Congratulations to Shawn Johnson for winning gold on the balance beam. While she may not be as graceful on the beam as Nastia, her routine was rock solid and athletic. Truth be told, I was getting sick of Nastia winning everything, anyway. Shawn deserved her chance to shine, and yesterday’s event final was it.

Shawn, you’ve done Hy-Vee proud.

And now that swimming and gymnastics are over, I can finally start getting to bed earlier.

(images via New York Times)

Since Michael Phelps won his first gold at these Olympics, I’ve been curious about the material and weight of the medals. Are they solid? Plated? How much are they each worth?

I found many of the answers to my questions here (via Pret a Voyager). I had no idea that the reverse side of the Beijing Olympic medals are inlaid with jade. Did you?

The medals are 70mm in diameter and 6mm in thickness. On their obverse side, the medals adopt the standard design prescribed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) — a drawing that represents the winged goddess of victory Nike and Panathinaikos Arena, while on their reverse side, the medals are inlaid with jade with the Beijing Games emblem engraved in the metal centerpiece.

Noble and elegant, the medals are a blending of traditional Chinese culture and the Olympism. It gives the winners of the Games great honor and acclamation as recognition of their achievement.

The IOC has strict stipulation on the Olympic medals’ material, identification, weight, size and drawing. The medals for the champion and the runner-up are made of pure silver, and the champion’s medal must be plated with gold weighing not less than six grams each. For the first time jade is used for the Olympic medals. The design not only meets the IOC requirements, but also expresses praise and honor that the Chinese people cherish for the Olympic Spirit and the Olympic athletes.

(image source)

Thank goodness for Slate. I now know why and when the horse was replaced with “the tongue” in gymnastics.

Why the equipment change?

In part to facilitate more impressive acrobatic feats, and in part to reduce injuries. The so-called vaulting table—nicknamed “the tongue” by gymnasts—was first developed in the mid-1990s by the Dutch gymnastics equipment company Janssen-Fritsen. The main impetus for the switch was a series of crashes that occurred at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, when several gymnasts either rammed into the horse’s front end after mistiming their approaches or botched their landings after misplacing their hands on the push-off. Although these mishaps were ascribed to a calibration error—the vault had been set 2 inches too low—the International Gymnastics Federation also began to consider whether the old-style horses were too hazardously shaped.

The table, which Janssen-Fritsen calls Pegases, made its international debut at the 2001 world championships in Ghent, Belgium. The front edge slopes downward and is thickly padded, so an accidental run-in hopefully won’t cause broken bones; a collision with the vertical face of an old-fashioned horse, by contrast, was more likely to be a disaster. The Pegases also boasts a larger surface area for the competitors to place their hands on, so a little midair shift to the left or right won’t have catastrophic results. Lastly, the table’s top is more cushioned than the horse, to lessen the blow in case anyone lands on it headfirst.

The larger surface area has also made it easier for vaulters to perform difficult maneuvers that require handsprings on the approach. The width of the table provides gymnasts with a bit more room for error when executing such routines.