26 replies to this topic

[JasonJ]

Watched some of it on TV so far and some of the preview stories of some of the local athletes. Was able to enjoy it a little actually. There's a pretty amazing variety of winter sports and it makes for some interesting watching in how people become so proficient in them.

[Harold Jones]

I don't make it a habit to watch sports on tv, but I occasionally come across the Olympics while I'm flipping channels. I am mesmerized by curling, I suspect because it looks like the only Olympic sport that you could perform with a beer gut.

[Skywalkre]

I'd watch it if they'd actually show the competition.  I tried watching this weekend but NBC's coverage had more commercials than an NFL game and when they weren't in a break they were splitting their time with stories of American athletes.  I saw, maybe, 12-15m of competition in the hour or so I tried watching.

[CT96]

I gave up on NBC last Olympics. By all accounts now they've gotten worse.

 

CBC streaming is almost perfect. It's how I'll be doing all my Olympics from now on.

 

Really enjoying the Biathalon events - the wind has been brutal on the rifle range.

[Corinthian]

 

Reason to watch Olympics

[R011]

Or would have been if it had actually fallen off.

[Ivanhoe]

Oh, dear;

 

https://www.usatoday...ands/328425002/

 

"As you all know, it has lots of canals that can freeze in the winter," Couric said, "so for as long as those canals have existed, the Dutch have skated on them to get from place to place, to race each other and also to have fun."

 

Couric's comment was not the only misstep in NBC's opening ceremony coverage. The network apologized over the weekend for analyst Joshua Cooper Ramo's on-air remark that "every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural and technical and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation." Japan occupied Korea for four decades. NBC later fired Ramo.

 

Note that Ramo is a graduate of NYU and U of C. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

All lies. Everyone knows the Dutch booze up on their canals, not skate on them.

[MiloMorai]

Some people in Ottawa skate to work.

 

[rmgill]

I thought Ottawans were all about their rails?

[MiloMorai]

Well there is a bit of a stink going on now as the new LR is behind schedule and going over budget.

[FlyingCanOpener]

Only things worth watching are ice hockey, biathlon, and bobsleigh. Give me all of those and I'm a happy FCO.

[Rick]

Only things worth watching are ice hockey, biathlon, and bobsleigh. Give me all of those and I'm a happy FCO.

You might add curling to that. I'm sure that is a sport that gets better the more booze is involved

[Soren Ras]

I generally make a clear distinction between events that should be considered sports and events that are entertainment.

 

Sport, being defined in this instance by some objective measurement used to determine a winner (points scored, best time, longest leap, and so on).  While there may be a referee, that person is only there to ensure that competitors are treated equally and the referee does not as a rule determine who will win. The contestant controls if he or she will win.

 

The entertainment events, on the other hand, consist of contestants performing for a band of judges who then award subjective points determining the winner.  The contestant's aim is to please the judges who are the ones who control who will win.

 

The performance of figure skating can be very pleasing to watch with impressive feats of skill, but I am really watching a bunch of judges raising their cards, and where human arbiters are inserted to determine who wins, corruption will eventually follow as surely as night follows day.

 

 

--

Soren

[Skywalkre]

This movie needs to be made!  (Written before they won the gold medal.)

 

https://slate.com/cu...yeongchang.html

[Ssnake]

In any case, I wanted to congratulate the Canadian hockey team for winning the Bronze medal.   

[MiloMorai]

And Germany, again, failed to defeat the Russians.  

[FlyingCanOpener]

Jeez, so close for Germany in Men's Ice Hockey! Simultaneously a heartbreaking loss, but at the same time... The Germans were actually playing for a gold medal for once! The Canadian implosion in the semifinal was pretty epic honestly.

 

Also, Bobsleigh is the bee's knees, and something must be done to stop the German hegemony. They need to throw off the shackles of research funding and go full-on F1 and see what happens.

[CT96]

In all the sliding sports (Bobsleigh, Luge, Skeleton) your odds of being on the podium are exceptionally high if you speak German. 

 

The US was actually, AIUI, starting to challenge more consistently, but the team leader (and highest scoring bobsledder in the US) died last year which really took the wind out of the sails of the team. 

[FlyingCanOpener]

That's because Zee Chermans take it pretty seriously... along with the Swiss, and make it a priority. IIRC the two main producers of bobsleighs are German, and one of them shares all of their production data with the German federation, so there's a little bit of home cooking*. I get the bylaws that restrict bobsleigh technological development, but the restrictions on rules are reasonably tight as it is, so letting engineers take a stab at things within their own countries would make things more amusing, and as we see in F1, kit can only take you so far.

 

*I read it in an academic paper by a team in Australia who were looking at the ways to improve design within the materials and research budget restrictions.