Olympic Elimination Rounds

OK, I was watching the men's archery earlier today (replay of course) and noticed that the second set of archers were both Americans. The winner of the event would head to the quarterfinals and one of the Americans had to defeat the third American archer to get to the round of 16. That means that the way the elimination bracket round were set up, only one American could possibly get a medal and at least one American would have to be eliminated by another American. As it was, both of the Americans eliminated, were beaten by another American.

I thought it was a bit odd and went digging some. My results were that it did not happen often, but often enough to take notice of. Brazil also had to face themselves early on in elimination in archery, and both China and Russia did so in fencing. There are probably more examples, but none on my initial search.

What are your thoughts ATS?

1st - How are the elimination rounds set up? i.e.~is it completely random (drawing name from hat etc...), or done off some type of scoring method?

2nd - Is there a way to override the round set up where one nation does not eliminate all of its own athletes early on in the tourneys?

They do a ranking round and from that score the seed is determined.

Ah, but is there a system that could possibly split teams from having to face each other early on?

I saw several examples and I'm sure there are more.

a reply to: JDeLattre89

They are no teammates they are individuals and once ranked they play first vs last, second vs second last and so on. if they want to be separated until the finals they better end first and second so they don't cross until the end, if they cross early on its most likely they ranked 30ish.

In archery case, they were 2nd, 15th, and 33rd out of 64 I believe.

Thanks anyways.

I don't know about the archery event but in swimming they do heats and the fastest times move to the next round.

I noticed that in gymnastics you could only have two people in the individual event. The third best gymnast was sitting on the bench watching last night.

a reply to: JDeLattre89

Whatever it takes to poopoo the Patriarchy!
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But then again, half the events might be over-represented by certain nations. Only a 1/4 of nations even in it I guess; the number that compete in most/all events probably much less.

Although it seems that of all the events in winter/summer, archery ought to be the one game every nation could send out a team?!

Well, at least in the case of archery, these seem to have been the same people who compete with each other year in and out. So it seems as though the countries that have teams are there. Many countries don't send anyone to represent them for many sports. And though space may be limited, that's why they have minimum qualifications.

It just seemed strange to me that you could have for example the Chinese competing with the Chinese for gold/Silver in something like ping-pong but in other examples people have to beat their teammates in order to advance.