Here is a good video from NBC about how Nastia’s life was instantly changed by winning the all around competition:

And then on the high bar, Jonathan Horton pulled off a silver!

So, that was a pretty good night for American gymnastics.

The U.S. women end up with 8 medals overall, and the men end up with two.

The commentators asked if He Kexin really believed she won the gold. Well, of course she’s does— she’s too young to know any better!

1. Tie breakers— Really? A tie breaker? And the tie breaker protocol doesn’t even make any sense! You drop the highest and lowest scores, as usual. Then you drop another score, look at the remaining scores, and the gymnast with the highest score from the remaining three scores wins. Confused? Yeah, so was Nastia’s Dad, and he’s a judge. And it’s not even the same tie breaker procedure for different events within the same sport. The gold in the men’s vault was also decided by a tie breaker, but in that event you just take the highest score out of the two vaults (which at least makes some sense).

2. No perfect 10— no explanation needed

3. Difficulty scores— meant to make things more fair but really just makes things more confusing

4. Inexperienced judges— Because there can be no judges from a country that is competing, you end up with judges from countries with horrible gymnastics programs judging the finals. And, apparently, in their programs falling down isn’t a big deal!

5. Judges bias against American gymnasts— Can it really be coincidence that China always seems to benefit from “voting irregularities”, and it never seems to help the Americans?

Those are my beefs. What are yours?

Then, Cheng Fei performed her vault. The first one had a high difficuly, and she performed it well and got a well-deserved high score. On the second vault, she fell. She landed her knees. And you know my rule— you fall down, no medal. Only in this case, even with the fall, her overall score was approximately .03 higher than Alicia Sacramone’s, so she eventually received the bronze.

I just don’t get it. I don’t care how difficult a vault is, falling down should knock you out of contention unless everyone else falls down.

On the up side, the silver medal went to Oksana Chusovitina, the 33 year old from Germany. Way to go! I can’t even believe that she’s still able to compete at all against these other young women half her age, much less get a medal.

So, that was the good and the bad of the vault competition tonight. Too bad for Alicia Sacramone, but great job Oksana.

I watched the competition last night, and it was really great! Where the men’s competition was really decided based on who messed up the least, the women were almost flawless. Many women were eliminated from medal contention based on minor mistakes.

My only complaint with the night was the judging. I’m really glad the women won so that I can legitimately address this issue without being accused of sour grapes. It sure seemed that the American women were consistently given lower scores for routines that had fewer mistakes. And I’m not talking about the difference in difficulty. I’m strictly talking about the execution scores. When you make it through a balance routine with no major balance checks or mistakes, and you receive a lower score than a gymnast who has FIVE mistakes that were obvious to even my husband’s untrained eye, something is wrong! I understand that the judges may favor other gymnasts’ style, but that shouldn’t affect the scores— at least not that much! Fortunately, the American girls maintained their cool, continued to perform their best and brought home the medals.

Below you can see the girls discuss their medals, as well as Mary Lou Retton and Bela Karolyi and the families of the gymnasts.

Watching the all around competition was a bit painful. I don’t know if it’s the added difficulty in routines encouraged by the new scoring, or what, but it was one of the sloppiest nights of Olympic gymnastics I’ve ever seen. Several men had serious falls, and almost no one performed a clean routine.

It was so much an “anyone’s medal” for anything but the gold that the sports commentators had almost no information on the French gymnast, Benoit Caranobe, who won the bronze. It was almost as though they had no idea who he was. It was a really genuine, touching moment though when he won. I don’t think he could have been more thrilled if he’d won gold.

Kohei Uchimura, of Japan, won bronze. Since he is only 19, he’s definitely someone to watch for the 2012 London Olympics.

Hopefully, by the London Olympics the time delays and other issues brought about by the new scoring system will be worked out, and we can watch with more oohs and aahs and fewer ouches.

I’m absolutely amazed with the determination of athletes who compete with injuries like this. On the one hand, you’ve put so many years into training. On the other hand, that must HURT! I imagine there’s not enough ibuprofen to make that stop throbbing. I hope she can now get her ankle attended to with no long-term ill effects.

Tonight, the women’s gymnastics team was disappointed to get the silver. It’s never easy to lose out on a gold because of mistakes (USA certainly had the opportunity to overtake China), but really it comes down to expectations. The women’s team came into the Beijing Olympics as world champions. Since they got to Beijing, they’ve lost two gymnasts out of six to injuries. But that doesn’t make silver any less of a bitter pill— especially when you expected gold.

Why weren’t the American men expected to medal at the Beijing Olympics? Well, for one, they didn’t have one returning Olympian on the team. Second, they had two alternates replacing the returning Olympians who were supposed to be on the team.

Alexander Artemev, Raj Bhavsar, Joe Hagerty, Jonathan Horton, Justin Spring, and Kevin Tan did America proud.

At least gymnastics had the good sense to raise the penalties for failing to execute a move, so maybe it won’t result in as many falls as ice skating’s new scoring system, where it seems that you’re better off trying the impossible and falling on your rear than executing a modest routine. Although I do have to say some of the scores that were posted last night, in spite of falls were pretty ridiculous. I miss the simplicity of a fall meaning you were pretty much done in the competition. On the other hand, I understand that it’s not fair that minor deductions on a ridiculously hard routine can result in a worse score than the perfect performance of a really easy routine. But couldn’t they, then, just raise the level of difficulty of required elements?

I don’t know what the best answer is to the scoring issue. And I’m not sure yet what I think of the current scoring system. But I do know that I’m going to miss the excitement of the perfect 10.

How about you? What do you think of the new system?

The video below is a fan’s tribute to the perfect 10. It’s a montage of perfect 10 performances to Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Goodbye”.

After her son was diagnosed with leukemia, she went to Germany to secure treatment for him. She has continued to compete to pay his bills. He is now in remission. Oksana became a German citizen in 2006. Shortly after that she competed for Germany in Worlds, earning a bronze in vault.

In the preliminaries at the Beijing Olympics, Oksana scored 14.725 on uneven bars (the second highest German score, 27th overall), 14.4 on beam (the highest German score, 43rd overall ), 14.45 on floor (second highest for Germany, 30th overall), and a whopping 15.525 on vault (the best score for Germany and 4th overall, qualifying her to compete for an event medal). So, she’s not just there out of pity. She’s definitely a valuable member of the German team. Wouldn’t it be something if she medaled in vault? That would be just awesome!

MSNBC is broadcasting a full day tomorrow, as well, including women’s tennis, women’s handball, women’s basketball, women’s water polo and women’s volleyball. (Incidentally, U.S. women’s water polo is pursuing their third straight Olympic gold medal.) Men’s badminton (where U.S. competitor Raju Rai may actually have a chance), weightlifting and men’s archery are also available for viewing.

CNBC will be showing men’s beach volleyball, boxing, and women’s softball.

USA is broadcasting women’s beach volleyball, rowing, men’s tennis (featuring Wimbledon champion Rafael Nedal), women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball.

Oxygen will be covering gymnastics and equestrian.

Online, you can see archery, badminton, basketball, fencing, handball, field hockey, judo, rowing, sailing, shooting, softball, tennis, water polo, weightlifting, and wrestling.

If you’d like to watch Nastia Liukin perform before tonight, I’m including her floor routine below.

You can see men’s gymnastics qualifying rounds during NBC’s primetime Olympic coverage Saturday night.

1. Michael Phelps— Could potentially be one of the biggest stories of the China Olympics. Will he break Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals in one Olympics? Will he tie his own record of eight medals (6 gold, 2 bronze) that he set at the Athens Olympics in 2004?

2. Shawn Johnson— She just might join the ranks of other women’s gymnastic greats Mary Lou Retton and Carly Patterson, who won all-around championships at the Olympics. At 16, she is the reigning world all-around champion.

3. Dara Torres— Dara hopes to increase the oldest age of the oldest gold medalist in swimming from 33 to 41 (she set the previous record at the Sydney Olympics). She also hopes to add to her current 9 Olympic medals.

4. The Lopez Family— Steven, Mark and Diana Lopez are siblings from Sugarland, Texas who will all be competing in TaeKwondo at the Summer Olympics. Even more amazing, they’re coached by older brother Jean. They are the first three siblings since 1904 to make an Olympic team. Since they won’t be competing against each other, they could conceivably bring home three gold medals.

5. Allyson Felix— The 22 year old track and field darling will be going for three gold medals. In the current climate of track and field, where the sport is reeling from recent performance-enhancing drug scandals, Felix has signed up for the enhanced testing program to prove that she is running clean.

6. Sheila Taormina— Sheila Taormina has already set a record before she even competes in Beijing. She’s the first woman to compete in four Olympics in three different sports. At this summer’s China Olympics, she’ll be competing in modern pentathlon. Previously, she has competed in swimming and triathlon. In 1996, she won a gold medal as part of the women’s 4×200 relay team. Taormina, age 39, will be joined on the U.S. Women’s Pentathlon team by teenage phenom Margaux Isaksen, who is only 16.

7. U.S. Women’s Softball Team— The U.S. Women’s Softball team, including several familiar faces from former Olympic teams, will be going for its fourth consecutive gold medal. Team member Laura Berg was on each of the previous winning teams and hopes to add to her collection of gold medals.

8. Lopez Lomong— You MUST visit his website. Lomong has an unbelievably inspiring story. A former “lost boy” of the Sudan, Lomong escaped from the Sudan and was relocated to the United States where he attended Northern Arizon University and began running track. Lomong will compete in the 1,500 m race in Beijing.

9. Laura Wilkinson— Laura Wilkinson is one of the United States’ best chances for gold in platform diving. After winning the gold in Sydney, Wilkinson was disappointed with a fifth place finish in Athens. However, she easily made the 2008 team and is looking really strong. Although she will be quite a bit older than many of the other competitors, she is working on some extremely complex dives and plans to go out with a bang at the Beijing Olympics. She will be retiring after the Games.

10. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh— They’ll be seeking to win the first back-to-back gold medals in beach volleyball. They’re coming into the Olympics with a 101-match winning streak and have won 18 tournaments in a row.

We only have one remote right now, but it would be even more fun if we had multiple remotes, since we could play against each other that way, as in this video:

So, if you’re looking for a fun prep for the Summer Olympics, go out and pick up Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. If you don’t mind waiting a couple of days for it to come in, consider ordering it from Overstock. It’s $7 cheaper than what I paid at Best Buy, and shipping is only $3.