The same could be said of many endeavors, including academics. But in the end do we really care that much about how the game is played? Sure, we’ll make a show of it, avoid the worst abuses, but winning is everything more often. I don’t propose that anything should be allowed as long as it helps in competition, but we’re not banning PEDs based on specific harmful usage, we’re putting a blanket ban on them declaring them unfair even if they do no more harm to a healthy mind and body than other accepted practices.
Funny you mention that, but nobody drug tests for people using mental PEDs. There are several that do work to some extent : creatine, modafinal, Adderall. And of course caffeine, but nobody counts that.
I do wonder how society will handle it if we ever develop safe and usable brain implants that can cache terabytes of data. You wouldn’t be able to turn off such an implant as your brain would depend on it to function, it would have been installed while the brain was still plastic. (or if we can ever reverse aging, we’d make the brain plastic again and install the implant). You could conduct examinations in faraday cages, where at least you can’t be using the wireless capabilities of the implant to cheat, but that is still hardly fair.
Also academic training programs aren’t “winner takes all” like in sports. You simply need to meet some minimum standards and you get the certification. Not always easy, some programs have 70%+ failure rates, but even then that means 30% passed.
In world class sports, if you aren’t either the top 3 in the world in the case of the Olympics, or the top few hundred in your country in the case of becoming a professional athlete, you get nothing.
Yeah, I know my post was a bit pollyannish, but then so am I. I know everyone only cares about winners, while they’re winning, and by the time today’s athletes have 'roid rage and shrunked testicles we’ll have a new generation of PED-enabled heroes to cheer for, but I don’t want to give in to that way of thinking until I really, really have to.
Are there “perfect” throws, i.e. no sweeping is required and the stone ends in the exact desired location? If so, how common are they?
I actually agree, but I have had a difficult time justifying that rationally. There is something better about ‘natural’ competition in my eyes, but I can’t really quantify it, and I think it’s largely based on a childhood ideal of athletic competition that someone growing up now may not have at all. I just have to rely on the concept that everything was better in the old days, even when it wasn’t and I just didn’t realize it at the time. That is definitely true if you define things the right way to justify it 
It happens, but I wouldn’t call it perfect.
I’ve heard that good sweepers can add 10 to 12 feet to the distance a curling stone travels. I always think that a perfect shot would come up 5 feet short without the sweepers; it gives them the flexibility to sweep early or late to put the stone exactly where the skip wants it. A shot that goes the right distance without sweepers is right on the edge of an unrecoverable error. There’s no reason to cut it that close; you’ve got sweepers, use them.
What if it was automobile racing, and instead of getting a racecar that is roughly the same performance as everyone else, you had to just go to a car dealership and pick randomly? You get stuck with that car the rest of your racing career, whatever it is. You are allowed to practice with the car and put better tires on it, but any sort of engine modification is disallowed.
That seems like what “natural” competition is to me. And it’s totally “fair” if one competitor gets to a corvette while you only get a mustang, but you can’t go under the hood and modify your mustang to have the same horsepower as that corvette. (take steroids and growth hormone)
That’s not quite the distinction I’m making. I don’t think there’s a need for such fairness in terms of natural ability in sports. In your analogy what I’m saying would be like requiring race car drivers to use Model Ts because that’s what was available once upon a time instead of taking advantage of new car technology.
Remember that the use of PEDs helps the naturally gifted too, genetics will always be an advantage in athletics, and just about everything else. I don’t see a rational reason PEDs should be allowed within reasonable restrictions to protect the health of the athletes. I do think it does some leveling of the playing field, in baseball the guy who can use steroids to build a little more muscle can suddenly jump in his value as a hitter because he can get it over the wall more often, and in baseball one more home run a season actually means something. But free usage of PEDs would greatly change some sports. I don’t know if that would really be bad or not, but we have to also consider that if reasonable PED use is allowed that that disallowed use will continue and probably be much worse for the the health of the athletes since they now are trying to surpass the already legitimately enhanced abilities of athletes.
It’s my understanding that sweeping is illegal in wheelchair curling (yes, there is such a thing; I’ve seen them in action at the Cape Cod Curling Club), so their deliveries pretty much have to be on the money.
Academic endeavors are not short term competitions, but lifelong endeavors that are supposed to contribute to human knowledge and understanding. Engineers are supposed to make the world better and safer through their efforts, doctors save lives or enhance health and well-being, or try to, and etc, etc. Totally different from short-term athletic performance. It may extend the boundaries of what people can do, and give pleasure to the practitioner and the viewer. But it is short-term, and there, the drugs make a difference. For life-long endeavors, not so much.
NASCAR drivers have failed tests for Adderall and been suspended.
While I’d like to see the officials take this seriously, I expect they will sweep it all under the rug as usual.
A better analogy would be that one is assigned a car at birth. The car assigned is somewhat based on the cars assigned to previous generations of your natural family, but there is some variability. You are “stuck” with that car for life. If you get the NASCAR version, you’re going to excel at round track races. If you get the Formula 1 car you’ll be better at road course racing. If you get the Pacer - well, sucks to be you, you will not excel at racing of any kind. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a thing. Pacers excelled at being cheap, utilitarian vehicles that inspired hate in half the people who saw it. But it did have a niche…
Maybe, but why did Edin’s previous shot fail to roll to a position that would have prevented the double take-out. Edin is arguably the best curler in the world, but Shuster was en fuego during the tournament and fully deserved to win. Koe was an awful disappointment. Homan was even more so. I’ll bet the Canadian Curling Association is right now wondering if there is a better way to choose the Olympic team. I would argue that the selection process was identical to the one used four years earlier that got two gold medals, including an undefeated run for Jennifer Jones.
But to respond to the original question, it is definite that the ice changes during a match. The announcers warn of it constantly. And a path that has been followed and swept frequently will be faster than a virgin path. The ice is carefully resurfaced before each game and quickly resurfaced after 5 ends. But audience, humidity, outside weather, etc. always affect the ice, no matter how carefully attended. And in Suchi four years ago, they had to truck in pure water because the local water was such poor quality it made lousy ice.
If I could figure out why a great athlete has a substandard performance, or vice versa, I’d be a billionaire. When you’re doing something right at the limit of human ability (strength, stamina, or precision) no one gets it perfect every time. It’s worth noting that even before that big score in the eighth end, the U.S. had outplayed Sweden. Sweden had the hammer to start the game, but after seven ends the score was tied and the U.S. had the hammer. They would likely have had two good scoring chances, and Sweden one, before the end of the game. So I wouldn’t say it was just a fluke and one bad shot by Edin that gave the game away.
Are you sure about the ice being resurfaced after 5 ends? My club hosted the junior national championships a few years ago and we had the top USCA ice techs come and do the ice prep before and during the tournament. We did a full scrape, pebble, and nip before each game. Then each team had a 9-minute practice session on the same sheet, and with the same stones that they’d be using in the game. There was a 5-minute break after the fifth end, but nothing was done to the ice.
It’s possible that the Olympics operate with a different standard, but adapting to the ice is such a part of the game at that level I’d be really surprised if they did anything to change it in the middle of a game.