I want to keep Olympic hockey, which is better than NHL hockey. I don’t know about basketball or baseball or water polo, though. The latter seems a little silly to me.
I would keep curling, as “distance from the center” is objective, and the “team” role is not something that alters the scoring.
That said, equestrian and motorcycles are OUT, in that they do not involve the olympian’s own power…
“Max weight”? Technically, weightlifting is judged, in that three judges decide whether or not a lift was valid.
As for the “three day Olympics” - not at all; track & field and swimming by themselves take up just about the entire length of the current summer Olympics, although there is some judging in swimming as well (in terms of “was that a valid, e.g., breast stroke?”).
A lot of people agree with you. Every two years, someone makes the same point on this message board.
However, I don’t. I like some of the judged sports. And I think they are very popular, otherwise they wouldn’t be shown so much.
It was an amazing feat that Mirai Negasu was first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics, and only the third woman from any country, however it was judged.
Most popular winter Olympic Sport - figure skating
Most popular summer Olympic Sport - gymnastics
The TV rights to those two sports carry the rest of the games. No one is killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
My wife has been recording them, and FF thru the ads/commentary/profiles/etc. I tried to watch some of the opening, but left the room to read.
The next eve I made it thru a couple of ice dance routines before I again, left the room to read.
As others have commented, simply no interest (in the manner they are traditionally televised.)
Controversy aisde,
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This is probably the seven billionth time someone’s made this argument on the SDMB, and
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A general discussion of one’s opinion of judged sports is off topic.
Please don’t derail this thread.
Thanks,
RickJay
Moderator
NBC’s smarmy human interest stories are usually my least favorite part of the Olympics, but I have to admit that I missed Alex and Frederic Bilodeau during the moguls this year.
“The bronze is secured by Gold” is one of the more confusing things I’ve heard a commentator say, even if it was accurate. Names aside, though, it was clear that women’s half-pipe was pretty much just a competition for silver and bronze very early on.
I am happy to announce my engagement to Chloe Kim.
Does anyone know her email address, so I can tell her the good news?
Women’s half-pipe was AWESOME!
And curling is boring. Sorry.
Bolding mine.
I have seen and heard so much about this the last day or so…I find it weird. I mean, yes, it’s obviously impressive in that only two women have ever performed this jump in competition before, but I don’t get what makes it special that she is the “first American woman.” Is there something about the water in the US that makes triple axels extremely difficult? Does the US only hire coaches who can’t or won’t teach the move? What’s the deal with “first American”?
FTR, I don’t find it all that compelling either in other sports when I hear things like “the first {name of team] player to hit three grand slams in a week” when the feat has been accomplished on other occasions by players from other teams.
Oh well. I just think it’s strange.
Ulf, it’s supposed to make proud of the American, cause you’re American (or you’re country, of you’re athlete). God knows there is not much else to be proud of in these here United States!
I 'll take what I can get!
And…btw I think Rippon got robbed, his skate was nearly perfect and he lost to skaters who fell. Not right!
I posted this same thing on FB, only with somewhat more disparaging language. After all, Midori Ito did it in the Olympics 16 years ago. So it’s not particularly important news, yet the media was all over that accomplishment like it was something super special.
What made the reporting worse was that, despite hitting the triple axel, she lost her portion of the team competition to the 15-y.o. OAR skater, Alina Zagitova, by over 20 points! She was, effectively, blown out of the water by Zagitova. Yet most of the reports had a single sentence in them, indicating that she was second place in the discipline, often without even naming the Russian skater. :dubious:
[quote]
All this says is that Rippon chose a program that was ridiculously conservative. Skating scoring is not some ambiguous thing any more. You can predict your outcome with much more certainty these days. So, he skates a fairly flawless program, which means his total is about what he could predict would be his maximum result. And yet, it isn’t sufficient to beat a total that was skated by someone who didn’t skate flawlessly. That’s just irrational. If you are going to skate a conservative program technically, on the hope that you will be perfect and the others will make mistakes, you should at least make the program difficult enough that you can get enough score from it to beat someone who makes those mistakes! :rolleyes:
And, of course, it wouldn’t have mattered in the least in the end. The US was four placement points behind the Russians in the end. That means that, to have changed who got the silver medal, EACH of the American disciplines would have had a result one placement better than they did during the free skate. About which, see the above commentary on the Zagitova performance. 
No she didn’t.
She did it 26 years ago.
Rippon’s main problem, as has already been said here, was, his routines’ base scores (74.63 - this is what he would have received had all of the Grades of Execution (the -3 to +3 ratings) been zero) weren’t worth as much as Chan’s (77.29) or Kolyada’s (81.41).
A prime example: Kolyada’s first jump was a quad Lutz, and he got 8.83 points (taking the automatic -1 for a fall into account), which is just about the lowest possible score you can get for that jump (the absolute lowest is 8.6, but two of the nine judges gave it a -2 instead of a -3). On the other hand, a “perfect” (all +3s) triple Lutz is worth only 8.1 points. Rippon had no quad jumps in his routine.
Also note that, despite being called “free skate,” there are limits. Watch the individual men’s free skate; you will notice there are always 13 “boxes” beneath the score, and, almost always, they end up getting filled. This is because a men’s routine is limited to 8 jumps/combinations (bonus fact: starting next year, it becomes 7), 3 spins, 1 step sequence, and 1 “choreographic sequence” (defined as “any kind of movements like steps, turns, spirals, arabesques, spread eagles, Ina Bauers (I “think” that’s where a skater is gliding “sideways” with one skate facing forward and the other facing backward), hydroblading, any jumps with maximum of 2 revolutions, spins, etc.”).
Heretic! Pebble her!
Not everyone can appreciate the beauty of a perfectly executed out-turn angle raise.
Well, a Robot Arm should be able to do it 99% of the time, surely?
Mr T has tweeted that he’s watching the curling!