Flatballer

Bothers me too. It makes no sense. Should definitely be weighted.

furiousferret

The interesting thing for me about the Olympics is the talent difference. Like, these are the best in the world bar none, but even then there are some athletes that stand on their own level. Its hard to comprehend how the Female Russian Figure Skater (Medvedeva) and the SoCal Halfpipe Snowboarder (Chloe Kim) are so much better than every other person in the world.

Doge

Olympics suck

Many great athletes in a sport for great countries, have to stay home. It is rarely the best of the best. It is a few of the best, from the best country and then those from other places that likely would not crack the top 20 of the best countries get to go. It is a very corrupt thing, the Olympics.

I like sports with winners. I have a hard time getting my head around "sports" where winning requires voting. They are art, take high skill, athletics, subjective voting and I question why they should be called sports at all. But somebody more powerful than me decided one art was a sport and other arts like music, painting, acting - all high skill hard things, were not.

One of the things I enjoyed about the Oslo sports Pub was they wanted to watch a sport with winning over some artistic pretty thing. They turned to chess over some spinning and twirly thing going on at the same time.
At least in that society where competing in business is bad - they understand competing in sports (see if I get banned).
Chess is much more a sport than spinning around in circles having judges decide how pretty you are.
ChessInBar.jpg

LAJ

I agree on the voting aspect of the sporting events. There is no doubt a ton of skill involved in slopestyle, but it's still a voted on thing. Give me the snowboard cross, any day. Same with the moguls. Style points in a timed event? Strange.

Flatballer

I don't disagree with your artistic take, they're not my favorite events for that reason, but I think calling them not sports is maybe a little far, although I wouldn't call dancing a sport, so I'm not where to draw the line.

However, while I don't doubt that some of the best occasionally get left home because their country is deep, many sports just take the top n from their top level international competition and then maybe throw a few spots to underrepresented countries that have someone of at least similar skill. It seems pretty rare from what I've seen to have someone with a legit medal shot left home.

Doge

Legit medal shots are not left home. Competitions often have 20 ->100+ depending on sport. Athletes that could do top 50% are left home all the time. I'd guess every sport, every year.

To me being hard, taking a skill, even being fit does not make it a sport. It needs to have a definitive goal and winner - beating someone, so at least one looser. These athletes are physically talented, train hard, are skilled - just like those in ballet - also not a sport, but dancer is a close description to what they do. Curling is a sport. It takes skill and we know who won just by looking - if you know curling rules. Cross country skiing, biathlon and downhill events against the clock are clearly sports. Why ballet is not and ice skating is (it isn't) is an example of how out of touch they are with what a sport is. I really don't think chess is a sport, but it is more so than twirling around waiting for judges to determine if you win. You win, or you don't.

LAJ

Throw in some style points in a 40K TT. Best wheelie, best brodie (is that still a thing?), best no hand corner.

burnthesheep

Probably the closest winter events to cycling would be cross country skiing or speed skating.

FWIW, it's called the Olympic Games.......not the Olympic Sports. Hence why you get both sport and game elements in the events.

In modern times, the cameras/tech provide judges with all sorts of data to take as much "artsy fartsy" out of awarding points.

The comment the wife had watching the other night was "I get the impression watching this that most of these people grew up very privileged lives".

Sure, you get a few folks out of the slums hitting it big. But, c'mon. Did you notice how many adopted kids there were competing for small countries? Also, there's only so much raw talent you can have so young to get noticed without also throwing in lots of mommy and daddy's money before you get "noticed".

Also, if it isn't a rich country, often the Olympics is a horrible investment for a country. Poor countries put it on and lose tons of money.

Also, watching Icarus kind of ruined a lot of the magic for me. Soooooo much dope, everywhere.

himespau 

the judging based "sports" thing has always annoyed me (but then so does ESPN broadcasting pool and poker as those aren't things I really see as sports - nor do I get broadcasting the national ******** championships). What's really annoyed me this year is the artificial delays that get stuck in to make things longer. In the men's combined last night, the announcers were talking about coming back in a bit because the workers were still cleaning up from a crash so they were going to do some filler or some nonsense. The thing was, that was primetime USA for an event that had happened in the daytime in a country that's 14 hours ahead of us (so essentially probably 20 hours earlier. Given the massive tape delay, why all the filler (except to make more time to sell ads)? Because I have little kids, I end up recording most live sporting events about sports that I care about (mainly the alma mater's football and basketball games) and watch them after the kids go to bed. As a result I've gotten spoiled where rarely does it take me much more than an hour to watch a basketball game or an hour and a a half to watch football. I now get impatient with all this time wasting in "live" broadcast sports. Ended up reading a book with the TV on last night and occasionally looking up to see what was going on.

furiousferret

Hopefully someday we can use AI to judge these events. We have the technology to do it now, there just needs a push. Every Olympics there always seems to be at least one corrupt judge with obscenely biased scores.

I also think AI should run our government, streamlining our budget and economic policy but that's a whole 'nother conversation.

mattm

I dunno man. Take baseball for example, I dread the day balls & strikes are called by computer. The human-error factor is part of the game!

And just because something is AI, that doesn’t mean it’s pure. Humans still need to program it, and humans (hackers) could still influence it.

As a software tester - whose job it is to find bugs before users do - the scary part is thinking about the bugs that software ALWAYS gets released with. Some bugs you know about before release, some bugs are surprises after release. The “best” bugs seem to get found after release.. but there are always, always bugs.

himespau 

Not sure I'd go that far, but I think all sports should be refereed by AI. How is it that in 2018 football doesn't know what a catch is or whether or not a ball has crossed one plane or another? That should all be easily assessed with sensors. It seems that most ball sports could be fixed that way.

jsk

Actually, the time difference is large enough that the US prime time coverage is live for many events, because we're seeing "tomorrow morning/afternoon" events in the evening. Not saying everything is live but some of the events are.

furiousferret

I sort of agree with baseball; I like that each ump has their own interpretation of the strike zone.

You call every foul for Basketball and it would grind the game to a halt. There would have to be some type of weighted system.

caloso

Here on the West Coast I was watching the slalom portion of the men's alpine combined live on the iPad app. That's my preferred way of watching. They'll show all the competitors rather than just the top contenders plus 'Mericans.

Ttoc6

See Chris Froome.

Back to the olympics. I'd say this is more pronounced in the winter olympics than the summer. Many winter sports require a lot more budget (and living in the right areas) to participate in than summer sports (leaving out the outliers of horse riding and all that BS).

Doge

Good point. It is at least truth in advertising. Better argument to add Chess.

Doge

I've officiated about 1,000 soccer games. They have it right. The referee decides and the players just play. They have no burden to figure out if it was a foul or not. The referee both decides if it was/was not and infraction and then in cases of fouls what to do about it.
And if video shows the physical thing that actually happened was not what the referee saw - it it the referee that determines the facts of the match, the video is useful to TV broadcasters only. Beautiful thing.

wktmeow

But then doesn't that open up the possibility of corruption? Is there any sort of accountability for repeatedly making inaccurate calls?

Doge

The game results stick. But is is not let go.
The top refs are watched, recorded and reviewed. I was watched recorded and reviewed. There is extensive training and it is competitive to get the more competitive games. So at the mid-level, about 10 years in, it is like many other sports. If you are not moving forward, or too slow, too old, you start losing assignments.
Many will tell you little kid ball is about the most fun to do, and parents can make it as difficult as the big kids nobody watches anymore.

carpediemracing 

So one of the guys at work was shaking his head. He says to me, check this out. His friend recently had a rash of unfortunate incidents.

1. Driving to work he gets rear ended. 2016 Mercedes (sedan?).
2. Very young son (7 years old?) gets into driver seat of their 2016 Mercedes SUV. Unclear what happened, it was probably running, he climbed into the driver's seat, got it into reverse, started rolling out of their garage.
3. Son panics, opens door to jump out. Door catches garage edge, gets bent the wrong way. Son apparently stays in SUV.
4. SUV rolls down driveway, drops off a 3-4 foot drop, and ends up in a field.
5. Mom runs after SUV, falls, breaks ankle.

This happened either a day apart or on the same day.

robbyville

Jeez that's rough, Final Destination moments, I don't mean that in a fatalistic kind of way, just that so darn "coincidental" that it almost seems fate driven if you believe in that kind of thing (which I don't but still...)

Doge

Any opinions on penalizing riders at VOS for how they touched their equipment?

A few days before the race in a communique they said no forearms on the bars. I think about 3-4min of penalties were handed out.

Riders crash mostly (IMO) from looking at the scenery rather than in front and out-of-the-saddle stuff. Logically those activities should be banned first/or next.

furiousferret

I think the Juniors lined up at that race are probably better bike handlers than most of the adults.

Flatballer

Getting the mail just now I noticed there are probably 10 or so cigarette butts, of two different brands, clustered around the end of my driveway and my mailbox. There is a sidewalk that people use for walks, but I don't know why there would be a cluster there. It's like someone is standing there a lot, but why? I've never noticed anyone lingering, but I'm not home during the week.