More canoeing. Less skateboarding.
The Brits had a boat wander out of its lane in rowing. The mens coxless four. Interesting choice of words. 
The crew doesn’t include a coxswain.
It’s another example of energy management. This type of error often occurs when the crew overexerts and loses control of steering.
Anyway, the Brits usually medal in mens rowing. Not this year.
I’m afraid we are witnessing the end of a fabulous career.
No, not remotely comparable.
hurdles would be like having to dive underwater and swim through a hoop whilst covering a distance as fast as possible.
I had always assumed Biles would retire after the Olympics.
Its a shame the last few days will probably overshadow her career.
She was the most senior and experienced gymnast on that team. The younger women were looking to Biles for leadership.
I’m unclear…are you still maintaining the original point that “suboptimal” events should be cut?
An event that requires you to use a suboptimal technique to cover a course is of little interest to me.
That is the case with, say, the 100m breaststroke. That isn’t the case with the 100m hurdles (because the hurdles are the course, not the technique)
I’m a swimmer in the sense that I swim laps at the local pool, and even I can feel the exhaustion in these races. I’m watching the swimmers chase the yellow “WR” line thinking “just go a little faster!” then I remember that it is not humanly possible for them to go any faster, they are quite literally using “every fiber of their being” to move through that water. It’s just incredible!
I mean, you like what you like, and certainly there’s no shortage of Olympics to watch right now!
That said, I feel like “suboptimal technique” defines about 80% of all sports. It is wildly suboptimal to get from one end of a basketball court to the other by bouncing the ball continuously, and I’d imagine soccer players would be much more effective getting around if they just picked up the ball and ran. It’s super suboptimal for a boxer to refrain from kicking his opponent in the knee.
Most sports are about creating weird and absolutely arbitrary limitations and then seeing who functions best under those specific limitations. For me, the backstroke or the butterfly are no different than any other random collection of rules.
(I would watch swimming all day long and never get bored).
But they are interesting to me. Different squids for different kids.
The upstream gates are all in eddy currents so there is so upstream water motion to help go the wrong way.
I am pretty sure friction reducing chemicals are banned along with textured surfaces ,they just go for super smooth surfaces and maybe wax to stop stuff sticking to the surface or stuff drying out on them between runs.
That said rules change fast as technology improves.
And that’s why they no longer use that rule in the NBA. 
I think the pushback against swimming’s arbitrary rules is that there’s so many variations and they’re all official. There’s multiple swimming techniques (front crawl, back crawl, breast, butterfly), just like there’s multiple field sports (soccer, handball, rugby, hockey). But then there’s different lengths (100m, 200m, 400m, etc), yet the field sports each have a fixed area. And there’s different team sizes (1, 4), yet the field sports each have a fixed team size.
So we end up with 18 swimming sports, but only 4 field sports. Where’s the variations in field sports? Varying team size, varying field areas, varying match length, etc. Or, why hasn’t swimming consolidated to a few standards like other sports? I think that’s why swimming feels more arbitrary than other sports.
At least basketball is moving in the right direction.
Agree.
Scenes we’d all like to see:
Dan f’ing Hicks trying to swim 100M while Rowdy tells him to “pick it up a little”
If you had a medal awarded for basketball played by bouncing with your left hand, one for playing with your right hand, one for shooting only with both hands, one for only allowing you to move by jumping with both feet. I suspect we’d be thinking to ourselves “why do we have all these varieties of what is essentially the same thing?”
I went and checked out a video of canoe slalom. What a sport!
It instantly made me wonder if canoeists had wildly different sized shoulder muscles based on the side they rowed on. I couldn’t find any pics of slalom canoeists hanging out shirtless or sleeveless, standing still. So the mystery remains.
However, I did find some pics of New Zealand flatwater canoeist Lisa Carrington and I can confirm that she is unilaterally buff. Damn, girl!
I think some of us might think that. Others of us - me, for example - would be planning our afternoons around the Bunny Hop Basketball Medal Game:-)
But, as discussed, there are multiple events that cover how fast you can run from point A to point B; sprinting, hurdles, relay etc. Should there just be one? It would mean cutting many of the most popular events.
You suggested that the swimming equivalent of hurdles would be a diving sport where you swim through rings…that doesn’t exist right now, and seems to undercut your point.
You’re free to like or dislike whatever you want, but I’m having trouble making sense of your logic.
I would agree with Pleonast that the number of swimming events is on the high side, and some could be cut. But I don’t see any reason why the perfect number of swimming events is 1.
Yeah I am not sure how the number of swimming events is determined, but perhaps it reflects the different events that occur regularly at non-Olympic meets. Yesterday, they were saying they barely had enough women’s butterfly swimmers to hold the 400m event (17) and one dropped out, so all entrants in the field were going to the semi-finals, and the qualifying heats were just to determine lane position. Then later, the women’s 1,500m event was held for the first time in the Olympics, as it was just added for Tokyo. IDK, but maybe they should consider trimming it down a bit, but then there would be howls from countries that have a strong, medal-contending swim team.
The men’s 1500 meters has been in the Olympics since '04. That’s 1904. They also added the 800 meter event for the men this year; it has been a women’s event since 1968. The Tokyo games are the first time in Olympic history that the men and women are swimming the same events.
Agree, but that is not the point. The question was if there are too many Olympic swimming events. One I pointed out barely has enough competitors, and yet another one was just added. I agree there should be parity between men’s and women’s events, but perhaps there are to many events in total.