Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Quadrennial Hot-Weather Events Descriptions II

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Here we go with Part 2 of explaining the various events that go down at Hot-Weather Events currently taking place in the UK capital. You can find Archery through Diving here, and we cover Equestrian through Shooting below. [Update: part three link] Also, remember that there are a ton of words that the average person can't use because of copyrights and trademarks, but I think you can make sense of it all below. 

Equestrian has Individual and Team Dressage, Individual and Team Jumping, and Individual and Team Eventing. Men and women compete together.
Dressage is one person and one horse at a time doing set movements, especially the piaffe (horse kinda lifts its feet in a cadence) and passage (a special trot). Everyone does the Grand Prix, then the seven best teams (teams are scored at the same time! three people per team) and the 11 best individuals move on to the Grand Prix Special, which is another round of the same, and determines final Team placement. Just the best Individuals then do the Grand Prix Freestyle, where you still show off moves but you choreograph it to music.
Jumping has you riding your horse on a course and jumping over bars and walls and stuff. You want the fastest time with the fewest errors. Round 1 has everyone, with the top 60 (and their team partners even if they're lower) moving on to Round 2, where the best 45 Individuals and the top 8 teams from this round only move on again. Round 3 has the top 35 moving on, but only 3 per country now. Team winners are based on your scores in Rounds 2 and 3. Round 4 has the top 20 moving on, based on scores only in this round. Round 5 is for final Individual placements, which are based on your score from Round 4 and Round 5. Jump-offs break ties.
Eventing is a culmination of four days, two of which are dressage. Day 3 is Cross-Country, which has 45 jumps. Day 4 is jumping/showjumping, which has two rounds. After the first, team placements are completed, and 25 or so go to the second to score the individuals.

Fencing has ten events, six for individuals and four for teams, and about the same number of men and women get to compete. Individual events are three rounds of three minutes each, or until someone gets 15 points. Team events can have nine rounds of three minutes, and a cumulative 45 hits win the match. In this day and age, hits are recorded through wireless technology. It's single-elimination and your seed is based on your International ranking.
Individual Epee for Men and Women allows both opponents to score at the same time, by hitting the other with the tip of the weapon.You can double-touche.
Individual Foil for Men and Women has very strict right-of-way rules where you're aiming for the torso. Foil is the lightest sword and no double-touches are allowed.
Individual Sabre for Men and Women is a hit-above-the-waist event where double touches aren't allowed. The sabre is a shorter sword than the others.
Team Foil - Women and Men have this, and there are three fencers on a team. Each fencer goes up against each other one, and each bout ends when someone scores five points, or, if the team from behind does well, they can go until they reach a multiple of five. Of course, the three-minute rule is also still in play. Men's Team Sabre and Women's Team Epee are played the same way, as far as I understand.

Football/Soccer has Men's and Women's events. Each country can send one team, with Men having 16 teams in competition while women have 12. It's a typical game in that it has two 45-minute halves. The teams are divided into four groups, and you play the other teams in your group. You get three points for a win and one for a draw, with the best eight teams moving on to the quarterfinals. It's single-elimination from there, with the top two teams going for first and second while the next two teams are playing for third place. Also, from quarterfinals onward, no ties are allowed - instead, two 15-minute periods are played, then five penalty shoot-outs each, then sudden-death penalty kicks if needed.

Gymnastics has three disciplines- Artistic, Rhythmic, and Trampoline. Men and women both compete in Artistic and Trampoline, while only women do Rhythmic.
Artistic awards 14 medals - one for each individual event (10), one each for Women's and Men's Team events, and one to the Male and Female All-Around best individual. It all starts with the qualifying round. If you don't have a team, you can compete in all areas or just the ones you want to. If you have a team, four (out of five) gymnasts compete in each area and the highest three scores are added together for each event. The eight highest teams can compete for Team, where only three gymnasts per team do each event and every score counts. Regardless of whether you're on a team, your scores from the qualifying round determine if you go on to the event finals - you need to be in the top eight for an individual event or the top 24 in all events. Artistic for Men includes six events: vault, floor exercise, parallel bars, horizontal bar, still rings, and pommel horse. Artistic for Women includes four events: balance beam, floor exercise, vault (which requires two different routines for women), and uneven bars.
Rhythmic has two medals - Individual and Group. Six people make up a group, and a country can send different people for individual and group, for a total of eight women per country. The events are set to music. Your apparatus must always be moving, and you're judged on difficulty, artistry, and execution.
Individuals use a ribbon, some clubs, a ball, and a hoop, each in its own routine. The group event has two routines, each with five participants. One has five balls while the other has three ribbons and two hoops. After the qualifying round, the top ten individuals move on to do it all again, as do the top eight groups.
Trampoline has a Men's and a Women's event, with 16 competitors in each, with countries having a limit of two per event. Each competitor does two routines for qualifications (one simple and one unlimited), with the top eight moving on to do a single routine, containing 10 required elements. You're judged on control, technique, difficulty, execution, and time of flight.

Handball has a Men's event and a Women's event, each with 12 teams competing. There are seven people on a team, and you can have seven substitutes. Each country can have one team per event. Teams are divided into groups of six, and you play everyone in your group. Winners get two points, draws get one. The four best teams in each group move on, and it's single-elimination from there, with the best two teams playing for first and second place while the next-best two teams play for third place.

Hockey, or more appropriately, Field Hockey has a Men's event and a Women's event, with 12 teams competing (limit of one per country) in each event. A team has 11 players and five substitutes, and a game has two 35-minute halves. Teams are divided into groups of six, and you play everyone in your group. A win gets you three points and a draw gets you one point. The two four best teams in each group move on, and it's straight to the semifinals, the winners play for first place and the losers play for third place. In the semis and finals, ties are broken with two extra 7.5 minute periods, sudden-death-style. If nobody scores, you move into a five-attempt shoot-out, then a sudden-death shoot-out if necessary.

Judo
has seven Men's events and seven Women's events, broken down by weight class. Each country can only enter one person per event. You start by being grouped into one of two pools per weight class, and it's single-elimination until you get to the semifinals. The losers of the quarterfinals compete against one another, with the winners competing against the losers of the semifinals for third place (awarded twice here). The actual competition is five minutes long, and you earn points based on the throws and holds you do against your opponent. It is possible to win with a single move. If it's a tie, you get three more minutes and the first point wins.

Modern Pentathlon has a Men's and a Women's event, and each country can enter two people in each, with the total number of competitors in each event being 36. You have to epee fence (each competitor fences everyone else in their event, but you only need one hit to win, and there's a maximum time limit of a single minute), swim 200M freestyle, and ride a 350-400M course with 12 jumps on horseback. After that point, your score is determined so that you have handicapped times for the rest of the event. The last part reminds me of the snowy-sport biathlon, only here, you shoot five targets within 70 seconds, then run 1000M, then shoot the same, then run the same, then shoot the same, then run the same. Whoever crosses the finish line first wins. It all takes place in one day, too. 

Rowing has 14 events, eight for men and six for women. Both men and women have quad sculls, double sculls, single sculls, eight, coxless pair, and lightweight double sculls. Men also have coxless four and lightweight coxless four. Each country can send 28 men and 20 women, but only one boat per event. Each race is 2000M, and six boats race at a time. If an event has 12 or fewer boats, they have two heats, and the best boat from each moves on. The rest try again and four more get to move on. Everyone who moved on tries for places 1-6, and everyone else tries again for 7-12. If an event has 13-18 boats, they have three heats, and the same basic process happens only on a larger scale. Again, the same with 19-24 boats, only with four starting heats. If there are 25+ boats, you start with heats and the four best in each heat go for quarterfinals, but more can go on from the repechage round. The rest kinda plays out like the others.
Quad Sculls uses two oars for each of four people.
Double Sculls uses two oars for each of two people.
Single Sculls is one person in the boat using two oars.
Eight uses one oar for each of eight people.
Coxless Pair uses one oar per person and no coxswain to steer the boat.
Lightweight Double Sculls uses two oars for each of two people. Women can't weigh more than 59kg and Men can't weigh more than 72.5kg. 
Coxless Four uses one oar for each of four people. Rather than a coxswain using a rudder to direct the boat, one of the rowers uses a cable attached to his foot to steer.
Lightweight Coxless Four uses one oar for each of four people, who cannot weight more than 72.5kg.  

Sailing has ten events, six for men and four for women. Each country can send one boat per event. Generally, an event is a series of races. Each time you race, you get a number of points based on your place (first is one, second is two, etc). After ten races (or 15 for skiff), your worst race is dropped and the rest are added together. The ten best boats move on and in the final race, points are doubled, and you want to have the lowest number to come in first. Events that work like this are: Two Person Dinghy for Men and Women, Windsurfer (like a sailboard) for Men and Women, Keelboat for Men, Skiff for Men, One Person Dinghy for Men and Women, One Person Dinghy Heavyweight for Men. On the other hand, the Elliot 6M (a keelboat) for Women plays by different rules, because it's a "match race" and is done head-to-head. 12 boats all race one another with winners getting one point and "dead heats" getting half of a point. The eight best boats then race one another in a series of races, and you want to be the first boat to get to three. It's single-elimination from there on out, but still needing to get three points to win each round.

Shooting has fifteen events, nine for men and six for women. Each country can send 20 men and eight women, which works out to two athletes in everything but women's trap and skeet, which can have one each. There's 10M Air Rifle for Men and Women, 50M Rifle 3 Positions for Men and Women, 10M Air Pistol for Men and Women, Trap for Men and Women, and Skeet for Men and Women. Women also have 25M Pistol. Men also have 50M Rifle Prone, 50M Pistol, 25M Rapid Fire Pistol, and Double Trap.
For Rifle and Pistol events, you're trying to hit a 10-ring target from the specified distance. Shotguns are used in skeet and trap. Trap is a clay disk being launched to shoot, 125 for men, 75 for women, and an additional 25 for the finalists. Double Trap is two clay disks at a time, with 75 sets for men and 60 sets for women. Skeet launches 25 discs at random heights, sometimes two at a time. Men do it five times and women do it three, with the top shooters doing an extra 25.
The Pistol and Rifle events are 60 shots within 105 minutes for men and 40 shots within 75 minutes for women. All shots are done standing up, except for the Prone (all lying down) and the 3 Positions, which has you standing, kneeling, and lying prone. Men do 40 shots in each position while women do 20.
The Rapid Fire Pistol, from what I understand, is doing 10 shots in 8 seconds, 10 shots in 6 seconds, and 10 shots in 4 seconds. You do this twice, and then the finalists do four sets of five shots in the 4 seconds series.
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