Why are the olympics always so god-awful boring?

That first horse's spine is (as it should be) slightly curved around the rider's left leg. How much of that is in response the rider's tilting head? She must also be looking at something - since we know the rider is supposed to sit entirely still and straight. Relevant's head is perfect, nice soft eyes & mouth, ears showing his attention is strictly on the rider, but he seems relaxed despite that obviously difficult maneuver. Of course, he's a chestnut (most of the best dressage horses are). Her wrists are cupped (do you see?), she's holding him back and he's being submissive, but he hasn't yet dropped the line of his face behind the vertical, so he'd move out on his next stride if he could. He has to be doing a piaffe (standing trot), just look at that tail. They are practicing, since she is not in full regalia and he's wearing bandages.

The next horse is slightly behind the vertical and the rider's wrists show that. He would prefer going forward and doesn't like that half-pass -- see how the left rein is pressing against the neck and the right is opening, while the right hind leg seems to be coming in with that extended trot... he's two-tracking. Note... another chestnut!! We LOVE to watch.

piffka

I'm a low level eventer so i have the basics of dressage down.
I certainly can see the merit in the critiscms of competitive dressage - even incorporated into my own riding and showing - almost ironic you have to suit your style to the judge's taste.

olympic level equestrian events are a nice treat especially considering its so rarely available any other time on tv

The South Korean Olympic team will ask the Court of Arbitration for Sports to determine if Yang deserves a gold medal.

"We want obvious mistakes to be corrected," said Jae Soon-yoo, an official with the South Korean delegation.

The error Wednesday cost Yang a tenth of a point on his parallel bars score that made the difference between third and first.

South Korea failed to lodge a protest during the event, so the scoring was not changed, said the federation, known as FIG. The South Koreans, however, said they did question the scoring as soon as the routine was over and were told by the judges to file a protest letter after the meet, Jae said.

If the mistake hadn't been made, Hamm would have won the silver and South Korea's Kim Dae-eun would have received the bronze instead of silver. USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi compared the mistake to a bad call in football that wasn't discovered until after the game. He insisted the decision by gymnastics' governing body should not put an asterisk on Hamm's gold medal.

Hamm scored 9.837 on parallel bars and high bar to close the meet, rallying from 12th place to first and becoming the first American man to win the event.

"Paul Hamm's performance the other night was absolutely incredible," Colarossi said. "It's unfortunate the judges didn't have the right start value."

<Start Value?>
A start value is based on the difficulty of the routine. Yang received a start value of 9.9 on parallel bars, a tenth lower than he got for the same routine in team qualifying and finals.

After reviewing a tape of the all-around, federation officials determined Yang should have been awarded a start value of 10. With the extra 0.10, he would have finished with 57.874 points and defeated Hamm by 0.051.

Anyone still watching Olympics?

It was even better to see your basketball team not get a medal at all.

pnut wrote:

It was even better to see your basketball team not get a medal at all.

The American men's basketball team won the bronze medal.

Peaches en Regalia..hmmm that would be a tough score.