Curling. It apparently matters a huge amount that you don’t touch the stone part of the stone. OK, whatever, but then how is it acceptable for players to touch and tap the opponents played stones with their brushes when indicating directions to other members of their own team? “It doesn’t cause the stones to move, and if it does, they can just move them back” is apparently the answer, but it seems strange to me. Rules are arbitrary I guess.
Alpine Skiing. I feel like having a howling camera drone pursuing the competitor down the slope is an unnecessary distraction to the competitors and it’s unfair too - since the drone will not be flown the exact same way every time and thus the noise that it makes, and its proximity to the competitor will not be uniform. I get that it’s a thing we can do so apparently it’s also a thing we must do, but it feels wrong to me.
For curling, is the rule don’t “touch” the stone, or don’t “disturb” the stone? The latter seems consistent with the rules you describe.
Downhill skiing is so fast that the competitor is going to have a ton of wind noise in their ears. Do we know if they can even hear a drone? I agree if it gets in front of them and is relatively close then that could be an issue, but maybe they already expect/train for this?
I have been assuming that we only hear that droning because there’s a microphone on the drone itself. I doubt the competitors hear it at all.
Drones are extremely loud, with a penetrating buzzing like a robot vuvuzela. Especially the ones big enough to carry a camera pack. I was at a destination wedding in Morocco and we had one maneuvering over the ceremony. Not quite deafening but close.
I don’t know if Olympic-level downhill skiing is itself loud enough (wind, skis on snow, etc) to drown out that sound.
Huh, we had a drone buzzing around to videotape blasting away ledge at my neighbor’s house. I was standing right there, watching, and i honestly don’t remember hearing it. The contractor had to point it out to me, and i found it but seeing motion in the sky.
I’m hearing it zooming past as we see and hear the contestants passing the static cameras. The audio feed from the drone itself is probably not used at all.
I’d be highly surprised if the skiers and snowboarders can hear the drone while they are shooting down the mountain.
It’s reported that they can’t hear them once they are well underway, but they do hear them at the start.
I’d imagine it might be different for different events - downhill skiiing is pretty much flat out with the drone always trailing; snowboarding on the half pipe has the hang time thing where there’s no noise from the board on the snow.
Seems like a useful tool for them to have when they are training (for analysis etc), so I guess competitors will soon get used to it anyway?