Yes, CBS was the American broadcaster for a few Winter Olympics: 1992, 1994, 1998.
Huh! I could have sworn NBC always had it.
There has been talk of changing the GoE system from the current “-3 to +3” system to a 0-10 system, so falls and “hand touches” (note that just touching your hands on the ice does not warrant the 1-point deduction for a fall) can be penalized more…and it needs to be; a -3 (a -2, for that matter) on a quad jump should not be worth more than a +3 for the same triple jump.
However, IMO, the change to the current points system is the best thing ISU has done since getting rid of compulsory figures. You no longer have the possibility of “Skaters A and B skate, and B is in the lead, but then C skates, and A is now the winner.”
I’ve been an avid viewer of the Olympics since 1972. In that time I’ve accumulated, inadvertently, a large amount of related trivia.
Of course, there are some sports in which an athlete can fall down and still win, though I agree that downhill skiing and track sprints are not among them. We had the example of the Norwegian cross country skier just the other day who fell down, was in 63rd place, for a while, and won anyway. In the “great race” thread someone mentioned a runner who fell in a three-lap race and won anyway, if I have that right; I’m sure at long distances runners have fallen even in world-class competition and won anyway. I know cyclists have won despite fallng too. So it’s not automatic that falling = out of medal contention.
I do agree with That Don Guy and DSYoung, both of whom know much more about figure skating than I do I’m sure, that the scoring system today is much more transparent and much improved over the old one.
I also think that the artistry shown by some of the “less athletic” skaters (I’m thinking here of Rippon and others whose jumps are not especially impressive; they are obviously WAAAY more athloetic than I could ever hope to be!) may be overblown. Here’s why. When I see a routine, I see lots of very “artistic” stuff that seems all of a piece–gliding effortlessly around the ice, beautiful lines on the arms and legs, in and out of spins, leaping from one leg onto the other in what looks loike a half rotation–all that looks clean and organic. I find that the big jumps, triples and quads, disrupt that “cleanliness.” They look (very often) like they don;t really belong, like they’ve been thrown in. They’re impressive, but they don’t seem to be part of the flow of the rest of the performance. --I suspect that a double or a single rotation looks less disruptive to the routine because more graceful and less chaotic-seeming, and so a routine with few major jumps looks better from an artistic perspective. BUT if what you’re grading is those “between-the-jumps” elements, maybe they aren’t really any better in the case of a Rippon: just that the program, to untrained eyes, seems more seamless. I don’t know, but that’s my suspicion.
Another thing: we actually have this kind of discussion a lot. “They should change sport x because it would be better and they’d attract more fans and lose fewer fans…”
Soccer: “They should widen the goal/get rid of offside/stop having ties.” “It would add offense. It would make it more interesting.” “People like me would start watching it.” Maybe so. But there are millions of people who love soccer NOW and don’t want it to change. They get to choose–not those who might like it better if things were different.
Swimming: “It’s stupid to have the breaststroke, the backstroke, and the butterfly. Why not just have everybody go as fast as they can like track?” “I would take it more seriously as a sport if they made that change.” “People like me would start watching it.” Again–swimming is very popular, not as much as soccer of course, but very popular, and the people in charge like it the way it is.
I;d like football better if they went to 2-hand touch. I’d like basketball better if they had a 12-foot high basket (and if they actually called traveling). But I’ve never been to a football game and haven;t been to a basketball game for maybe 20 years, so what I think doesn;t count.
Same here: the people who run figure skating like it the way it is. They like the current balance of athleticism and grace. They might tweak the scoring system somewhat but they aren’t going to change the basics. Sad but true.
My big gripe with the prime time viewing is the scheduling seems chaotic. Thursday night when the men’s skate was advertised in the prime time block, it was nearly 11o’clock coming on. I couldn’t see any reason for this, except maybe to throw in some downhill races with the horrible Bode Miller calling it. It was torturous. The main anchor kept teasing about it. He’s another problem. Who the hell is that guy? And they took Katie Curick (msp) out of moth balls, that is just sad. There are so many good broadcasters and anchors around why would they do this?
Think of it this way:
In golf, two golfers play a hole from the same tee box, to the same hole, with all the same hazards in the way. So if golfer A hits a shot that is just one foot too far to the left, and goes in the water, or out of bounds, he will probably lose the hole, even if the other golfer hits a less ambitious shot off the tee. Risk and reward are easy to balance because the field of play is level.
Now, imagine that golfer A is playing a 500 yard par 4 with 300 yards of carry over water to the fairway, and out of bounds down the left hand side after that. Golfer B, however, who cannot hit the ball as far as A, decides to use a different tee box, one that has only 250 yards of carry, and which reduces the possibility of going out of bounds significantly. Golfer A hits the ball, and it lands one foot too short; it’s a great shot, better than what B will hit, but it didn’t land safely. Golfer B hits his tee shot, a mediocre effort in comparison, but comfortably safe. Would you consider it fair to have A and B compete that way?
A skater attempting a quad jump is pushing the limit of physicality. His fall may mean that he did almost everything right. He jumped correctly, he got all the rotations in, etc. But he managed to catch an edge just wrong, and down he goes. He’s like 95% perfect, but because it’s at the limit, the fail is dramatic.
A skater attempting lesser jumps isn’t pushing the limit of anything, really. If he completes the jump, it just means that he did the expected. If you create a system of judging where a fall on a more aggressive jump automatically results in failure, you simply encourage “safe” skating.
Figure skating isn’t JUST about how you look on the ice. As I pointed out, it’s an ATHLETIC endeavor, which is why it’s in the Olympics, and not just something you take your kids to go watch at the Ice Follies. It may not be aesthetically pleasing to watch someone fall if you aren’t someone who has figure-skated yourself; you probably have no idea just how little the margin of error is. But skating people DO know, and this system is designed to emphasize that fact. Some falls, the truly dramatic failures, will result in fewer or no points being scored (under-rotation for example). But it was incumbent upon Adam Rippon (and everyone else who prefers to be “artistic” over “athletic”) to at least attempt a program that could win because it was athletic enough to be worth the effort.
[Foghorn Leghorn] "That was a joke, son, a joke! " [/Foghorn Leghorn]
I’m familiar with the intricacies of curling; been curling since big enough to handle a rock. 
But think, again, of slalom skiing. They cannot just ski conservatively, because someone else might hit the turns harder and get away with it without falling—and that person would get the goal. So every contender must push themselves and hit the limit of where they probably won’t fall, but they might. And different skiers will have different risk tolerances.
The same would be true in figure skating if they heavily penalized falls. The gold medalist probably would have some quad jumps, having pulled them off like a high wire act with no net.
You keep the net and reward a “good try”, you’re not only killing the aesthetic quality of the sport, but failing to sufficiently reward the skaters who attempt risky jumps and LAND them. Am I understanding the scoring right, that three attempted quad jumps that all result in a staggering hand on the ice will get you more points than attempting just one quad and nailing it perfectly? If so, that’s madness.
And I object to this idea that I don’t understand how slim the margin for error is. Sure I do—it’s pretty obvious. But the same is true of the amazing moves in gymnastics, that 99.999+% of the population is not remotely capable of. This is why they are Olympic athletes! But I don’t recall medalling gymnasts falling on their asses. Or take the NFL. To leap and make a diving fingertip catch in the end zone with a defender all over you and get your tiptoes in bounds is an incredibly difficult thing to do. But if you almost make the catch, you don’t get half a touchdown. You get an incompletion. Bupkis.
You do make a fair point that within the rules as they stand now, Rippon could be accused of not really trying to win, like a point guard who doesn’t try a desperation half court shot at the buzzer because she doesn’t want to lower her shooting percentage. But the rules can and should be changed to make the incentives more fitting with “pleasing the crowd”. Dean Smith was absolutely right to develop the four corners offense in basketball to protect a lead, but it was deadly dull to watch, so they instituted a shot clock.
I also think you are forgetting that the big money in figure skating, like gymnastics, is in endorsements. Those are more likely to go to crowd pleasers than to the most athletic jumpers who fall and stumble frequently.
I should have ducked when I heard that stone whish by
I should have ducked when I heard that stone whoosh by
Maybe third time will be the charm.
Random observation:
I couldn’t bare to watch middle distance track running during the summer olympics, but I love watching cross country skiing. No idea why. I just like it. Maybe it’s the snow.
Also, figure skating is for Ice Capades. I really hate it. Same for any event that scores style points. Either you’re the fastest or the strongest or jumped the highest/farthest and stuck the landing or you didn’t. If some judge thinks you happen to look the prettiest, you’re not participating in sport, you’re in America’s Got Talent.
So, I just saw that an athlete from Russia has failed a doping test. No word on the name of the athlete or the sport.
Word is now in that it is the male half of the Russian mixed doubles curling team. They had won the bronze, but the guy has tested positive for meldonium.
Fastest, Highest, Strongest…not…nicest?
No I don’t like judged sports either, give me the purity of someone strapping on a pair of skis, being pointed down the mountain and told “there’s the finish line, now who can get there fastest?”
The men’s downhill is the top event for me and I was delighted to see Axel Lund-Svindal win and equally chuffed to see Marcel Hirscher win 2 golds (already! he hasn’t even done his best event yet)
I noticed that runners always seem to have some strength left at the end of a race, enough to still walk around at least, but cross-country skiers will cross the finish line and just collapse. Then I figured out that some cross-country events are against the clock. If you’re running, you can adjust your pace against the other runners and if you’ve got a lead you can ease up and just jog across the finish line. But when you’re skiing against the clock you might need every second you can get, so you have to be right at the limit for the whole race.
I don’t know if you’re picking up that vibe, but those cross-country skiers are hardcore.
Weather is part of the problem, I think. They were unable to run the alpine events the first few days due to high winds, which means everything has had to be rescheduled, when then causes more overlap. This means NBC has to make some tough choices if they have multiple “big” events going on live at the same time.
I’m not thrilled with Bode Miller either, but I’m honestly not sure who else is around to do it–usually the color analyst role is filled by someone who was in the sport, maybe everyone else available is worse?
In the Sweden vs. Finland hockey game, I was cheering for Finland. My mom’s 2nd husband was from Turku.
Bloody Swedes! :mad: