
American TV Neglected the Saddest Story in the Olympics - ColinWright
http://1045theteam.com/american-tv-neglected-the-saddest-story-in-the-olympics/
======
ColinWright
I have no doubt that many HN readers will wonder why I've posted this. It's
not specific to hackers, I know. It's only tangentially related to technology,
and it certainly doesn't seem to have anything to do with startups.

But there are questions to ask, and lessons to be learned for startups, and
for entrepreneurs in general. Here are some of the questions raised for me.
Perhaps you can think of more:

What processes do you do by hand that could be automated? The timing was done
by hand - a notoriously error-prone process. relentless automation can
systematically weed out systematic errors, provided they are properly
monitored and tested. Then you can forget them, and let them do their job.

Do you have the right people doing the right jobs? The report is that the
time-keeper was an inappropriately chosen volunteer. It's notoriously easy to
leave a job in the hands of someone who may not get it right when it's
important. And just when isn't it important? (actually, sometimes)

Do you have the right error reporting processes in place? The team lodged an
appeal, and clearly that didn't go anywhere. Why not? The entire bout could
surely have been replayed and the timing checked. The result, in truth, should
never have been in doubt, and could easily have been overturned.

Do you have the right corrective measures in place? After reviewing the bout,
surely it should be straight-forward to correct the result. When you have a
mistake reported, can you roll-back and make it right?

And finally (for me - perhaps you have more points to make), always, always
consider the individual. This poor woman was left distraught on the piste,
unable to leave, in full view of the audience, in tears, her lifetime's work
hanging in the balance, out of her control.

So let me ask - how well do _you_ look after your users?

~~~
btbuilder
I believe just the starting of the timing is done by hand. The stopping is
done when a contact is automatically detected.

I am on the "fence" about this article. It seems within the capabilities of a
15 year old to press a button when a referee shouts a word. The responsibility
is great when the controversy hits, however.

~~~
T-R
> I believe just the starting of the timing is done by hand. The stopping is
> done when a contact is automatically detected.

That's exactly the issue, though - there are a handful of mechanisms in place
to ensure that the clock stops and points are awarded properly - electrical
equipment is used, buttons on the tips of the Epees are tested with a 750g
weight, fencers test on eachother's masks before each match, testing kits are
used to check wiring, etc., and the judges are there to watch movements to
account for possible disputes. The task of starting the clock has been
significantly overlooked compared to the task of stopping it.

Aside from this, the rules and the scheduling of matches are done with the
assumption that there will be no major disputes, which needlessly compounds
the damage from any dispute that happens.

~~~
btbuilder
I imagine the complexity of the system above is not primarily about stopping
the clock, but to accurately detect whether a hit was placed.

To have this level of precision I imagine the judge's "allez" would have to be
replaced with a racetrack style countdown and green. Otherwise attempting to
detect when a specific spoken word has been said (either predicting it just
started, or detecting that it has finished) sounds like a complex problem.

------
chrisaycock
Fencer here. There are several questions on HN, so I'll explain the rules that
led to this.

A normal bout goes for nine minutes or until someone scores 15 touches. In
this case, time expired with a score of 5-5.

In the event of a tie, one fencer is _randomly_ selected to have "priority"
and the bout resumes in sudden death for one minute. Whoever scores in that
minute wins. However, if time expires again, then the fencer with priority is
declared the winner by default.

The reason for priority is to force one competitor to be the attacker. Epee
fencing in particular favors defense, which is why the score is routinely so
low. The priority rule is a way of preventing passivity in overtime.

For this bout, the Korean fencer was given priority. The clock ran down to one
second and the two fencers "doubled", meaning they hit simultaneously. In
overtime, a double touch is annulled; nobody scores. The clock had one second
remaining, so the bout resumed. The fencers doubled again.

But oddly enough the clock _still_ had one second listed! So the fencers had
to try it again. They immediately doubled. At this point, it looked like the
clock had run to zero, and it really isn't clear what was actually happening
with the time keeper. Eventually, the referee reset the clock back to one
second!

Finally, the German fencer scored a single touch and was declared the victor.
The appeal from the Korean team is that the clock should never have been reset
to one second; the numerous double touches beforehand had been more than a
second long.

The committee that overseas the referee (the Directoire Technique) refused to
overrule. From personal experience, the DT never overrules.

At any rate, the entire fencing community is really upset about this. Many of
us were routing for Korea today in the team women's epee event because of
this.

~~~
Someone
For reference: the rules (<http://www.fie.ch/download/rules/fr/RTECHN.pdf>) do
allow the referee to adjust the clock. Section 32 (page 10), about the
duration of combat, states:

"En cas de défaillance du chronomètre ou de faute du chronométreur, l'arbitre
devra évaluer lui- même le temps restant à tirer."

In English:

"In case of failure of the chronometer or of error by the chronometer, the
arbiter can, all by himself, decide the time remaining."

So, I can see a reason why the arbiter was not overruled, especially since he,
apparently (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339668>), informed both
parties that he adjusted the clock. If they had changed the result, surely the
other party would appeal to that.

------
w1ntermute
> Unfortunately for Shin, the clock never started after the referee signaled
> to restart the match, giving Heidemann more than one second to land the
> winning touch.

> the timekeeper for the event was a 15 year old British volunteer

Wow, this is just absurd. Does anyone know on what basis the decision not to
award the Korean fencer the victory was made? This isn't even a situation in
which a do-over would have been necessary - the correct result was obvious.

And I can't help but feel that if this had happened to an American fencer, the
decision would have been very different.

~~~
sokrates
> Unfortunately for Shin, the clock never started after the referee signaled
> to restart the match, giving Heidemann more than one second to land the
> winning touch.

If I recall correctly, this is wrong. If there is less than a whole second
left for this 're-start' of the match, the clock is reset to a whole second.
In the German broadcast of the event, viewers were told that Heidemann landed
her hit 0.8 seconds after the clock was officially started again, so it
counted.

Now what's left to discuss is whether it's possible that the clock was started
those 200ms late by whoever was keeping the time. However it's probably not
regulated down to the split-second at which point or at which hand or mouth
movement by the referee the clock is to be started again.

~~~
ColinWright
The real technical question concerning the judgement made is:

    
    
        Just how late was the restart of the clock.
    

If it was more than 200ms then the hit should not be allowed to stand. Was it
more than 200ms late in being restarted? The video should make that clear -
there should be sufficient logging to know for sure.

But the question shouldn't arise - the processes involved should not allow the
clock to be restarted at a time other than when the official says "Allez"

Secondly, the contestant should _never_ be treated like that

~~~
sokrates
Yes, the real failure in this case is not technical, but social. Especially
that they forced her to stay on scene during the entire decision process.

------
mechanical_fish
Fencing used to be scored entirely manually. This was a disaster (see
anecdotes below) and the problems were solved with slightly-expensive but
relatively simple electronic touch-detection technology, i.e. those crazy
lights that you see flashing green, red, and white.

I predict this will happen again. Perhaps the referee will get a little box
that, when a button is pressed, simultaneously shouts "Allez" in an authentic
French accent and starts the clock. If the clock doesn't start, the referee
will stop the bout, debug the technology, and reset the clock. (Welcome to
fencing, where one's kit of electronics parts is almost as important as one's
weapon. ;)

Now for anecdotes:

I fenced saber ( _terribly_ ) back when saber wasn't electrified at the NCAA
level - which is to say: there was no electric circuit to detect contact
between Fencer A's saber and Fencer B's target area.

(Saber got electric scoring last, I suspect, because the head and arms are
part of the target area and you need conductive gloves and masks, which cost
money, particularly because it's harder to share gloves and masks between
fencers than it is to share a simple mesh vest.)

Moreover, at a regular-season NCAA fencing match, there's no budget for _five_
impartial judges per bout, and no spare unaffilated fencers sitting around. So
the rule was that we had to make touch/no touch calls _in matches involving
our own teammates_. This was, to say the least, a no-win situation for a
beginner. I quickly learned to pretend I was half-blind and clueless – which,
alas, did not require much acting talent – and round off all non-obvious calls
in favor of my teammate. To do otherwise was to earn the undying enmity of
one's own team.

The stress drove me crazy. In retrospect, I should have demanded to be
switched to foil or epee – epee, in particular, with its electronic scoring
and lack of right-of-way rules, was a gloriously straightforward sport; though
I would still have been a lousy fencer at least I would have lost for clear
reasons – but instead I fled after one season.

If there's a moral to this story, it's this: There is _no way_ that this
incident is the most unfair thing that has happened in the history of Olympic
fencing. ;) They must have been really, _really_ good sports back in the old
days.

~~~
swah
Do you enjoy watching those matches? Looks like an enjoyable sport to
_practice_ , but as an layman watching on TV, it gets very boring, because I
can't see when someone touched, when someone defended, etc.

At least if the swords where painted in bright colors...

~~~
mechanical_fish
Frankly, back in the old days when Olympic fencing never turned up on TV, I
used to wish I could watch it. But then it appeared, on streaming video. And
I've tried to watch it every four years. And I always turn it off after a
couple of minutes, because it is the most boring spectator sport I can think
of.

Even bowling, which is far emptier of visible strategy than fencing, is
perhaps more fun to watch, because it makes pleasant sounds and has a soothing
rhythm and you can immediately see the difference between a good frame and a
bad frame. And I actually spent more time watching _archery_ last week, which
is really boring as a spectator, but again it has a hypnotic rhythm, and at
least you can see where the arrows land.

In fencing, most of the time the participants are hovering looking for
openings and baiting each other, and then something happens that you barely
see, and half the time that's a no-action anyway because they didn't hit the
target, or they moved past each other, or the equipment broke.

I see, from our more-informed commenters, that this controversial match seems
to have involved a tie, three tiebreakers, two dubious judgement calls and a
denouement that happened too fast to see and that may have been a glitch. I
wish this were atypical of my experience with fencing, but that pretty much
sums up what it all looks like to me. ;)

So, not surprisingly, it turns out that a lot of sports are more fun to do, or
read about, than to watch.

Maybe it would be different if I _really_ understood fencing, rather than
knowing some but not all of the rules.

------
rdl
The saddest story of the Olympics is still the 1972 Munich murder of the
Israeli team, which is hopefully never surpassed.

I agree this was a really bad referee call, though.

~~~
eavc
The article specifically qualifies it as a saddest 'on field' moment.

~~~
rdl
I think on-field in the context of the article meant live vs tape delayed or
written about afterward. (It was immediately after complaining about NBC not
covering it for Americans).

------
sokrates
> Lam led with one second left on the clock

That's also not strictly speaking true. The match was even at this point. Lam
had previously been selected by /lottery/ to win in the case of an even
standing at the end of the one-minute-long extension to the match. So, she
would have won had that second passed, but she was not leading.

~~~
ColinWright
This is your second comment that has details I've been unable to find
elsewhere. I'm interested in trying to track down what actually happened here,
and your sources seem better than mine, unless I'm just missing something.

Can you provide some links for me to check out?

Thanks in advance.

~~~
sokrates
I'll see if I can dig up any German media write-ups with details. If so, I'll
reply (also with a rough translation)

~~~
sokrates
[http://www.abendblatt.de/sport/article2355249/Eklat-um-
die-l...](http://www.abendblatt.de/sport/article2355249/Eklat-um-die-letzte-
Sekunde-Heidemann-holt-Silber.html)

> Csar ging zur Planche, befragte beide Fechterinnen, ob sie damit
> einverstanden seien, die Uhr nochmals auf 00:01 zurückzusetzen und das
> Gefecht ein letztes Mal freizugeben. Heidemann und Shin A Lam stimmten zu.
> Csar gab das Startsignal. Heidemann attackierte - und traf nach 0,84
> Sekunden. Die Uhr zeigte 00:00.

Rough translation: Csar walked up to the planche and asked both fencers
whether they would agree to reset the clock to 00:01 and re-start the match
one last time. Heidemann and Shin A Lam agreed. Csar gave the start signal.
Heidemann attacked - and hit after 0.84 seconds. The clock showed 00:00.

If you search for "lam 0,8 sekunden" on the German Google News, you can find
similar articles. However, they usually are an exact copy of the article
mentioned above. The real source of the above claim is probably the "Sport-
Informations-Dienst (sid)", a German sports news agency that provides content
to those publications. I haven't yet found any other primary sources with the
exact time.

~~~
ColinWright
That's brilliant - thanks. It doesn't seem conclusive, because if the clock
didn't get started, and the touch happened at 0.84, then the question is
whether the delay was more than 0.16s, and further, why did the clock on the
video still show 0:01, while the claim there is that the clock showed 00:00.

And if the clock showed 00:00, wasn't the touch out of time?

Completely unclear, but it's useful to have the extra information. Thanks
again.

~~~
sokrates
No problem. My guess is that they round the displayed clock up instead of
down, so 00:00 automatically means the end of the match, and any split second
left shows 00:01 to let everyone know that it's not over yet.

~~~
Foy
More importantly, why doesn't the clock just show milliseconds too?

This is an Olympic combat event... one second is a long time.

------
ColinWright
Added as a note ...

Clearly this item has been heavily flagged. There are currently 20 items above
it on the front page, and of them, 10 are older _and_ have fewer points. The
ranking algorithm says those items should rank lower. The fact that they don't
indicates that this item has been flagged.

It would seem there are those on HN who consider this inappropriate. Enough
that they don't simply ignore it, but that they take the effort to flag it
(although one click is hardly much of an effort)

But the lessons to learn from this are there to be seen by those who would
take the time. That's why I wrote my extensive commentary, and that's why a
few people also commented in support.

Perhaps I should have written this up as a blog post so that I could have:

* controlled the title (since the moderators are now so aggressive on this)

* made the commentary the first thing to read, rather than the story.

Perhaps a lesson to take away from the story of the submission (rather than
the story of the fencer) is that there is a vocal minority on HN who will flag
things regardless of whether there are lessons to be learned.

I'm disappointed by that, although not really surprised.

------
alinajaf
More images (including video of the incident ) here:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/ktlincoln/an-olympic-fencer-
refuses-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/ktlincoln/an-olympic-fencer-refuses-to-
leave-the-floor-after)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
American TV also removed the 7/7 London bombings memorial in the opening
ceremony, for that matter.

------
ojno
Assuming the video here ([http://www.buzzfeed.com/ktlincoln/an-olympic-fencer-
refuses-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/ktlincoln/an-olympic-fencer-refuses-to-
leave-the-floor-after)) is accurate, I make it 28 frames, in a 30 fps video,
from the start of the "Allez" to the beep of the hit, so I reluctantly have to
agree with the judges.

~~~
mynameishere
Why "reluctantly" if the judges were correct in the first place? Anyway, the
real crime is the ridiculous random sudden-death coin flip. Whose idea was
that?

~~~
klez
I get that, if that was not the case, both contendants would stay too much on
defense. OTOH if one is declared winner 'by default' in case of a tie, the
other is more inclined to attack.

------
pbreit
The criticism of NBC is tiresome and probably inaccurate. Fact is, the vast,
vast majority of US tv watchers, including on both coasts: 1) prefer to watch
US athletes, 2) like the biographical segments and 3) like to watch marquee
events in prime time. The vocal minority are media and tech elites (and
wannabes).

~~~
ColinWright

        The criticism of NBC is tiresome and probably inaccurate.
    

And the reason I submitted this isn't because of the lack of coverage. The
reason I submitted it is because of the many, many lessons that entrepreneurs
can learn from the incident itself.

Here are just some of them highlighted, to help you see why I submitted this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339300>

~~~
pbreit
Good points (except I think premature automation is not always or even usually
wise; and, see "Knight Capital Group").

I guess I was responding to the post itself (or its need/decision to highlight
"American TV's" neglect. And also a good many responders taking an opportunity
to bash NBC.

------
hythloday
I used to fence a bit and watched this match live on BBC's iPlayer on
Wednesday night. For those of us who're honorarily British for the Olympics,
here's the link:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/live-video/p00w2wzb> (segment #3)

If you don't have access to it, the salient points of the match are:

48:25, the "sudden death" round is started due to non-combativity or timeouts
on the previous rounds. Shin is given "priority" based on the toss of a coin,
which means at the end of a minute if no single hits have been scored, she'll
win. Shin has been playing much more defensively or tactically all match, so
this maintains the tempo up to this point.

49:02, a double-touch happens with 24s left on the clock. Double-touches (ones
that occur within 1/25th of a second of each other) are not scoring, so play
resumes.

49:27, another double-touch with 15s on the clock. Shin plays very defensively
and scores the majority of her points by evasion and counter-attack, but uses
up a lot of the piste (the area the fencers are permitted in), so the referees
check that she didn't overstep it.

50:09, another double-touch with 9s left on the clock.

50:24, another double-touch with 5s left on the clock. Heidemann isn't scoring
a single-touch with her attack, but she's driving Shin toward the back line
where she'll lose if she oversteps.

50:48, another double-touch, 4s left on the clock.

51:03, another double-touch happens with 1s on the clock.

51:18, Heidemann immediately attacks the moment the beep occurs for another
double-touch with 1s left on the clock. The commentators are bemused that this
takes less than a second but to my eye it's pretty reasonable.

51:20, Heidemann and Shin go en guard, with Heidemann repeatedly being warned
by the referee not to take a position too close to Shin (the call of
"distance" from the ref).

51:39, another double-touch, again with 1s left on the clock. The commentators
are wondering about a technical malfunction at this point, but as Heinemann
takes her position the clock actually clicks down to 0s. The referee notifies
Shin and Heidemann that the clock will be set to a full one second. The Korean
coach comes out to argue but is overruled.

52:56, Heidemann scores the single-touch she needs to advance.

Resetting the clock to 1s is actually unusual, if I remember right, and
probably shouldn't have happened - I suspect that this was the mistake by the
timekeeper (which shouldn't be held against them, Olympic timekeeping is not a
"best-effort" thing). It's hard to say who "should have won" the match -
Heidemann certainly played a more aggressive and interesting game but Shin's
conversion so many of these into double-touches or even points for her are
exemplary. As another poster points out, I suppose the real answer is to voice
recognition software start the clock on "allez".

Lastly, I just wanted to salute Shin's courage and dignity in coming on to
play the bronze match, even though she must have known she had no chance to
win the medal. Even having rewatched the match in slow-motion half a dozen
times, I have a hard time feeling convinced that the right decision was made -
from her perspective she must have felt absolutely robbed.

------
mark_l_watson
My wife and I are both disgusted with the coverage. Sure, we like to see kids
from our country win, BUT, we all live on the same planet, and nationalism
belongs in a previous century. The human interest stories are not bad per se
until you realize how much broad international is bumped.

For the OP story: if that young woman's worst possible result if the error had
not occurred was a bronze, it would have been good if the international
Olympic committee could have firmly pulled their heads out of their asses and
given her a bronze medal. It would hurt no one if two bronze medals were
awarded.

------
lnanek2
It isn't just that the players weren't american, it's the sport as well. When
I was in fencing school in the US, the coach had to order the tapes of the
fencing bouts of the olympics, because they weren't even shown on TV in the
US.

------
sokrates
To round this up, we Germans just got evened out ;)

In the men's team semi final, Peter Joppich fought the final match against
Yūki Ōta. In the extended time, Joppich scored a single hit which was
apparently not counted because Joppich obscured his vest with his mask.
Another double hit which to me and the commentator seemed like an attack by
Joppich then (after a few minutes of discussion between the referees) was
counted for Ōta, leading to sudden victory for Japan.

So, cheers to karma!

------
Jd
"giving Heidemann more than one second to land the winning touch"

This seems the crucial point, and without having it specified it is hard to
tell if this is a very serious oversight or very minor aspect. If Heidemann
had 1.01 seconds instead of 1.0 to land a hit, this would be very minor.
Whereas if Heidemann had a full minute of extra time, this would be major.

I'm not doing any extra research since this isn't too important to me -- but
some crucial context is very clearly missing here.

------
kenmazy
I was trying to find a clear description of what happened, with supporting
evidence at the right times, and it was surprisingly hard (many arm-chair
fencers).

This is the best I could find:
[http://shinalamandtheinfinitesadness.blogspot.com/2012/08/sh...](http://shinalamandtheinfinitesadness.blogspot.com/2012/08/shin-
lam-and-infinite-sadness.html)

------
theorique
This story has nothing to do with Michael Phelps, Kobe Bryant, or the
Brazilian beach volleyball team. Therefore it is not interesting.

------
huggyface
This story is interesting and notable without the completely unnecessary
narrative about American TV.

