Olympic Coverage

[phi1l]

combining shi jumping with marksmanship might be interesting, except maybe for the spectators.

[Alex Franke]

Have you seen the POV footage that was taken using a camera mounted (on the helmet, I think) to one of the lugers? Now THAT was exciting -- at least for the luger. I would have to agree that watching it, at least on TV, is a little flat. They're going so bloody fast that it's virtually impossible to pick up the nuances that make one run 0.0000746 seconds faster than another.

There's a POV of the downhill skiing, too. The camera person is clearly standing up and casually moving down the mountain (you can see from the shadow), but it still looks like a thrilling ride!

combining shi jumping with marksmanship might be interesting, except maybe for the spectators.

At first I though you meant jump a bit, then shoot a bit. And then of course I got the image of shooting mid-jump -- good thing I wasn't drinking anything at the time.

[dbhost]

I spoke too soon... NBC had snowboarding, luge, and speed skating tonight. The speed skating was kind of cool. I kept waiting for the guy on the inside lane to blow it and take the outside lane guy with him....

I need to find some NASCAR....

[LCHIEN]

i foound the segment on how the (real) 10-year old american made Zamboni machine had to be flown into Vancouver to replace the (2) brand spankin' new Candian-made ersatz Zamboni machine (really an Olympia machine) that malfunctioned. Teh Canadian company Resurfice Inc made the Zamboni wanna-be Olympias and had considered it quite a coup to get the contract for the machines for the olympics because Zambonis had always gotten it before.

OK they're all ice resurfacers and Zamboni is a trade name for such.

And, the Curling? That's one sport you can record and watch at 4X and not miss a thing.

[germdoc]

The women's downhill was pretty awesome. The girl who wiped out on the last jump flew 200 feet in the air before mislanding. That's some big air.

And kudoes to Lindsey Vonn--great competitor, born in Minnesota, I might add...

[phrog]

I think the reason they show soooo much of the figure skating is because their internal reviews show that the female viewers love it and that makes for good ratings. (Not too crazy about it myself but I can always turn to another channel.) Personally, I love curling - it's like a cross between chess, billiards, and bowling. (And no judging on form.)

[natausch]

Don't bag on curling, its the one sport where tactics and hand-eye coordination matter and physical ability is almost unimportant. Heck, you could grab a couple random guys off their barstools in upper Minnesota and have an okay curling team.

And while we're at it, I have no doubt that Shaun White deserved gold, but the idea that either of Piiroinen's runs was anywhere close to Lago's is as absurd as the men's figure skating "rivalry."

[dbhost]

Snowboarding as an Olympic sport is sort of ridiculous. Does that mean that Surfing will become a summer Olympic sport?

[docrowan]

Snowboarding as an Olympic sport is sort of ridiculous. Does that mean that Surfing will become a summer Olympic sport?

Yet another "sport" that depends on a panel of judges who determine points based on subjective criteria. Curling gets made fun of a lot, but at least the point scoring is completely objective.

If the top female iceskater performed an absolutely flawless routine to punk rock music while wearing no makeup, a plastic trash bag on her body, and curlers in her hair, would she still win? I think not. There would be an uproar if she DID.

If the top female speed skater crossed the finish line first wearing the same get-up, would she win? Absolutely. There would be an uproar if she DIDN'T.

[natausch]

How about Moguls then? There is a timed portion, an artistic portion and technical points.

Whether or not any sport with judging is fair the fact that jumping in the air and landing on a blade less than 1/8th inch wide is an athletic endeavor.

As for halfpipe, less than half of the finalists were able to complete their routines without wiping out. A large portion of that is the tricks required to be in medal competition can only be done by a handful of people on this planet. Heck, the Japanese boarder who ended up sliding down the pipe on his face received a 35 out of 50 score. White only finished with a 48 out of 50.

At least for now, whether it was perfect or not, there is only one person who has completed a three and a half turn with two flips trick in competition. By the time the next Olympics come around there will be a handful of people who can do that trick, and someone will have to manage to work out a new way to wow the judges.

[LarryG]

Snowboarding as an Olympic sport is sort of ridiculous. Does that mean that Surfing will become a summer Olympic sport?

It might; so might BMX bicycling and skateboarding and so forth. None of these interest me personally in the slightest, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of being Olympic events, whether now or in future.

People entertain themselves by playing sports and games, and over time new ones are invented, and in each of them there are people who are better at playing them than most. Competition is the inevitable result -- informal at first, usually with the participants themselves as the only audience. Later on, the competition becomes more formal, and is watched by arenas full of paying spectators. When enough people are participating and enough people are paying to watch, the Olympic powers-that-be ignore the new sport/game at their peril.

All of this is, largely, yet another instance of the generation gap in action. You and I regard certain sports/games as being THE traditional Olympic events, and I for one hope most of them never go away. But we tend to forget that even the most traditional of events -- ski jumping, let's say -- probably began all those many years ago with some foolhardy kid saying, "Here, hold my beer and watch this." Snowboarding (just to use your example) may seem unworthy of Olympic status to some of us, but there's a whole mess of other people out there to whom it matters a great deal.

The scoring/judging issues that Chris mentions aside, a lot of these newfangled "non-traditional" events are in the Olympics because the Winter Games are a microcosm of the games people are playing nowadays. And that is, IMO, exactly the way it should be.

[Hoakie]

I do understand and to somewhat agree with the notion of human judged/subjective competitions preventing it being qualified as sports, I'm can not go all the way there. Just about all competitions are subjected to review/judgment by human officials to determine the outcome, so it is difficult to draw a line on what is a sport and what is not.

Could a football game have too different outcomes depending on what official crew is working the game? Ideally no. However, if one crew interprets holding or pass interference more strictly/loosely then the other, it can have huge effect on the game. Since the system isn't perfect we rely on the notion that the same set of referee's should make calls fairly for both teams within a game. Instant Replay has taken care of a lot of the critical subjective calls but there are still a lot of subtle ones that can tip the balance. The same idea can be extrapolated into the Olympics. In an ideal world, the same set of judges should be able to fairly judge the events based on merit.

Unfortunately there is a lot of name recognition and politics that influence on the scoring which is unfortunate. But again, does Tom Brady, Brett Favre, Peyton Manning etc get more protection from the officials (on questionable late hits, etc) then a rookie QB?


Every event in the Olympics that I can think of require the participants to perform precise technical elements that must be to earn objective points. The major problem that is encountered is that there is too much emphasis is placed the subjective element. The only reason that portion is needed is to separate two participants that do technically identical programs/runs then they use style, grace, or amplitude to make the decision.

Are the participants in the newer sports or judged sports athletes? Heck yeah. They train and compete against their peers and participate in accordance to a common set of rules.....and they know that they are subject to different interpretations of those rules, even if they aren't as objective as other sports

[conwaygolfer]

Looks like I might be one of few men who like figure skating. Those people are in fantastic shape physically and mentally to perform the way they do.
I would like to see another athlete (snowboarder, luger racer - you name it) that can get down as low on one leg while spinning at fast rate in circles and then immediately go to the other leg and do it all over again. I think most, if they got down, would lose their supper on the ice before they finished.

Just my opinion.....
Conwaygolfer

[Hoakie]

I would like to see another athlete (snowboarder, luger racer - you name it) that can get down as low on one leg while spinning at fast rate in circles and then immediately go to the other leg and do it all over again. I think most, if they got down, would lose their supper on the ice before they finished.
Conwaygolfer

I am not disagreeing with you that they do amazing things and are strong, talented and coordinated. However, they have trained and practiced hours to learn how to focus their eyes on a point as not to get dizzy. It would be just as easy to flip it and think of a figure skater making it 2 miles down a hill with boards strapped on their feet running at 100mph without killing themselves. Or keeping track of body position 20 ft above the half pipe while twisting and turning without breaking their neck. Take a fish out of water....

[Alex Franke]

Looks like I might be one of few men who like figure skating. Those people are in fantastic shape physically and mentally to perform the way they do.

I like it too -- just as much as some of the other events. I think it's because it's not as thrilling... Probably the same reason I haven't really gotten into curling.

Hoakie -- by "focus their eyes on a point as not to get dizzy" I think you're talking about "spotting." I don't think they actually do that a lot in figure skating. And they spin remarkably fast, so my guess is that they just train to not get dizzy at all.

In any case, I think figure skating got its start (and its name) with a more objective goal -- having to accurately skate out very specific figures in the ice. But even without that, I can't imagine it would be difficult to objectively judge whether or not someone landed a triple-whatchamajigger without falling. Same thing for snowboarding.

If the top female iceskater performed an absolutely flawless routine to punk rock music while wearing no makeup, a plastic trash bag on her body, and curlers in her hair, would she still win? I think not.

You should look at some of the costumes. They're nearly that bad. LOML mentioned that one was guy wearing a skeleton bones costume. :-o