Originally Posted by Storm Raven
How much athletic ability is required for the various archery and shooting competitions compared to curling? If they can be in, I don't see why curling shouldn't be.
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You were reading into my post what wasn't there. My
roomate has the problem with curling
not me.
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.
Some of these games arguably require about the same skill and athletic reflexes to play as darts or pool, and if they do not I am sure someone could think up another example that did.
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.
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.
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.
I do not think Hockey should be removed and I do not want to see figureskating be removed, though if things continue as they have I think it should. What I would like to see is a inquiry in to judging procedures and some watchdog mechanisms set up.
Bad referees are not allowed to continue to work in Hockey so why should bad judges be allowed to continue to judge skating?
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.
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.
