Men's Prelims - Walker NH :(

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achtungpv
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Re: Men's Prelims Live Updates - Discuss Here Only!

Unread postby achtungpv » Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:36 am

rainbowgirl28 wrote:I wouldn't say it was fair to call him busted for doping twice. It was back and forth on the same thing, and he never failed a drug test, he was guilty by association. But he has been ruled not guilty so...


Correct. He saw a doctor (only once if I remember correctly) that was later associated with a cycling doping scandal, not track. He's never failed a test or had missed tests.

If you're gonna condemn somebody by association, there'd probably not be an athlete left in the sport.
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Re: Men's Prelims - Walker NH :(

Unread postby rainbowgirl28 » Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:59 am

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/be ... 98,00.html

Steve Hooker survives scare to qualify for pole vault
Tom Smithies in Beijing | August 20, 2008 02:15am

Stephen Hooker clears 5.65m at his third and final attempt to qualify for the final of the Olympic pole vault. Picture: Michael Dodge
AUSTRALIAN Steve Hooker survived a scare early today to qualify for the final of the pole vault.
After twice failing to clear the bar at 5.65m, a tracksuited Hooker regained control of his Olympic destiny on his third attempt to make it through to tomorrow night's final.

Australia's second vaulter, Paul Burgess, bombed out at 5.65m to end his campaign.

And in a controversial qualifying round that finished in a deserted stadium just before midnight, America's gold medal favourite, Brad Walker, also bit the dust.

Walker, who had the highest jump this year coming into the Olympics of 6.04m, made a complete meal of his third attempt at 5.65m.

In January, Hooker confirmed his rightful place among the elite by clearing 6m in a pole vault event at a Perth interclub meet, making him just one of 15 men to have achieved the feat in the sport's history.

But that was a bright spot in what has been an injury and illness plagued two years, with Hooker suffering both glandular fever and a chest injury in the build-up to Beijing.

There's never been any doubt about Hooker's pedigree, coming from rare Olympic stock. His mother, Erica Nixon, jumped for Australia at the 1972 Games as well as winning a clutch of national titles as well as silver at the 1978 Commonwealth Games.

And father Bill represented Australia in the 800m and 4x400m at the 1974 Commonwealth Games and won four national crowns.

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Re: Men's Prelims - Walker NH :(

Unread postby master » Thu Aug 21, 2008 12:09 pm

MoCoVault wrote:Is there any way to give http://www.nbcolympics.com feedback and tell them not to keep changing the order of the vaulters on their live feed. I understand they put them in order of their current place, but it's a lot more informative to pole vault people if they stay in their jumping order. I didn't see a feedback link anywhere.

When I first used their chart I was confused. But when I realized what they were doing, I found it helpful. I am interested in what you feel is "..a lot more informative to pole vault people.." in using the chart without changing its order. I certainly can understand the benefit of that being what we are used to.

- master

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Re: Men's Prelims - Walker NH :(

Unread postby rainbowgirl28 » Thu Aug 21, 2008 12:50 pm

http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dl ... 10313/1001

Miles now America's only hope for pole vault medal
USD graduate advances, U.S. teammates don't
DAVID WOODS • GANNETT NEWS SERVICE • AUGUST 21, 2008

BEIJING - On a night in which the world champion was eliminated, Derek Miles stayed on course to win a pole vault medal at the Olympic Games.

Miles, 35, a Californian who now lives in Tea, cleared 18 feet, 61/4 inches Wednesday. He was one of 13 vaulters to reach Friday's final.

His U.S. teammates, world champ Brad Walker and 40-year-old Jeff Hartwig, did not survive a qualifying round that didn't end until past midnight.



"It was a long competition," said Miles, a University of South Dakota graduate who now is a track assistant at the university. "I think one pit had it worse than the other. On our pit, everything was OK.

"I struggled a little bit out there at first. I'm feeling good. Today was a good learning lesson. I was coming around at the end."

Miles cleared 17-101/4 on his first attempt and almost went out at 18-2 1/4, clearing on his third. He made 18-61/4 on his second try.

Walker passed until 18-61/4, then missed three times for a no-height. Hartwig made 18-21/4 on his third try but missed 18-6 1/4.

Walker criticized organizers for conducting qualifying so late at night and said the competition was poorly run. He said waiting to open at 18-61/4 was not unusual for him.

"That's just what you do. You try to conserve jumps," Walker said.

This is the second Olympics for Miles, who was seventh at Athens in 2004. He called the 91,000-seat National Stadium an impressive venue.

"It's exciting," he said. "It feeds the overall energy, which is great for the pole vault."

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Re: Men's Prelims - Walker NH :(

Unread postby vaultmd » Thu Aug 21, 2008 2:42 pm

Did NBC have ANY tv coverage of the PV prelims? I recorded the prime-time and late night telecasts yesterday and early this am but I don't think the PV is in either one.

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Re: Men's Prelims - Walker NH :(

Unread postby KirkB » Thu Aug 21, 2008 3:04 pm

master wrote:
MoCoVault wrote:Is there any way to give http://www.nbcolympics.com feedback and tell them not to keep changing the order of the vaulters on their live feed. I understand they put them in order of their current place, but it's a lot more informative to pole vault people if they stay in their jumping order. I didn't see a feedback link anywhere.

When I first used their chart I was confused. But when I realized what they were doing, I found it helpful. I am interested in what you feel is "..a lot more informative to pole vault people.." in using the chart without changing its order. I certainly can understand the benefit of that being what we are used to.

- master

Until they improve this (and they won't be improving it before the Men's Finals - it's not a bug), you should just keep a hard-copy or soft-copy of the Start List to refer to the vaulting order. That will allow you to understand passing strategy, who's on deck, etc.

There are at least 3 ways NBC can improve this from a user interface design perspective, each one being a bit better than the previous ...

1. The simplist way is to just add the jumping order # as an additional column to the nbcolympics.com list. The reader can then just glance down the list for the next vaulter in order.

2. A better way is to allow the reader to sort the entire list by either start order or rank - by clicking on the column heading that you want to sort by. Then, for those of you that prefer start order, you can see the list sorted that way. Preferably (for us, at least), start order should be the default order. However, there may be more readers that prefer the rank order, so NBC will cater to that majority.

3. The best way is to make the reader's most recent sort order choice "sticky" - even from one day to another. (This is usually done by "cookies".) That way, you won't have to re-sort the list by start order after every auto-refresh. It just takes a slight bit more time to design the software this way, but it would certainly be the best solution to satisfy everyone - those that prefer rank order, and those that prefer start order.

NBC is using Microsoft SilverLight, which is a very powerful browser plug-in that can make your browser do almost everything that you can do in a "thick client" application - such as Word or Excel. Really, it comes down to understanding user preferences, and designing the user interface accordingly. Keep in mind that they will probably not customize their application for PV only. The same interface will probably be implemented for every field event. Even the running events have somewhat of an equivalent to "Start Order" - it's "Lane #".

As a side note, I think they've done a really good job of implementing this with SilverLight. The auto-refresh feature, for example, is something that you don't normally get in Internet Explorer or Firefox. Without SilverLight, you have to click the refresh button on your browser when you think there's been a change (like we do now on PVP, as Becca posts updates during the competition). The country flags, and the drill-down to athlete bios are also nice features. But most important of all, it's within a minute or 2 of the LIVE results!

Not quite as quick as Becca's stealth team :yes: , but hey, what do you expect for multi-billion-dollar company on a multi-million-dollar website! :)

Kirk
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Re: Men's Prelims - Walker NH :(

Unread postby MoCoVault » Fri Aug 22, 2008 8:36 am

master wrote:
MoCoVault wrote:Is there any way to give http://www.nbcolympics.com feedback and tell them not to keep changing the order of the vaulters on their live feed. I understand they put them in order of their current place, but it's a lot more informative to pole vault people if they stay in their jumping order. I didn't see a feedback link anywhere.

When I first used their chart I was confused. But when I realized what they were doing, I found it helpful. I am interested in what you feel is "..a lot more informative to pole vault people.." in using the chart without changing its order. I certainly can understand the benefit of that being what we are used to.

- master


Thank you KirkB for a very thorough analysis. I knew it wasn't realistic for them to make any changes by today's final.

I'd say overall I'm happy with NBC's coverage of the PV, and Olympics coverage in general, especially the live online autorefresh updates. As well as the streaming online video and multiple TV stations showing stuff a lot. Their actual prime time TV coverage wasn't anything special, but it wasn't any worse than other meets.

I haven't had a chance to check out the full video of the women's prelims and finals, but if it's quality, then NBC deserves some props for that.


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