emmelinemay | Conspiracy Theories

I've not been able to watch much of the Olympics, although I'm pretty pleased to not that we're doing pretty well this time around. Brits, it seems, are good at rowing and cycling.

There have been a few rather ugly marks on this Olympics though, which are fascinating me rather more than the medals table...

This one is probably my favourite:

0.001 of a second

A site documenting Omega sponsored Phelp's victory in an Omega sponsored lane, to the naked eye coming second but the Omega timing device recording a 0.001 victory. Not at all suspicious.

Age contraversy

One of many articles about Chinese gynmast He Kexin who was 13 last year, but now appears to have a passport that proves she's 16. The minimum age for gymnasts in the Olympics has been 16 since 1990 to try to protect the welfare of child gymnasts. A British gymnast came 4th in this competition, so most of the UK articles are about how she 'should have won'.

Rehearsal injury

Liu Yan, a dancer who was rehearsing for the opening ceremony, fell over 3 meters and landed on her head. Officials said she had a 'broken leg' and nothing more for a few weeks. How the hell you can fall on your head and break your leg, I don't know. They've since admitted she's probably paralysed, and so covered up the severity of her injuries for some reason.

CGI fireworks

Some of the effects in the opening ceremony were faked becaue officials were worried the live ones wouldn't work.

Nice voice, shame about the face"

7 year old Yang Peiyi, who won a competition to sing at the opening ceremony, was deemed not pretty enough, and so a 9 year old mimed instead.

kafunked and I commented as we watched the ceremony that she was miming, it was pretty obvious, but we assumed she was miming an older girl's voice! Sad thing is, Yang Peiyi is a perfectly beautiful little girl, she just has wonky teeth, just like a million other little 7 year olds in the world.

And finally, because there has to be an 'and finally',

British cheat caught out by green water...

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I don't know if it's the same in China as Korea but dates of birth are a funny thing out there. My friend-who-lives-out-there forgets how old he is as his "Korean age" can make him a year or two older than his "British age". That said, it wouldn't be difficult to work out what was intended by the Olympic committee's rules as I think they'd likely be using the same calendar as us!

The evidence for her being currently 14 is that she has been talked about in the Chinese press, and her age last year was given as 13. Officials refuse to comment any further, as they say there's the passport, there's the proof...

To be honest, this Olympics was going to be rife with claims like this, so I'm not terribly surprised...

There's always contraversy, but this one is so much more interesting, for some reason. Perhaps because China is barely even pretending it isn't cheating, it's just kind of going 'Yeah, we're cheating. But none of our people know, and we're going to say we're not, and everyone will be too polite and political to do anything about it'.

I am more interested in the Phelps one really, the pictures are pretty interesting, and the background. I liked the part where they say that the Serbians have seen the slowed down footage and are happy with it, but they aren't going to show anyone else. I have two mental images in my head, one where the Serbians are 'shown the footage' in the form of leather suitcases full of unmarked notes, and one where they are 'shown the footage' in the form of blunt instruments.

Heh, it's funny because I was thinking the same thing about being "shown the footage"!

(deleted comment)

Nice one :)

i remember wathing the phelps replays and being clear in my mind that he touched first, especially given the dynamics of butterfly, it's a lot quicker to bring the arms over than glide, it happens a lot in backstroke too when they mistime the final stroke.

My former work colleague Doug agrees with you - he wants this to go on here as he hasn't got an LJ:

His fingertips were definitely closer to the wall at that point than Phelp’s. But the Serbian dude had made his final stroke and had his arms out for the wall, so was basically gliding for the final few inches on previously built-up momentum.

Phelps was still executing his final stroke, and was in the process of bringing his arms forward when that photo was taken – i.e. he was still going at full pelt. Don’t forget the Phelps is very tall, with abnormally long arms. So considering he was (a) going faster at the end (b) had his head and shoulders closer to the end (look at the conspiracy photo) (c) has a longer arm-reach I don’t find it odd to believe that he won in what was an incredibly close finish.

hmm, interestingly there was controversy over this before the olympics even started...

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2008-07-27-3655845897_x.htm

Interesting but unsurprising really. My housemate described the Olympics as a "glorified sports day". Which would certainly be more interesting, especially if there was a sack race, obstacle course and egg-and-spoon.

Olympic sack race and the 800m egg and spoon...that would be awesome

Wouldn't it just? Especially if all the pomp and ceremony remained the same! They should bring back the tug of war too.

Only if theres a pit of custard in the middle for people to be tugged into!

Hahaha, of course!!!

I seem to remember that tug of war used to be part of it? Or maybe that was just a particularly amusing dream... ;-)

It did indeed. Not anymore though, sadly.

http://www.olympic.org/uk/sports/past/index_uk.asp

Long ago though, so you're unlikely to have seen it happen, unless you look REALLY REALLY good for your age...

I must have read about it! But what a shame it isn't part of it anymore, Japan could send all their Sumo wrestlers, it would be hilarious! :-D

Lets start a campaign to bring it back for 2021!

(unless roller derby is in the running, of course...)

yes and we once won all three medals in it because the UK was the only country to field teams! The good old days

hang on...isn't there that one kid on the british diving team whose only 14? or does that have different rules?

DIving has different rules - it was only in gymnastics that they had a problem with really young entrants.

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