Does Not Obey the Laws of Physics

So, all my blathering about doubles is meaningless because men's and women's doubles are no longer a thing! Wow, I have not been keeping up with table tennis development.

Instead of doubles, it's now a team event, which means three out of five athletes need to win their singles match. Hm...I can't tell if this favors or disadvantages China.

In other Olympic news, China won two more swimming golds! So...Tokyo's shitty Olympic Village housing is basically improving China's chances at some of their weaker sports, because it's fucking with the usual dominance by other nations.

Eh, you win some, you lose some, I guess.

I'm not even surprised Argentina couldn't get past the group stages in men's fútbol. That 2-0 loss to Australia was just too much.

LOL @ Messi watching the game:

I'm sorry, Mochiball, the youths on Argentina are shit.

OK, to be completely fair, Argentina did valiantly fight to the end and equalized with Spain. They were knocked out by Egypt on goal differentials. But they really shouldn't have lost to Australia in the first place and should've gone through with at least 6 points. And Spain didn't help things by drawing to Egypt when they really should've been able to win.

Welp, now Pedri and Eric García goes on for who knows how much longer and will miss the entire pre-season. Meanwhile, I can imagine Messi sulking, since his Argentina got the Olympic gold back in 2008.

In other fútbol groups: Germany's out of groups because of Côte d’Ivoire, and Japan beats Mexico. (=.=) What is even happening anymore?

At this point, I'm pretty sure the gold is going to be a toss-up between Brazil and Spain, because these are the only two countries that seem to be taking the Olympics seriously. I can't decide who I want to get this. On the one hand, Dani Alves does not need any more titles. On the other hand, Pedri hype is going to go on forever if Spain wins. Both outcomes are horrifying.

And under no circumstances is Japan winning gold an acceptable outcome. NO.

Meanwhile, Piqué is having some kind of midlife crisis meltdown:
( Are you OK, Piqué? Did Shakira say something? )

I was not following the table tennis news, but apparently there's been some serious kerfluffle over the Tokyo Olympic's table tennis court size.

According to the head coach of the Chinese table tennis team, the athletes complained about the small size of the courts during warm-ups last week (July 21st). The coach, Liu Guoliang, then measured the courts and confirmed that it is indeed smaller than regulation. Table tennis courts use the "ratio" system (number of dividing boards used to encircle the court), with non-finals games played on 7x14 courts and finals played on 8x16 court size. The measurement for the Tokyo Olympic table tennis courts were 6x11.

The smaller court size means that Chinese athletes cannot accelerate at their usual pace safely due to the lack of space. This heavily impacts Chinese table tennis tactics, as one of their strong points is using the full width and depth of the court through their higher acceleration. This especially affects the men's team's performance due to the high reliance on this acceleration in their strategies. This acceleration is the meta which allowed Chinese table tennis athletes to dominate over foreign athletes, as this strategy has yet to be widely adopted by other countries.

Liu has lodged an official complaint, but it was too late to change the venue size.

As I have seen, the male Chinese table tennis athlete had played poorly through out the mix doubles tournament, as Liu said he would be the most impacted.

Remember, all of this was complained about five days ago. Well before the competition began.

So, that does help explain a bit more about why the performance was so terrible.

And that reminds me that the crew team complained about the water for sculls (rowing) was not properly desalinated, which changed the friction coefficient and buoyancy on their tiny boats. This complaint was lodged by multiple teams, as sculls teams practice and compete in fresh water.

Just another example of the arena being very poorly regulated in this Olympics.

I woke up to shocking news.

I'm not sure I've completely digested the news yet.

But, this is a case of no complaints. The fourth dive was terrible. There was no recovering from that with the kind of margins that exists at the Olympic level. It doesn't matter if the rest of the dives were still heads and shoulders above everyone else, the error on the fourth dive was absolutely horrifying. Honestly, the fact that they were still able to get silver despite the terrible error (the synchronization was completely off, it was like watching Americans dive) tells you the quality of the rest of the dives.

The thing I'm not happy about are people complaining that the athletes didn't have the right mental resilience to win, which is bullshit. These two were previous Olympic gold medalists and have won the international championship in synchronized diving. They've more than proved their mental mettle. What the team needs to do now is figure out why the error occurred and how to prevent this from happening ever again.

And the trend of Chinese men's failing at getting golds that they should be able to get continues. Air pistol, air rifle, now synchronized diving? What's next? Gymnastics? Table tennis? This is a horror show. 😱 Someone get these athletes a sports psychologist and fix this problem.

I still can't get over that fourth dive. Seriously, what is going on in the Chinese diving camp?

Edit to add: OK, you know what? I think I'm getting over it. Even Messi misses penalties. Sometimes, disasters happen. Even more so in sports. The fact that China has managed to win men's 10m platform synchronized diving gold medal in four Olympics in a row is already an achievement. And the dream of winning all of the diving golds was always a long shot. We'll come back 3 years later and be stronger. 💪

中国跳水队加油！

Another gold in the bag. Yes, I'm updating before the game even ends, that's how ahead the team is.

What cracks me up is the commentator criticizing the US duo for trying too hard to get the individual execution points and not paying enough attention to the synchronization...y'know, the most important bit for synchronized diving.

Not gonna lie, the US team was shit. I'm not usually one to shit on athletes, but there's a good reason the US duo came in last in the finals. The quality difference between the other nations and the US was...shockingly huge. And it was amazing how confident the two of them seemed to be, as if they didn't realize they're falling behind. I've just never seen that kind of confidence on athletes when they're at the bottom of the pack. Color me stunned.