Rules are rules

First off, I have to say I'm a little unhappy with the New York Times web site this week, their Olympic spoilers screaming at me from the home page. I don't even remember what I was looking for yesterday morning, but I sure wasn't expecting to find out the outcome of the uneven bars competition that didn't air until 11 o'clock last night.

But knowing the outcome didn't keep me from watching the event last night, and glancing at the headline didn't make me understand how the tiebreaker worked, so that part, at least, was news to me.

And as much as it's a flawed system of tiebreaking, and as much talk of scandal there was about the tiebreaker (and about the scoring more broadly, with near-constant lamentations about how the Americans are getting screwed), it's not like the judges or the IOC or whoever made it up on the fly. They had a system in place for just this occurrence, and they followed that system, and despite a tie score, Nastia got the silver. And yeah, that's got to sting, a ton, and maybe she can call up Al Gore and be like, "Dude, I totally get it now," but that's the system, dopey as it may be. Don't take it away from the Chinese gymnast who ended up with the gold medal, and make snarky comments like, "Does she REALLY think she earned the gold, as she stands up there on that podium?" Well, yes, I bet she does, because she, in fact, did earn the gold.

And as much as I enjoy the American gymnasts, as crappy as I think it is that these 12-year-olds are competing (and, here, of course, the Chinese -- or Chineses, if you saw Tropic Thunder -- have circumvented the rules, which I agree is crappy, perhaps LEAST of all because it potentially gives them a competitive advantage), as beautiful as Nastia's routine was last night, as much as I'd have liked her to win gold, I think everyone needs to keep in mind that judging here is inherently subjective. It's not a matter of who touches the side of the pool first, or who crosses the finish line a nose ahead of the next hurdler.

So yes, I thought that Alicia Sacramone's (I am afraid to look up the correct spelling of her name for fear of additional spoilers, so apologies if I got that wrong) got hosed, but I also thought that Nastia's floor routine was better than Shawn Johnson's. That's my opinion; I just thought it was more graceful and beautiful, and although Shawn's was more powerful and athletic, I value that slightly less in a floor routine. My opinion. And even though there are some supposedly hard-and-fast rules here -- a step out of bounds is a one-tenth deduction, a fall is five-tenths, a balance check on the beam is something and a bobble is something else -- whose to say that one judge's balance check isn't another's bobble? There's an art to this stuff; it's subjective. What resonates with me and appeals to me in a routine as an American, and as a long-ago gymnast, is probably different from what appeals to an experienced gymnast from Australia, and what is perfection to Bela Karolyi (whom I love, by the way, which makes me feel conflicted given how awful he seemed to be in his coaching of Nadia) may be just adequate to a Chinese coach. That's just how it goes.

So although I appreciate the patriotism, and the media's and commentators' and fans' support for Team USA, I also feel like we need to dial it down and quit it with the sour grapes. Because even though I long ago outgrew my leotard, I still have this mantra seared in my brain: Gymnasts don't say "can't"; gymnasts don't cry; gymnasts don't whine.