No regrets.
Odd comment, since the rules are extremely simple – toss the ball into the net without setting foot in the goal area.
The “passive play” rule isn’t complicated; it just depends on the referees’ judgment. A team would be called sooner if they aren’t making an effort, or later if the defense is stifling them.
What constitutes a foul? What infraction incurs a penalty shot? Very unclear, from my limited watching.
But again, not a sport I’ve watched very much and will not do so in the future.
I’m actually going to go with men’s boxing as the worst. There’s a lot of sports I don’t understand the nuances of, but that doesn’t make them bad to watch, it makes them bad to watch for me. The boxing, however, has a number of issues. The three round format isn’t generally enough time for an amateur to record a KO, so they always go the judges. Similarly, it’s not a lot of time to learn and take advantage of an opponent. The shift to the 10-must is good, but that the scoring per round being open is bad. In my viewing it resulted in a lot of third rounds where one boxer had incentive to tangle up and waste time as much as possible, which does not make for a good fight. Especially when the ref yells at them ten times to stop it but is either unable or unwilling to take a point.
Women’s boxing has the same structural issues, but it’s actually better than the pros in one respect. They get three minute rounds too, and not the two minute rounds of the pros. Now, I like watching the women when they are on the card, but I wish they’d go three minutes.
I’m always amused in threads like this when people dump on rhythmic gymnastics as the worst event to watch over, say, rowing.
Sure, it’s a bit odd and froo-froo to American eyes. But even if you don’t care a whit about the outcome or how the judging works, if nothing else it’s people doing damned amazing and impressive things. It’s like a circus act. It may not seem like a sport, but it’s clearly kinda fun to watch.
Compare that with a long rowing race. There are some boats. Some are going faster than others. And they keep going. And keep going. And keep going. And keep going. On and on and on and on. Eventually, one of them presumably crosses the line first. It could not possibly be more tedious.
Yeah. This is it exactly. Thankfully, while they’re still thin, the athletes aren’t as alarmingly anorexic-looking as they used to be. I guess I’m both amazed at some of what they can do and nonplussed at how stupid it all looks.
Nope its clearly the worst thing out there. I love watching the olympics but we only had the core NBC channel near the end of the olympics rhythmic gymnastics came on my wife and she only made it 10 minutes before she made me change the channel. Its like bad ballroom dancing and I don’t like watching dancing with the stars either. Its barely more athletic than ballet and way less interesting. Adding in the batons’ hoop or ribben just makes it even worse.
At least with crew its a race, you can see who is going faster, whos in the lead, and the physical struggle of the athletes to maintain pace and rhythm. Every judged event is worse.
I can’t stand all the artistic gymnastics coverage, but there was something oddly intriguing about the rhythmic gymnastics…watching the ribbons twirl, hoops and clubs thrown in the air, etc. was kind of fun, no matter how silly a “sport” it is.
Penalty shot is for being interfered with in the act of shooting. Fouls are just unsportsmanlike play, usually something that could cause injury to the other player. Most non-shooting fouls just gives the ball to the team that was fouled. If it’s egregious, the player is sent off for two minutes.
It’s really a very easy sport to pick up on the fly.
I had never watched rhythmic gymnastics before the Tokyo Olympics, but hearing all the Dopers’ comments about it, whether be it good or bad, made me view it to see what all the hoopla was about and it was actually … way more entertaining than I thought it would be.
Yes, it might not fit most people’s confines of what a traditional sport should be, but damn I find it fun to watch the dexterity and limberness of the girls when they make the apparatuses almost an extension of their own bodies.
Watching a marathon, the 3000 m run around a track, a 1500 m freestyle swim - good at the start of the race and end of the race but please they’re pretty boring. I’ll admit rhythmic gymnastics takes commitment but IMHO not the worst. Walk-run is the worst. It hurts to watch. For me, because of my athletic background (admittedly 30 years ago), I love gymnastics, swimming, track/field. Best is a toss-up between floor routine in gymnastics and 50m or 100m butterfly swim.
A marathon at least is over in about two hours. Golf, on the other hand, lasts for days. Days and days of supposed Olympian athletes walking around whacking tiny balls with sticks. Truly stultifying.
@Terminus_Est I respectfully change my worst (non) sport to Golf. I forgot it was an Olympic event. This is a summer sport though. I’ll be able to highlight winter sports next year!
I enjoy sports in general and I am happy to watch most of the Olympics events. I quite liked the rhythmic gymnastics.
But I found fencing confusing. They seemed to dance around and then one of the suits lit up. Artistic swimming was rather weird too.
The least interesting are the winter events where one person (or team) goes down the hill, they record the time, then another person goes down the hill, et cetera. Finally they announce that one of them was 0.01 seconds faster going down the hill than the others and is the winner. Imagine if the track events were like that. Boring.
Much better to have races where everyone is going at the same time, and the first down takes the gold, such as paralell slalom snowboarding.
The men’s downhill is the “blue riband” event in the same way as the men’s 100m is. And they don’t announce the time only at the bottom, there are intermediate splits given all the way down so you know how a given individual is progressing.
That’s the only reasonably sensible way finding out who is the quickest over that course. They can be doing 90+mph and there is often only one “quickest” line to take. Imagine setting off 30+ skiers at the top of the course all together, jostling for the same bit of ice. Carnage, death and serious injury.
There is the skicross event which has a much less severe slopes, slower speeds and 4 competitors at a time and that sees enough crashes as it is.
My problem with parallel racing is, the faster competitor doesn’t always win. In parallel snowboarding, they do two runs (just in case one course is faster than the other), but the margin of victory in the first race is capped at something like 1.5 seconds, so if Competitor A wins the first heat by 1.7 seconds and Competitor B wins the second heat by 1.6, then B is declared the winner.
Originally, it was one competitor at a time, but I think the problem was, the course detoriorates over time (much more so than with skiing), so when you took your run affected your result.
There are many events that use the same system as downhill skiing: pole vault, discus, javelin, long jump, high jump, gymnastics, diving, equestrian, ski jump, bobsled, luge, skeleton, etc.
Why pick on downhill skiing.
I concur, and had come to the thread to put it up as my top pick. We can argue whether or not its a “sport” but it sure is amazing to watch, and you can’t deny that there is some degree of skill in being able to throw a ball up in the air do two cart wheels and then catch it between the back of your head and your foot.
Yes, but that would way more spectator friendly.
I loathe and despise volleyball, be it beach or inside. Lots of reasons that I won’t go into. I love track and field (or athletics, as the Brits would say) because it’s faster/higher/further/farther.