Topic: 2010 Winter Games: Vancouver (Read 218 times)

architechguy · « **Reply #25 on:** February 20, 2010, 01:38:00 AM »

That's an interesting discussion about kicking sports out of the games. Hockey isn't the only sport that sees a small handful of countries dominate and a mass of inexperienced competitors using the Olympics for their ONLY international competition. That's the very nature of the Olympics, it's the one international event that's open to anybody and everybody who can qualify. It's like the US Open and British Open in golf, anybody can qualify for it, you don't have to be invited like The Masters. That's going to lead to a lot of flash in the pan competitors who are not up the elite level. Compare hockey to luge, where there are about 40+ competitors and only a half dozen actual contenders. That's less than a 1:5 ratio of contenders to pretenders. Women's hockey has 8 teams and 2 of them are contenders, that's a 1:4 ratio. That's better than sports like luge or bobsled, and better than probably 75% of the sports in the Olympics. Surely, there's no demand to expand the tournament to 12 teams like the men's game just yet, but at least the level of competition is roughly the same as just about every other event.

Plus, like they said in the article, there already are hockey and ice rinks at every Olympic venue, it's not an additional cost to build baseball or softball stadiums. It's not a matter of whether the sport itself is international enough, just the quality of competition.

thedrUNKenLoper · « **Reply #26 on:** February 20, 2010, 02:10:33 AM »

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/vancouver/figureskating/2010-02-19-lysacek-gold_N.htm

spices up the 2014 games in Russia

thedrUNKenLoper · « **Reply #27 on:** February 20, 2010, 04:49:43 AM »

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/curling/news?slug=dw-curling021810&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

I'm sure this is something many of you never thought of, I know I didn't

thedrUNKenLoper · « **Reply #28 on:** February 22, 2010, 01:59:09 AM »

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/The-REAL-medal-count-Germany-ahead-of-U-S-?urn=oly,220910

thedrUNKenLoper · « **Reply #29 on:** February 22, 2010, 02:51:05 AM »

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Montgomery-is-Canada-s-man-of-the-Games?urn=oly,221070

check this story out

architechguy · « **Reply #30 on:** February 22, 2010, 09:43:43 PM »

That article about judged sports is pretty absurd. You can't just pretend those sports didn't happen, but it's certainly fair to view those sports differently. All competitors are playing by the same rules, so the standard is consistent. Besides, this is why they give medals for 1st, 2nd and 3rd, so in terms of the medal count Russia gets just as much for the figure skater's controversial silver medal as the US gets for their controversial gold. For that same reason, you can't over value first place finishes over second and third. It's a medal count, not a gold medal count. If you only want to recognize gold medals, then stop giving out silver and bronze. Besides, just because one country wins more gold medals doesn't mean they had a superior performance, if one country wins 10 gold medals and nothing else, and another country wins 9 medals of each color, which team do you think did better? That's an extreme example, but if one team has 5 fewer total medals than another, it's not fair to say they did better just because more of their medals are gold.