omedon said:
Originally Posted by Storm Raven
You were reading into my post what wasn't there. My roomate has the problem with curling not me.
Sure, I noted that, but I was just responding to the point in general. My position is that if archery can be included in the Olympic games (and I think it can), then curling can as well.
My point is that there seems to be a line that has to be drawn between Games and Sports. Now you appear to be saying that the line can be reasonably drawn to include, golf, pool, and darts. But, you failed to reply to my suggestions of cards, scrabble, and Hungry Hungry Hippoes. Some new examples that include hand eye coordination would be: Jacks, Pogs, Nascar, Snowmobile, and Tractor racing, or even Video Games.
I didn't respond to them because, for the most part, I don't have a position worked out on most of those one way or the other. I don't really have a clear definition in my head as to why curling would be an Olypmic sport, but shuffleboard might not. But that isn't what we are talking about here.
Nascar, snowmodile, and tractor racing I would probably define as non-sports, mostly because they don't rely upon human muscle for their primary motive impetus. Every event currently in the games relies upon a human body as the primary component, even bobsledding requires the competitors to push the thing to get it started. Nascar relies upon mechanical engineering. I think that is enough of a difference to disqualify events that feature internal combustion engines.
My main point was that there must be a line between what is considered a game and what is considered a sport. And maybe under your definition of what is a game and what is a sport figure skating doesn't qualify. But there must me a very real definition made before events are arbatrarily added or removed.
Under my definition, figure skating isn't a
sport. It is a popularity contest, or a beauty pageant. Anything that is primarily judged isn't really a game or a sport, it is an event, it is a show.
Your qualifiying criteria seems to be that the event have a very defined set of rules that can be clearly produce a winner and loser with very little human speculation, of which figureskating admittedly entails plenty.
Correct.
But the little judgement calls can have just as great an effect on who walks away with an Olympic medal and who doesn't. Too many Hockey games have been decided NOT because of the skills of the players but because of a bad call by a referee. Indeed referees often make mistakes and try to balance these out by favouring the opposite team on the next close call. Usually it works out in the end and the best team wins. But sometimes a very bad call is made that costs a team the medal.
The fact is that while hockey is predominantly rules based (which seems to be your criteria for what makes a sport) and it has clear winners and losers; in close matches the referee does decide who wins using his own judgement. In these cases it is out of the players hands. This is not so different from the judging done in figureskating.
It is very different. I have made this point about ten times now. In hockey, a referee is not
intended to determine the outcome of a match. It is
intended that his actions should have no impact on the outcome. Certainly mistakes can be made, but those are regarded as mistakes.
In figure skating a judge is
intended to decide the entirety of the outcome. It is
intended that a figure skating judge not only have an impact on the outcome, but that he dictate it entirely. His judgement is the sole criteria upon which medals are handed out.
If you can't see the very important difference in those circumstances, then you are beyond help.
Bad referees are not allowed to continue to work in Hockey so why should bad judges be allowed to continue to judge skating?
What criteria will you use to determine whether the subjective judgments of a judge should be questioned or not? Since you have
no standards for the competition itself, how do you have any standards for grading the officials?
To counter your point that I must have been dissapointed that there was no Aerial Ski jumping in the '88 olympics.
The Greeks must have been delusional to actually have the 100 M race under your criteria. You must have been very dissapointed that it was ever included in the Olympics for the thousands of years that there were no adequate measures. For without photographs and watches that time the events to '100ths of a second in order to decide the outcome (a not uncommon occurence in the olympics) the deciding of the winner would be very arbitrary indeed.
And you whizz by the point. Aerial ski jumping wasn't in the 1988 Olympic games. You said you couldn't picture the Winter Olympics without the event. I said just think back to 1988 and it isn;t that hard to see. Instead, you raced to a complete non sequitur that made little sense.
I'll address it anyway. Deciding the winner in a footrace is very easy. Who crosses the finish line first. If you have to observe it with your eyes, then you still have an easy to apply criteria to make the determination.
On a more positive note:
I have just heard on the radio that there is going to be an inquiriny into the jugement that was ruled on last nights pairs event. Maybe this problem will be licked once and for all. 
I doubt it. Since this happens almost every time the Winter Olympic games roll around, I doubt figure skating is going to clean up its act this time around. It didn't in any of the previous Olympic games in which similarly nonsensical things happened (which happen
every time figure skating participates in the games), there is no reason to expect that it will happen now.
