Sports Random, Random

[ti-amie]

If you haven't watched "Bridgerton" you won't get it. If you have, this is genius. It was posted three days before the start of the NFL Draft.

[ti-amie]

[the Moz]

Power to the people!!

Glory glory Man United

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

That's got to be the stupidest two-punch law in history.
Then again, it is Georgia.

[ti-amie]

Phil Mickelson has won at tournament at age 50. Someone posted this from way back in the day.

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Simone Biles Dials Up the Difficulty, ‘Because I Can’
The Olympic gold medalist’s new vault is so dangerous that gymnastics, for now, limits the scoring rewards for trying it. Biles says that’s unfair.

By Juliet Macur
May 24, 2021
Updated 10:04 a.m. ET

INDIANAPOLIS — Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, is renowned for performing moves so difficult, and so distinctive, that several have been named after her.

On Saturday, she executed a new one considered so dangerous that no other women even attempt it.

Her latest signature skill is called a Yurchenko double pike. Biles attempted it in competition for the first time on Saturday night at the U.S. Classic, her first competition in 18 months.



Biles had unveiled the vault, a stunning feat of power, physics and fearlessness traditionally only attempted by men, a day earlier, in a video from a practice that quickly went viral.

The Yurchenko double pike is considered so perilous and challenging that no other woman has attempted it in competition, and it is unlikely that any woman in the world is even training to give it a try. To execute it, a gymnast first must launch herself into a roundoff back handspring onto the vaulting table, and then propel herself high enough to give herself time to flip twice in a pike position (body folded, legs straight) before landing on her feet.

It’s the kind of maneuver done much more easily by a platform diver who has the help of gravity and the safety of a soft landing. Biles, though, executes it by producing enough speed and strength to power herself high in the air and then flip so quickly on the way down that gravity seems to have been taken by surprise. Others were too.

Not even the vault’s namesake, the former Russian gymnast Natalia Yurchenko, tried it in competition. (The double pike carries Yurchenko’s name because she pioneered the roundoff-back-handspring approach to the vault, not what Biles now can do after pressing off it.)

Biles performed the vault so well on Saturday that her one flaw, somehow, was over-rotating it. That meant she needed to take a few steps back on her landing to stop her momentum.

Still, when Biles landed, it sent the small crowd at the Indiana Convention Center into a frenzy.

The judges scoring her, however, were not so impressed. Despite the move’s difficulty, they gave it a provisional scoring value of 6.6, close to what Biles’s other vaults have received. That limited the points available for performing it successfully, a point that a frustrated Biles suggested was unfair to her.

“I feel like now we just have to get what we get because there’s no point in putting up a fight because they’re not going to reward it,” she said of judges and, ultimately, the International Gymnastics Federation, which has the final word on starting values for new vaults done in competition. “So we just have to take it and be quiet.”

Biles said Saturday that the gymnastics federation had similarly given her double-twisting, double-back beam dismount a start value that was too low, and that she expects it to undervalue her Yurchenko double pike when it is reviewed.

United States women’s national team coordinator Tom Forster agreed with Biles that a 6.6 was not high enough given the vault’s difficulty. “It doesn’t seem to be consistent with what they’ve done with other vault values,” he said, “and I don’t know why they do that.”

Part of the reason for that might be a concern for the safety of gymnasts not nearly as skilled as Biles — by assigning a dangerous move a low start value, the federation quietly discourages others from risking it. But there also may be a fear that Biles is so good that she might run away with any competition she enters simply by doing a handful of moves that her rivals cannot, or dare not, attempt.

“They’re both too low and they even know it,” Biles said of the rewards for her beam dismount and the double-pike vault. “But they don’t want the field to be too far apart. And that’s just something that’s on them. That’s not on me.

“They had an open-ended code of points and now they’re mad that people are too far ahead and excelling.”

Despite not being properly rewarded, Biles, the defending Olympic champion in the all-around, said she would continue doing them.

When asked why, she quickly answered, “Because I can.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/spor ... d=tw-share

[ponchi101]

This girl is not normal. That is basically saying "I am supergirl".
Insane, in the amazing sense of the word.

[ti-amie]

Michael Phelps is a freak of nature.

Katie Ledecky wipes the pool with her competitors.

But Simone is the one being harassed by her sport.

[ponchi101]

I hope I made it clear that I am not in that group of harassers. I was in admiration.

[ti-amie]

I hope I made it clear that I am not in that group of harassers. I was in admiration.

I understood.

[ptmcmahon]

I think we all are in awe? Don't know how you couldn't be. Seems like they are trying to punish greatness for being too great, and there is sadly an obvious difference between her and other two you listed

[dryrunguy]

So, due to the lockdown in Argentina and widespread COVID concerns, authorities made the decision to move the 2021 World Cup to Brazil. Brazil was chosen over last-minute offers from Chile and Paraguay.

https://soccer.nbcsports.com/2021/05/31 ... tina-2021/

[ptmcmahon]

You mean the Copa America? World Cup is 2022 in Qatar.