I guess I wasn’t clear. Figure skating has a quantifiable, objective criteria for winning, but not for scoring. The scores are subjective. Most obviously the artistic merit scores, but even the technical score is pretty subjective, or they wouldn’t vary. That is what I meant.
I never said anything about what makes some thing a genuine Olympic event. (I assume that is what you are driving at.) I think your view on this depends on what you think the Olympics should be. I prefer that the Olympics be a recognizable offshoot of the ancient Olympics, which were limited to just sports. (By my definition of sport.) For me, the Olympics are a forum for world wide sports. They help determine “world champions” at various events. Even most professional sports do not have such forums. E.g., widely played sports like basketball and baseball do not have such forums. (Tennis and what we call soccer being two exceptions.)
I know many see the Olympics as an international forum for what I call athletic competition. I can understand that. The Olympics are a ready-made, well known forum. This is a different vision of the Olympics from mine, but last I checked, I wasn’t world-wide-president-for-life. Yet. I tend to dislike including athletic competitions that aren’t sports, partly because they are more amenable to being rigged. (As much as the US '72 basketball team was robbed, and various boxers at the Korean Olympics, ice dancing and gymnastics have been much more problematic over the years.) I also just prefer sports. Except diving. It’s not just the pretty, athletic, young women wearing very little. I even watch the guys dive. :eek:
Bridge and chess would meet my definition of sports, if physical skills primarily determined ability. Despite the impressive stamina required by chess masters, both are clearly mental competitions and not athletic competitions. Since I think of the Olympics as sporting events, I don’t want them included anymore than I want to see competitive dance included. Those who see the Olympics as an international forum for any form of competition might disagree. Of course, chess doesn’t need the Olympics. It already has a mechanism for creating a world champion. I suspect bridge does also, but I don’t know.
I don’t entirely agree. Sure, artistic merit is entirely subjective, but technical merit is only somewhat subjective, with the balance being objective. Skaters must perform a set number of jumps, spins, and other specific moves during their routines. For technical merit scores, the judges compare the number of elements successfully completed to the requirements This is objective, as the element either was or was not performed in the routine. Each of these elements has a specific manner in which it must be performed to be done correctly, an ideal the skater is trying to match. Height, distance, speed, number of spins, landing on one foot on the correct edge, etc., are all objective measures of success. The judges compare the element as performed to the ideal to determine a score. This is somewhat objective, and somewhat subjective.
Figure skating is an example of a sport that has a combination of athletic and artistic elements. I don’t think there needs to be a hard line distinction between sports and arts. Ballet dancers are great athletes, but ballet is not a sport; it’s parked fully at the artistic end of the spectrum. Speed skating is a sport with little to no art involved; the winner is the contestant with the fastest time. Ice dancing is closer to the art end, while figure skating somewhere in the middle, though I’d put it somewhat closer to the athletic end than the artistic. Diving is in the middle, but heavily weighted towards the athletic.
Not exactly. I was just curious as to why you called the movement to include chess and bridge as Olympic events a sham. I see that you meant that you didn’t like the idea, not that you believe the movement is fake.
Without a formal count, I’d venture that the majority of of the core summer events have other ways of crowning world champs. Track and field, swimming, diving, boxing, gymnasitcs, tennis, soccer, bicycle racing, volleyball, and many more all have world championships.
You’re right, “sham” is probably the wrong word to express what I meant. I wasn’t trying to imply that those movements aren’t genuine, but I do think they’re ridiculous. Then again, I try not to think about the Olympics (unless I read a thread about it, of course).
Personally, when I think ‘sport,’ I think of physical exertion. I don’t think that ‘sport’ and ‘not sport’ are the same as ‘good’ and ‘not good.’ It’s just that they’re different things.
We do not disagree on what figure skating is, just on what is a sport. The technical merit score in figure skating is “somewhat subjective” in the same sense that how well one writes is “somewhat subjective”. You can like or dislike various styles, but bad grammer is bad grammer. Ok, a bit of hyperbole, but you see why I think of figure skating as an art.
For me, not everything that is athletic is a sport. What is the difference between a runner and a jogger? It is more than speed. I know runners that are quite slow, and I’m sure some world class athletes can jog near my race pace. One reason I run is to improve my performance. IMNSHO, that is the difference between me an a jogger. We both run to get outdoors, enjoy ourselves, etc. But I also do workouts designed to make me faster.
Clearly there are athletic arts and artistic athletics. Yes, the line is fuzzy, but there is a difference. My definitions tell you where I draw my line. I can’t tell where you draw yours.
Actually, you are wrong on most of these. Tennis and soccer do have world championships, which is one reason I’d rather not see them in the Olympics and I mentioned them earlier. (I can also watch either on almost any day of the week. I can’t say that for Greco-Roman wrestling.) Boxing also has world champions. However, of those three, only soccer has a world championship tournament. Boxing doesn’t even have seasons. Track and field, swimming, diving, and bicycling have international events, but don’t identify world champions. (Lance Armstrong winning the one event covered in the US does not make him a world champion.) I will grant you that Track and Field does, in a sense. (I think that your average American marathoner has a better chance of knowing who won Boston or London, than that marathon designated as “World’s”.
At any rate, I didn’t mean to overplay that. I would just rather the Olympics included sports I don’t get to see much. Then maybe there would be air time for all the swimming finals, and not just the ones with Americans. (To be fair, though, they’d have to get rid of all of those bio bits.)
Boxing has established world champions in the professional ranks. having seasons or tournaments is irrelevant. Boxing determines its champions through a standings based system. That doesn’t mean they aren’t champions.
I agree with this 100%. Dump the “up close and personal” bits and show more events, and every major event final that it is feasable to show, even if there are no Americans involved.