that while reviewing the tape of Y T-Y's p-bars routine he finds that there is a hold not deducted for. There are a certain number of holds allowed in one routine and Y T-Y had one more than allowed. The deduction is two-tenths.

Let's break this down.
Say the judges (illegally) give Y T-Y his 10.0 start value. He wins the competition, right? Wrong. In giving him the 10.0 SV they've used the video, so they take off .2 for the hold. He's right back where he started, not winning the gold medal. Then, you have to give EVERYONE the same treatment, reviewing their routines and correcting the scores. Wow, that's dumb. So no one did it.

Results remained the same, Paul has his gold, South Korea is pissed (until Ahn beats Ohno one and a half years later in Turin), and people (Americans!), because they don't bother to get all the facts (Miles Avery's right: when reviewing the tape you can see the extra hold) they make the wrong decision.



*I was terrified this would become bigger than the IAA deal. But noooo, no one cares about Aleksei Nemov and his amazing show of class in shushing the booing crowd as Paul stepped to the podium. Aleksei should have won. Paul shouldn't have silvered. Yann Cucherat wasn't that good. The only real problem was that no one (with the clear exception of Aleksei) was outstanding.

**Bulgaria, whom Jordan represents, actually filed a protest. It was denied. That event was a crock. Jordan was far and away the superior gymnast in that competition. Even my dad thinks so and he knows nothing about the intricacies of scoring. "But he didn't stick his landing!" Exactly. They didn't even take off for the step. Just because he's Greek.

***Same thing happened to McClure that happened to Yang Tae-Young. His SV was about three-tenths lower than it should have been. Did America file a protest after the contest? Nope.

Miscellaneous

1. Adam Melhuse re-signed with the A's not too long ago after having been DFA'd by the Rangers.

2. Eric Chavez has been shut down for the season to get shoulder and possibly back surgery. He's had a torn labrum for 10 years and has a bulging disk in his back. His "tendinitis" problems this year with his forearms were fabricated -- he's had nerve problems.

3. Houston's magic number is down to 13. Wandy is still bad on the road. The Astros are still unable to hit and now Ransom is playing shortstop. Where is Mike Lamb?

4. Eliminated teams are the Orioles and the Devil Rays, with the CWS magic number at 1. Let's see if the Twins and Indians can get wins to make it official.