I love watching most sports and have enjoyed the Winter Olympics. I wonder if I am the only one disturbed however by how important chance seems to be in many winter events. I am particularly thinking about short track skating and snowboard cross. The Olympics should be about being the best,not the luckiest.
EVERY sport/game has an element of luck or chance involved, some more than others. I am thinking not only of short track skating, which I absolutely love watching, but also the snowboard cross and - hello - horse racing and NASCAR. NEVER bet the favorite! Even our own sport has luck involved, who hasn't had a momentary lapse of attention and then watched your heat start! Oops. All the prep and training means nothing if a person doesn't show up on game day for whatever reason. This is because our sports and what we like is a reflection of life itself, we prep as best we can and show up to play only to have luck happen anyway.
I don't think "chance" is the right word to describe the differences between events where a judge determines your final score and rank vs. the time clock or something objective.
In swimming it would be the difference between who finishes the race first (sport) v. who has the best stroke according to a Judge's standard (non-sport).
What if swimming was judged on how well we swam "fish-like" in true TI fashion. Egad - perish the thought!
What about horse racing as a sport? Who is the athlete, the horse or the jockey? If both, does that make it a "team sport."
NASCAR is a team sport - the pit crew plays an extremely important role in the outcome of the race. Not to mention the physical stamina and strength it requires.
What about diving?
Synchro?
Compare to Water polo?
You have a few elements of chance in swimming -- getting a good draft or something like that.
Some of the Olympic timed sports are decided by fractions of fractions of seconds... if someone wins because their arms are long and they trip the clock .001 ahead of the next person, is that athleticism or just plain luck?
One of the other things I do in my spare time is participate in sheepdog trials. They're judged events, but it's still pretty obvious what is a good run and what is not. I feel that way about a lot of the Olympic judged events. Halfpipe may be a judged event, but it was pretty clear when someone had a killer run.
My favorite sports to watch are those where if you mess up, you die (with the exception of auto racing -- despite living in Indy, I just can't get into it). Those guys and gals are serious athletes. Whether they're sportsmen/sportswomen too is a moot point, as far as I'm concerned.
In Deeee-troit, driving to work every morning is a sport. If you're not going 85-90 MPH in the left lane, the faster drivers will either draft behind you (aka tailgate) or weave in and out of the 3-4 lanes to get ahead of the slower drivers.
I guess Michiganders believe that if we built 'em, we know how to drive 'em. :p
chance is part of the equation in many sports
because things can go wrong or right
in short track skating
the skaters need to be
highly skilled, very well conditioned, and tactically smart
In snowboard cross
the boarders need to be
highly skilled, well conditioned, acrobatic, coordinated and tactically smart
but in both events, things can go wrong,
contestants can wipe out and make tactical errors
in skating, it looks like it's important to layback, draft and pounce at the right moment
it's a shame about lindsey jacobellis
wiping out and losing the gold
because she was hotdogging
she's now earned her spot in history
"Don't pull a jacobellis"
she learned an important lesson
celebrate after you cross the finish line
Things can go wrong in swimming
you can
blow a turn
poorly split a race
breathe water / choke
get a cramp
hit the bottom
blow a start
blow a finish
what else
Ande
Originally posted by Allen Stark
I love watching most sports and have enjoyed the Winter Olympics. I wonder if I am the only one disturbed however by how important chance seems to be in many winter events. I am particularly thinking about short track skating and snowboard cross. The Olympics should be about being the best,not the luckiest.
My point was about short track skating and snowboardcross. Clearly these are athletes and usually the best racer wins,but they are much more at the mercy of their competitors skill and sportsmanship than in most sports.Yes,people run into each other in track(ask Mary Decker),but is unusual where as in the above sports it is usual.
I agree the new scoring system in figure skating helps some people. Take Sasha Cohen who is better at spins and spirals than jumps. Sasha is slightly in first place after the short, and both Irina and Arkawkola are just behind. Anyone of them can win it.
I think curling looks like an absolute blast! I haven't tried it yet but plan to. I don't think it's boring at all.
I disagree with the Wetzel column about figure skating, but I see where he's coming from. Judged sports are just so different from a sport like swimming it's difficult for us to understand them sometimes. But does that make them not sports? Not in my mind.
Speaking of figure skating, I think the new scoring system at least helps things somewhat. It is far, far from perfect but it does attempt to quantify a program rather than just resort to a judge saying "I liked this skater better than that skater" which the old system did. The problem is there is still lots of leeway for the judges to boost the scores of their personal favorites. I think that's just part of skating that will never go away.
The new scoring came in as a result of the judging scandal at the 2002 Games. The irony is, under the new system, the judges' scores are all anonymous! Only in skating would the solution to corrupt judging be to make the scores anonymous. :rolleyes:
