legitimate athletic contests? I would not go this far, but I would say that if you do not have an objective measure to judge the winner by it is not really a sport. The one that really gets me is ski jumping. Why do they need to add a style score when you have a perfect measure (distance travelled in the air)? Who is to say that someone is worse, if they travel further but do not look quite as pretty?Exhibition figure skating is very different from competition figure skating.
Are you suggesting that sports such as diving, synchronized swimming, gymnastics, snowboarding, and everything else that isn't just a matter of who is fastest, scores more goals, or throws the gizmo the farthest aren't legitimate athletic contests?
The Future of The Olympics
- Thread starter Commodore
- Start date
Winter Olympics would be pretty lean without the judged events...
I guess you could add basketball, since basketball is actually a winter sport... but then you get into the same problem that we have with the NHL not participating... making the whole thing a farce.
I guess you could add basketball, since basketball is actually a winter sport... but then you get into the same problem that we have with the NHL not participating... making the whole thing a farce.
Many events you could keep, but just restrict the result to an objective measure. Ice skating would be pretty hard though.
You would lose figure skating entirely... which is frankly a non-starter in-and-of-itself. Figure skating is literally the crown jewel of the Winter Olympics. You'd lose half your audience based purely on that. It would be like taking gymnastics out of the Summer games.... completely absurd. But even putting that aside, which... Ok whateves... you would also lose snowboarding entirely, which again, loses a major chunk of your younger audience... you also lose all the half-pipe events and the ski jump. Ski-jumping for distance alone makes no sense as it becomes pure-math... get a person of optimal height and weight who crouches at the optimal angle and they will go the same distance every time, give the same ramp height/length/angle... it would be pretty boring.
All that would be left is alpine skiing, cross county, sledding events, hockey and curling... I guess you could move the combat sports and indoor sports to the Winter games like boxing, tae kwon do, fencing, wrestling, weightlifting... maybe even swimming... but even then, boxing is a judged event so...
I don't think removing judged events is an idea with much merit. It just doesn't work on so many levels...
It's not a matter of "pretty." It's a matter of "correct positioning of arms, legs, and feet" and posture. All of those have an effect on how far the jumper gets.
Actually it's AdrienIer who's been complaining about corrupt judging, but don't let facts get in the way of your snide comments.
Why? Back in the late '80s, when I started watching figure skating, there were three components to the competitions: figures, the short program, and the long program. The figures were strictly technical skating skills, and the skaters didn't wear any fancy costumes. Think of it as the skating equivalent of a music exam candidate having to demonstrate skill at scales and playing a short piece of music cold, without ever having seen it before and having no chance to practice (which is something I'm very familiar with, having done years' worth of Western Board of Music exams).
The short program was mostly a measure of skills such as jumping, spinning, and footwork. There were required elements that had to be completed.
The long program put the whole package together - technical skills plus artistic interpretation.
Nowadays... figures were abolished in the '90s, and I think that was a mistake. It meant that some skaters became sloppy and relied more on artistry over technical proficiency. I haven't watched enough skating in the last 15 years to know who the top skaters are and how good they are. Apparently a pairs team executed side-by-side quadruple jumps, which is pretty damn impressive. For the longest time, Surya Bonaly was the only woman to ever pull off a quadruple jump in competition, but if memory serves, it wasn't counted - nor were some of her other moves, like backflips. Mind you, Bonaly was originally a gymnast, so she already had training in pulling off some pretty spectacular moves.
Speaking of hockey... the good guys (gals) won 
Our heroes the Muricans are now only 3 medals behind the naughty Canadians and 4 medals behind the even naughtier Germans. There's probably no catching the evil Norwegians, sadly, who must be cheating somehow
Our heroes the Muricans are now only 3 medals behind the naughty Canadians and 4 medals behind the even naughtier Germans. There's probably no catching the evil Norwegians, sadly, who must be cheating somehow
I commented in the other thread on me appreciating Zagitova more than Medvedeva.
We could argue the validity of my view. And there are fundamental disagreements at play in figure skating.
We could exhaust, though, arguing reliability of of observation. I.e. i may be wrong, but i'm not exactly being "subjective" in the way you imply the entire sport was "subjective".
I.e. theoretically you could make a computer programm that could make most if not all of the judgements that are being made in figure skating, according to a defined weighing of priorities.
That's a hard problem, arguably harder than self-driving cars, so it's not going to happen any time soon.
The difference is:
Most people know when the guy is derping around in the end zone, one "can clearly see it", but 99% of viewers not only cannot see what happens in figure skating for lack of trained eye but don't even know the precise technical criteria in the first place.
Making this a basis to call the one "objective" and the other not, strikes me as arrogant.
Baseball umpires make bad calls, there are biases in you-can-still-miss-it-in-slow-mo figure skating, soccer players dive and for the past 60 odd years actual scientists have argued on whether the English have actually won a bloody world cup or not.
And that argument is as simple (you'd say "objective") as it gets:
There's, like, a line. Duh.
Point being: Sports get refereed. Deal with it.
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stinkubus
Emperor
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It's not really an either/or type of situation but rather a continuum. The more a contest relies on the judgement of the officials the more susceptible to corruption/bias it becomes. The NFL is undoubtedly a worse product, on the field, due to the high number of judgement calls the officials are required to make just to keep the game watchable. Popular North American sports are not immune from the phenomenon.
warpus
In pork I trust
The hockey tournament is actually pretty interesting this year, as a result of the NHL boycott. Teams like Germany are doing better, it's sort of levelled the playing field a bit and made things more interesting. The players on well known teams like Canada are also made up of players people don't know (for the most part), so you don't know what to expect from their skills and tactics and so on. It's gotta be so exciting for those guys on Team Canada for instance, players who would have never guessed that they'd be able to represent their country at such a big event. It's gotta be a magical couple weeks for these guys, and they seem to be playing their hearts out as well. Win/win all around, but I say that as a casual hockey fan. Hardcore hockey fans are probably missing the stars. I don't care so much about the stars myself, and the quality of play looks good enough to me. I enjoy watching the sport
As for sports that are judged subjectively, surely one day we'll have computers judging these things in a more or less objective fashion. If google can recognize a hot dog pic from a non hot dog pic, then one day this will be possible.
"Farce" and "Interesting" are not mutually exclusive though... as any Pro wrestling fan knows.
My point is that when we watch Alpine skiing, we know we are witnessing the greatest in the sport that the planet has to offer. When we watch the NHL-less hockey, we're just watching a collection of skilled dudes play hockey... which can be seen at any High School, College or Little league or Old-timers' rink in North America (or anywhere else).
Well at least the ladies did their part.
And I don't think that teaches the NHL anything... If it taught anyone anything it was the IOC who got taught a lesson.
Well the only people who lost are the American and Canadian federations. I don't think the IOC lost all that much. But I think the pressure for the NHL to make a deal for 2022 has increased.
warpus
In pork I trust
"Farce" and "Interesting" are not mutually exclusive though... as any Pro wrestling fan knows.
It's players playing for their country at the olympic level though, that tends to elevate things both in the way the players approach the game, and how special it feels to the viewers.
I'm of fan of hockey as a sport, and so the dynamics here changing a bit made the tournament a bit more interesting to me than usual, even though Canada's chances were diminished. The same teams always making it to the semifinals kinda gets boring after a while to me.
I can see how people who enjoy seeing top players play might not have been into this as much. I get wanting to see the top guys playing. But like I said I'm a fan of the game and not necessarily specific players, so to me it's still hockey, it's at the olympic level, things are mixed up a bit, a bit of a more level playing field for some countries, so bring it on!
Remember that Basketball is a winter sport so doing it the Summer Olympics creates less conflict than Hockey in the Winter Olympics does.
It's true that we Muricans were sick of seeing the Team USA basketball lose over and over just cause the NBA wasn't participating... maybe the same will happen with US and Canadian Hockey fans.
BenitoChavez
Elderly Tortoise
It would be strange putting Hockey in the summer Olympics. All winter Olympic sports involve ice or snow and no summer sports do. Basketball works in the summer Olympics because it can be played year-round without ice and snow. In fact ice/snow would hinder playing basketball. The only reason it's considered a winter sport is because that's when the NBA and college teams play.
Timsup2nothin
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It's a winter sport because colleges and high schools play it in the winter, when multi-sport athletes aren't playing outdoor sports.
