[Olympic][b]WE WERE ROBBED!!![/b]

[Sodalis]

ok... sorry for skipping ahead and not reading the entire post...

then what do you call a sport?

basketball? track and field? bowling?

in BBall, a ref can call ticky- tack fouls and toss a player which will drastically change the face of the game.

Track and field, a line judge calls the false starts. Two and you are DQ'd. If he had a twitchy eye and DQ'd you, you lose. No questions.

If the presence of a ref is your only qualifier of a sport and nonsport, then bowling and gof is the only sports out there. In bowling, you throw a ball down a lane and knock down pins. There is no judge to say whether you did or not. in golf, you swing a club and hit a ball into a hole. No judge can say if you did or not. It is clear and simple.

in hockey, a penalty call can take a player out of a game- giving teh opponent an advantage. this called late in the game with the game on the line will make the team nervous. they can lose because of a bad call...

 

[Florin]

I too hate it when medals are determined by judges, however I find figure skating to be worse than sports like gymnastics where there are standard deductions that have to be taken for things like stepping out of bounds, etc. Figure skating could do itself a lot of good just by standardizing its scoring system.

Besides, why do they call it figure skating? They've taken the compulsories out of the competition, so they don't actually have to skate any figures any more!

 

[Storm Raven]

And yet, the prestige of holding an Olympic medal is the same its always been, despite your lifetime of skating scandals. You see, the problem with your argument is that its all specious theory and no fact.

Oh, not really. There is evidence that if you allow a sport to become corrupt, sooner or later it drags down everything around it. Look at professional boxing. It used to be regarded as a big time sport, with bigger TV ratings in the US than football, baseball and basketball. But it became laden with corruption and scandal (a heavy dose of it emanating from Don King), and now it is a virtually irrelevant joke.

I have to agree with the Colonel here, too... the Olympics have done a good job of following society's desires, for the main part. There's no reason to be so elitist about what's allowable as an Olympic sport. If you try to play that game, sooner or later you have to cancel the Winter Games altogether and just have some track and field and greco-roman wrestling between naked men.

Except of course, at the least, the Winter Olympics would still have various alpine ski events, luging, speed skating, bobsledding, hockey, curling, snowborad slaloming and downhill events, short track skating, cross country skiing, skeleton and a bunch of other events. The Summer Olympics would retain an even more impressive array of events.

I'm just saying to dump the glorified dance and art competitions from the roster. Seriously, you could dump every single judged event from the Olympics tomorrow and you would still have thousands of competitors engaged in scores, if not hundreds of events every four years.

 

[Desdichado]

Besides, why do they call it figure skating? They've taken the compulsories out of the competition, so they don't actually have to skate any figures any more!

Is that true? I thought certain elements, such as paired camel spins, etc. were still necessary requirements in every program.

 

[KDLadage]

[OT] Sport or Art

As much as I love Figure Skating (I am in absolute love with Katarina Witt and her performances in the past) and as much as I love many of the judges "sports" -- I have to agree on a level.

If the activity, no matter how difficult or trying it is -- has to be judged when it is all over, it is an art, not a sport. Sports, in my mind, are defined by having OBJECTIVE winners and OBJECTIVE losers.

Once you enter the realm of SUBJECTIVITY -- you have entered the realm of Art. For example:

• The Westminster competitions are ART; Flyball competitions are SPORT.
• Figure skating is an ART; speed skating is a SPORT.
• Gymnastics is an ART; the Long Jump is a SPORT.

And so on.

Granted, there are quite a few sports (based upon this definition) that I do not want entering the Olympics: for example, I do not want the Olympic Stock Car Racing events or the Olympic Power Boating or Olympic shuffleboard. So, obviously, more than just objectivity/subjectivity needs to be a factor here.

But I think it is a factor none-the-less.

So, should Gymnastics and Figure Skating and such be eliminated? I don't think so. But one must understand that they are not sporting events; they are artistic events.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh, not really. There is evidence that if you allow a sport to become corrupt, sooner or later it drags down everything around it. Look at professional boxing. It used to be regarded as a big time sport, with bigger TV ratings in the US than football, baseball and basketball. But it became laden with corruption and scandal (a heavy dose of it emanating from Don King), and now it is a virtually irrelevant joke.

Yes, but your argument wasn't that figure skating itself would be dragged down by corruption, but that other sports completely unrelated to it (except for the fact that they are also featured in an Olympic venue) would be dragged down by figure skating. That is a specious argument, and there is no evidence I know of to back it up.

Except of course, at the least, the Winter Olympics would still have various alpine ski events, luging, speed skating, bobsledding, hockey, curling, snowborad slaloming and downhill events, short track skating, cross country skiing, skeleton and a bunch of other events. The Summer Olympics would retain an even more impressive array of events.

I'm just saying to dump the glorified dance and art competitions from the roster. Seriously, you could dump every single judged event from the Olympics tomorrow and you would still have thousands of competitors engaged in scores, if not hundreds of events every four years.

I think you missed the thrust of my message. I was saying that if you're going to apply a relatively elitist viewpoint to what is "Olympic" and what isn't, then eventually you wind up on the slippery slope that only allows you to play the games the way the ancient Greeks did: thus a few track and field events and greco-roman wrestling between naked men. No thanks.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Y'know, another thing to consider is that, despite years of alleged bad judging, there are still skaters willing to compete. The athletes make a pact, of sorts, to accept the way the competition is handled. It's not like they walked in and were stunned that there were judges. The point is this: a competition is based upon all participants knowing the objectives that need to be met in order to win. Skaters know they have to please the judges, and the audience also knows this. Yet there is a great deal of interest despite this. Everyone knows the judging is subjective - judges, skaters, audience, the Olympic committee, everyone. That's just the way the sport is. There will always be controversy when judging is, by necessity, subjective in nature. Hell, there is plenty of controversy in sports that don't rely on subjective judging! That doesn't mean, necessarily, that the sport is corrupt and should be eliminated.

 

[Storm Raven]

ok... sorry for skipping ahead and not reading the entire post...

then what do you call a sport?

If you are going to ask redundant questions, go back and read the three or four posts in which I went over this already. I'm not going to keep explaining this to people too dense to actually read the damn thread before chiming in with inane comments that have already been discussed. Look, it is right there. Go read the damn thing. Then add somthing useful to the dicussion instead of being a dimwit.

Track and field, a line judge calls the false starts. Two and you are DQ'd. If he had a twitchy eye and DQ'd you, you lose. No questions.

In Olympic Track and Field, false starts are determined by pressure sensors in the starting blocks. No judgement required. Know what you are talking about before babbling.

in hockey, a penalty call can take a player out of a game- giving teh opponent an advantage. this called late in the game with the game on the line will make the team nervous. they can lose because of a bad call...

I've gone into this before. The difference is that the referee is intended not to have an impact on the outcome of the game. Perhaps you should go back and inform your ignorant self about the arguments that have been previously posted in this very thread before bringing up the same repetitive blathering.

 

[WSmith]

So, you are saying you can't pick the winner of a footrace based on objective criteria? Odd. [/B]

Did you miss the smily? OOPS. I typed a instead of a

I agree about the referee. IF he does his job correctly, which in most cases is the truth, he should have no influence on the game's outcome. BUT on very rare occasions, ref's who do "do something wrong" as you said, can influence the outcome. I am not saying it is common occurance, but that is does have the slight possiblity of happening.

Now, saying that I agree about the truely "judged sports" like you say. I would never, and have never been interested in any sport where there is NO objective method of winning, (the footrace, a ball into a hoop-net-goal-etc.) To give something your all and have someone behind a desk say it was worse than someone who obviously performed substandard in comparison, is not my idea for competition.

 

[Storm Raven]

Y'know, another thing to consider is that, despite years of alleged bad judging, there are still skaters willing to compete. The athletes make a pact, of sorts, to accept the way the competition is handled. It's not like they walked in and were stunned that there were judges. The point is this: a competition is based upon all participants knowing the objectives that need to be met in order to win. Skaters know they have to please the judges, and the audience also knows this. Yet there is a great deal of interest despite this. Everyone knows the judging is subjective - judges, skaters, audience, the Olympic committee, everyone. That's just the way the sport is.

So, corruption is okay if everyone agrees to it? You know, that's what did in the original Olympic games, only it took them centuries to get to the point where that happened. We got there in just a fraction of the time. Yippee!

In any event, any competition in which the winner is not wholly determined by events on the field of play, but by your demeanor at receptions before the event, and whether you "deserve" to win isn't a sport anyway. It is moving to beauty pageant territory.

There will always be controversy when judging is, by necessity, subjective in nature. Hell, there is plenty of controversy in sports that don't rely on subjective judging! That doesn't mean, necessarily, that the sport is corrupt and should be eliminated.

Events in which subjective judging is required are not sports and should not be treated as such. They are no different than beauty pageants, and I don't see a lot of people clamoring for the Miss Universe pageant to be included in the Olympics.