| kowenicki said: Who? When? |
hmm, for this Olympics along :
1. Gymnastics reduced number of participants from 6 to 5 in teams competition, which is a huge blow to teams that rely more on individual talents rather than overall abilities, namely China, their women won gold last time but only finished 4th this time.
2. Badmintion introduced preliminary stage, which means there is no guarantee who you will face in the elimination stage, countries that are good enough to have 2 teams capable of competing for medals will have high likelyhood of facing each other before semi finals, effectively reducing their chance of winning medals by half, hence some players tired to throw their last game just to avoid face their teammates right away.
3. Diving: Difficulty score has been increased for some moves, for countries that use to emphasis on executions over difficulties (again China) this is a big setback, and again, they've lost men's 3m board gold medal for the first time since 1992.
4. Taekwondo: score for head shots has increased by 1 point, I'm not sure if this would affect any particular country, but it will have a huge effect on athletes' style, it will definitely beneift athletes who prefer attack over precision and speed.
Shooting and fencing also changed their rules, but I'm not into those so can't comment on that.
Table Tennis changed it rule 3 times since 2008 (removing double match and introducing team match, reducing single's players from 3 per country to 2, change the order of competition), all aimed to give China handicaps, so far not as effective as gymnastics and diving.
