Why do Olympic boxers have helmets? I must have seen dozens of matches and something always looked off to me. I can’t believe I never thought about the fact that they have helmets!
This happened during a weightlifting event. The guy basically dropped the barbell on the back of his neck. He’s ok, but its something that happens during weightlifting. In Beijing, some guy snapped his arm I think. Anyways, my question is about the privacy screens they bring out. Why do they do this for weightlifting and no other sports that I know of? I know its embarrassing to be writhing on the floor in pain but it seems weird that they do it for this sport and no other. All the arguments for doing it can applied to any other sporting injury, so it doesn’t make sense. Let us see the broken bones!!
Sorry if this was already answered. I’m posting from my phone. On NBC the beach volleyball display shows the nations abbreviation, their flag, a number I don’t know the meaning of, competitor names, and score. What’s that non-score number?
In Track, is there any real benefit to slowing down a few meters before the finish in a preliminary race? Even in the shortest sprints, the leaders slow down at the end to conserve energy for the next round (even if it’s not until the next day).
What happens to the toes of springboard divers? I saw footage of the German diver in the prelims who came down on his back and the commentators said something about him losing a toenail on his jump from the board. Even looked like there was blood on his foot before he hit the water. And in the finals several of the divers had toes taped up or bandaged.
Seriously. We’re talking about a sport in which the men shave their armpits not to reduce drag but to prevent other men from pulling that hair out as a distraction. Water Polo is rough.
Safety. Olympic boxers are always amateurs and wearing helmets is standard practice in amateur boxing. Only professionals box without helmets, and it’s only professional boxing we normally see televised.
I like that the data and maps they now use in sailing - GPS has really helped get an overview of what’s happening in real time. Knowing wind speed and direction, distances between boats and to markers, etc; you can get into tacking, angles and hanging over the egde and shit.
Is it not the case that if they push themselves to the limit, they are slightly more likely to pull a muscle, which would clearly be disastrous and pointless? I realise this is much more likely at the start of the race than at the end, but is it not a consideration?
Also, perhaps the top athletes think there is a potential disadvantage in showing their competitors exactly how fast they can go. I mean, it’s got to be pretty demoralising if you run your best ever race in the semi-final, trying hard right past the line, only to get the same qualification time as Bolt, who has eased off 15m out? It means that you can be pretty certain you have no chance of beating him in the final. And he will know that as well. Whereas if you ease off as well, you’ll get a slower time, but you remain something of an unknown quantity.
This must be true, there are big psychological advantages to easing up in the sprints.
When Usain does that thing where he enters the Bolt time zone 2/3 of the way through - I will now appear to jog whilst you all continue to leather it, and I’m still running faster - it must be devastating to the other athletes. Not that I reckon any of them really believe they can take him in the first place.
In the diving, they have several scores. The high and low are discarded, which is signified by them being shaded. The announcer keeps saying they are shaded red, but they look gray to me, no hint of red at all. How do you others see them?
It’s also the distance used at “junior” meets; presumably, they can use the track for qualifying for future European or World Junior Championships (Eugene, Oregon will host in 2014). I am still a little surprised it’s there, as, since the track seems to have a number of Olympic logos on it, I assumed they would get rid of it after the Paralympics, the way they did at Turner Field in 1996.
Up until the early 1980s, headgear (they’re not “helmets” as they’re soft) was not allowed in amateur events, pretty much because the USSR and, presumably, Cuba didn’t want them used. If you ever see footage of, say, Sugar Ray Leonard or Michael Spinks from the 1976 Olympics, they are not wearing headgear.
Gray. Also, they throw out the top two and bottom two scores. It used to be that they threw out just the highest and lowest scores, but then multiplied the result by 3/5; this was so the scores would be “comparable” with smaller events, where only five judges were used and the middle three counted. (They still do this, in the synchronized diving, as five judges’ scores are counted - the middle score for the three given to each diver separately, and the middle three of the five “synchronization” scores.)