But you are assuming that the officials did not have access to footage that showed the Chinese riders did break the rules.
What are you talking about? If there is any conclusive evidence that the Chinese cyclists broke the rules, I have not seen it nor have anyone else for that matter is seems.
That is the the main root of the dispute.
The rules in any sport state that a foul should only be called when there is good evidence to support it. Bad calls get made in sports that do no rely on video replay and that is just part of the game for those sports, but for sports that do use video replays, there is no excuse for making bad calls based on those replays.
It is a very very simply matter that you are going way out of your way to try and spin and twist and distort for I don't know what reason.
Either there is a clear-cut image that shows the Chinese pair handed off illegally, in which case it was right to relegate them, or there wasn't. If there was a 'smoking gun' image, I have not seen it, and I cannot think of why such an image would not be publicly available like there are clear-cut evidence for every single other decision made.
Yet funnily enough in sport, officials do not always justify their decisions. In fact, I would say it's fairly rare for officials to comment on a decision after they have made it. I assume this is because they want to retain their independence and do not want to be sucked into a public argument every 5 minutes.
Again, please first familiarize yourself with the rules and facts surrounding the sport we are talking about. This is not football where no video-replays are allowed. The fault in question could realistically only be called based on video evidence unless the athletes were deliberately trying to loose.
Since the fault was called well after the race had been finished and was based solely on playback evidence, there should not be any issue with delays or bad on the spot calls as the officials had the opportunity to review the footage at their leisure.
Difficult to say. But the "appeal" seemed to gain little or no traction at the start.
Well then, maybe you should find out for sure before trying to equate the situations then.
Why would the officials have access to clear footage for the British riders but only blurry footage for the Chinese riders?
Well that's my question exactly. Why is it that no clear-cut image has been presented for this race when all the others had crystal clear video and images to support the decisions made? Seems a little odd to say the least.
The same equipment would have been used for both cases. It's much more likely that they could see both clearly.
The broadcaster, officials and coaches all have access to the same feeds. Yet no clear image was ever released that I am aware of, and the Chinese coach wanted the Officials to look at the footage he had seen and then tell him that the Chinese pair had handed off illegally. Hardly an unreasonable request.
As for the BBC sport video, I think officials have access to something slightly more sophisticated than asking a broadcaster to replay their TV footage. And I'm hardly surprised that the BBC would not try to get crystal clear images themselves, as the vast majority of BBC viewers wouldn't have cared either way what happened. Surprisingly enough we cared about what happened to our athletes, so the BBC spent a lot of time over it - and it was a significant news story in its own right. Maybe you should write to the BBC and ask them why they didn't show the clear images they did with the British girls?
The broadcaster has access to the same feeds as the officials. And it just looks like you are trying desperately to find any excuse to try and dismiss this story. One has to wonder why you are trying so hard when you clearly have no understanding or interest in the sport in question.
To address your suggestion that the BBC didn't show footage because 'no one cared', well do you really think so lowly of the BBC's professionalism? This was a gold medal race for crying out loud. Fair enough if it was in the heats or something similar whereby nothing was at stake. This was a gold medal deciding match, and a gold medal deciding decision.
Are you honestly going to tell me that you think the BBC team just shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Who cares? Lets got for a pint.' when all this was happening?
Why - because Chinese coaches never lose their temper? Come on, Chinese people are known for getting angry like anyone else.
Give me an example where a Chinese national coach has made a fuss for no good reason before.
That is ridiculous. The Chinese girls were not riding at supersonic speeds, they were riding at perfectly normal speeds that the equipment could have slowed down. They were able to tell the British girls broke the rules, so I'm sure they could have done the same with the Chinese girls.
Yeah, take my comment out of context why don't you.
I clearly meant that the judges could not tell with just their eyes and had to rely on replays. And those girls were not riding at 'perfectly normal speeds', if they were only managing normal speeds, they would not have set a new world record during qualifying.
You find me someone who claim that they can see the alleged fault at real-time playback speeds and I will show you a lier.
If you had to make a judgement call in real time, mistakes are unavoidable. But when you can look at a reply and slow the footage down frame by frame and you are only looking to see who crossed the line first, any mistake is unforgivable.
Maybe. Or perhaps he was worried he'd get disciplined because his girls made a mistake that they shouldn't have, so he tried to deflect attention by claiming "we woz wobbed". I would go for something in between. Coaches protest all the time, usually because they think they have a case. The Chinese coach may have thought he had a case - didn't mean he did.
Again, please find me an example where a Chinese national coach has done anything like what you are suggesting. You can just as easily apply that line of argument to any coach in any sport in any country that has ever protested any bad decision. The argument is so generic and baseless it is meaningless.
You are clear scraping the bottom of the barrel and are just suggesting anything remotely likely. I ask again, what does this mean to you that you are so desperate to try yo defend this decision when you so clearly did not even know the details of it until I pointed you to the videos for it?
