Olympics Talk: A brief discussion before it goes away

[Paul Farquhar]

IMHO, all sports that depend on subjective judges score of artistic impression need to go away. If there isn't precise measurement mechanism to determine winner, sport isn't for Olympics.

This. The motto for the Olympics is "higher, faster, stronger", not "more artistic", which is inevitably subjective. They should ban Eurovision whilst they are at it.

I don't like they banned leg grabs in judo.

Taekwoondo is rubbish. It needs to go away. It's barley even combat sport. Can we finally get proper full contact striking based combat sport? Muay thai was demonstration sport this year and it was miles better than TKD.

I don't know about other countries, but pretty much all combat sports, including boxing, are being looked at askance in the UK because of their tendency to cause long term brain damage. They are trying to be "safer" so as to avoid a total ban.

 

[GrimCo]

I don't know about other countries, but pretty much all combat sports, including boxing, are being looked at askance in the UK because of their tendency to cause long term brain damage. They are trying to be "safer" so as to avoid a total ban.

That kind of thinking is what made modern TKD the way it is. Laughable point touch sport with minimal contact. If they can't handle proper full contact combat sport, maybe it's better to remove them all together, rather than ruin it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

They can't.

Seriously, the number of scandals and controversies in scoring figure skating over the last few decades is ridiculous.

That is going to be inherent anytime you are judging a performance. I don't really have a problem with that though as I think it is worth having sports like this in the olympics.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That kind of thinking is what made modern TKD the way it is. Laughable point touch sport with minimal contact. If they can't handle proper full contact combat sport, maybe it's better to remove them all together, rather than ruin it.

Taekwoondo is rubbish. It needs to go away. It's barley even combat sport. Can we finally get proper full contact striking based combat sport? Muay thai was demonstration sport this year and it was miles better than TKD.

I don't need TKD to be like Muay Thai to be entertaining. But I agree it has really become less interesting over time. I would argue that the sensors are the main thing disrupting my enjoyment of it. I still watch it and still like the performance, but it is missing that harder contact that I think made it more enjoyable to observe. TKD is never going to be like Muay Thai. But knock outs used to be more common, they used to hit hard. Now it is essentially a game of tag. What I like about TKD is the rules set favors kicking so you have a very beautiful contact sport. In terms of a sport like Muay Thai, I would be all for that entering the olympics. The only thing to keep in mind is Muay Thai amateur rules are going to be very different from professional (so they may end up with headgear and even shin guards----the shin guards really change the feel of the sport IMO)

IMHO, all sports that depend on subjective judges score of artistic impression need to go away. If there isn't precise measurement mechanism to determine winner, sport isn't for Olympics.

I don't think these things need to be objective at all. There are some great sports in the Olympics that are more about judging the performance. They are still physically demanding and require athleticism. I don't think their presence takes away from other sports and people can choose to not watch them if they don't like them

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't know about other countries, but pretty much all combat sports, including boxing, are being looked at askance in the UK because of their tendency to cause long term brain damage. They are trying to be "safer" so as to avoid a total ban.

I think in the US we are still pretty tolerant of these sports, but it probably varies a lot by state (the rules for amateur competition often vary by state as well). Every once in a while something bad happens in boxing that gives me a sour feeling in my stomach for a bit. It is easy to forget how dangers combat sports can be. But I hope they don't get banned or become relics of teh past. Or get so changed they lose their essence. Changing rules for safety can be useful (for example setting the ideal number of rounds in boxing is a good thing). But introducing something like the sensors they have in TKD, that radically altered how the sport functions. It definitely made it safer, but it also made it much more boring than previous eras. And the rules in karate at the Japanese olympics, which I think prohibited knocking out your opponent or hitting them hard int he head*, resulted in a competitor being knocked out but still winning the match (which is just backwards, and shouldn't happen in a combat sport)

I love full contact combat sports. I like watching them, I trained in them growing up. I do understand the damage they do, I don't think everyone and his uncle should be involved in them. They certainly aren't for every person, and parents should be wary of putting their kids into them. I have cognitive issues from it myself, and I know people who have long term effects from it. When I was doing it, we knew much more than they did a couple decades before but we still didn't know what is known now (we would take someone out of sparring for example for several weeks after a knockout, but we were less aware of people walking around with minor concussions all the time). But the sports are adapting. There is a move towards not doing hard sparring all the time (and this is gaining traction because it is actually effective and it's how Muay Thai fighters train in thailand). When I did it, it was hard sparring every single time (and in boxing around here it still is). Ultimately these are dangerous sports. They aren't for everyone but I have seen first hand how Olympic style boxing for example, can make a difference for young people who might otherwise think their only option is joining a gang. And there is a beauty and grace to boxing that I think is worth preserving. What I do think is important is that people getting into these sports understand fully the risks, and the idea that you can escape head injury or brain damage is not very realistic if you are getting hit in the head regularly. They also need to uniformly change how weigh ins are done in all combat sports so you don't end up with so many mismatched fights and you don't have fighters killing their body in the lead up to a fight to cut weight.

You have to keep in mind people are baked differently. I loved these sports enough that I was okay with the risk. And if you have ever sparred or competed you can understand how thrilling that is. That is not for everyone. Some people need it though. Skiing is also incredibly dangerous, but we don't ban that. Part of what makes the olympics the olympics is athletes are putting their bodies on the line

*I don't really know much about karate competition rules systems

 

[Bedrockgames]

That kind of thinking is what made modern TKD the way it is. Laughable point touch sport with minimal contact. If they can't handle proper full contact combat sport, maybe it's better to remove them all together, rather than ruin it.

Again I think some of the rules are okay, for example not allowing kicks to the head make TKD not a very good self defense or real fighting sport, but it preserves the kicks as teh priority (the way boxing preserves the fists as the priority). But I agree, when I did TKD, you hit as hard as you could, you were supposed to cause 'trembling shock' to score a point. The best era of TKD came just before mine, when they kicked with the ball of the foot as the striking surface (by the time I came into it, they were kicking with the top of the foot for striking surface, save things like back kick). This striking surface thing is a pretty big deal. I made a point of learning the old style from the old timers at my school and the ball of the foot sends the full power of a kick right thorough that chest guard (I have seen people fold from an old school round house to the body at competitions). But we still hit hard, knocked people out, and hurt each other (I broke someone's arm in a competition, had my nose broken, got knocked out, etc). However the individual competitions and then the rules started favoring lighter and lighter contact. After I left and started muay thai, I would hear from people at my old school telling me that refs would instruct them to not hit so hard at competitions for example (when I was doing it people went all out). Eventually they introduced the sensors and those just made it about making contact.

The thing I like about TKD is it isn't like point karate, where you stop when a point is scored. you keep fighting and they keep tallying the score. That always made it more ferocious, less gentlemanly. It used to be that you would see things like people gettin knocked to the ground with a back kick counter, or crumpled from a spinning hook kick to the head. And you would see wild things like really aggressive tornado kick combinations. Now when I watch it, it seems they mostly stand up on one leg like a bird and tap with their lead round house (occasionally mixing it up with other kicks). You occasionally see flashes of what it was, and the people doing it are clearly prime athletes still, but it is so toned down it makes me a little sad.

 

[GrimCo]

Olypics and combat sports is weird. People competing at Olympics are pro athletes, yet when it comes to combat sports, they insist on amateur rules (boxing, probably MT also if it becomes a thing). Dutch style kickboxing, with shin guards and headgear, could be very good Olympic sport, with full contact, but relatively safe. But lets be honest, when it comes to full contact combat sports, they are inherently not safe. You are trying to knock out other person.

Modern olympic tkd reminds me heavily on sports point karate i did as a kid, but with helmet and chest protector. Even rules are similar ( no punch to the head, karate did at least had kick to the head). They do often look like storks, standing on one leg and hopping. With no power needed, they can speed up, do more light taps to score point.

I think they should acknowledge that people competing are professionals, they do sport for living, and they are consenting to possible risks.

 

[billd91]

I think they should acknowledge that people competing are professionals, they do sport for living, and they are consenting to possible risks.

We've been finding that's a pretty loaded concept, particularly since we are increasingly learning about long term effects of certain sports on brain damage. Whether that consent is fully informed is questionable. And since most of these athletes start to pursue their sport as kids when their ability to provide well-informed consent is undeveloped, that's further loading the concept.
Don't get me wrong, lots of sports are fun to watch. It's fun to watch people exceed the bounds of what seems to be possible and continue to push the envelope on human achievement. But make no mistake that they are paying a price for it that they probably don't fully grasp and cannot fully predict for our entertainment (and, hopefully, their appropriate paycheck).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Olypics and combat sports is weird. People competing at Olympics are pro athletes, yet when it comes to combat sports, they insist on amateur rules (boxing, probably MT also if it becomes a thing). Dutch style kickboxing, with shin guards and headgear, could be very good Olympic sport, with full contact, but relatively safe. But lets be honest, when it comes to full contact combat sports, they are inherently not safe. You are trying to knock out other person.

I think boxing might also just be a unique case because amateur boxing is so massive and there are still plenty of platforms for serious competition like the olympics, golden gloves etc. Also amateur boxing and professional are deeply intertwined. If you go to a boxing gym there will be amateur fighters there but also professional, as well as semi-pro. The olympics is one of the things that helps boxing gyms get fresh blood

But the reason TKD is amateur is there has never really been a successful professional TKD circuit. I would be interested in seeing such a thing, it has been tried, but it never took off.

Modern olympic tkd reminds me heavily on sports point karate i did as a kid, but with helmet and chest protector. Even rules are similar ( no punch to the head, karate did at least had kick to the head). They do often look like storks, standing on one leg and hopping. With no power needed, they can speed up, do more light taps to score point.

The stork thing is very recent. That would always still happen from time to time in the past (especially if two equally skilled competitors faced off). But the sensors really altered the way matches looked.

The rules for taekwondo are a bit different from point karate. My understanding is in point karate, you stop when a point is scored (correct me if this is a misunderstanding). In TKD you can keep kicking and punching the whole round like in boxing or muay thai, and in the past you would do that full force, trying to score but also trying to hurt or knock out the person. You can't punch to the head in TKD (you can only punch to teh chest). But kicks to the head are completely legal and encouraged (they are worth more points). I lost a fight from a shin kick to the nose that sent me to the ground. I was knocked out from a kick directly between the chin and neck. Knocking out an opponent with a head kick is a way to win a match. The not stopping when a point is scored really makes it a different thing IMO (it allowed people to land heavy combos and not stop)

The two big things that make TKD not particularly like real fighting are 1) no punches to the head (this has been a long standing rule to preserve the purity of the kicks and define the sport) and 2) the sensors (these are more recent and they have led to a move away from true trembling shock as the criteria for point scoring---I believe trembling shock is still described in the rules I could be wrong, but you can tell watching it trembling shock is not the benchmark, it is just automatic now).

The other element is the chest protector. This is pretty bulky, and while I don't have a problem with chest guards, they make you move a little different than you would without them, and they shield your body too much from the impact (I will say though one reason you may need them in TKD is because it is all kicking for the most part, things like spinning back kick counters land with a lot more force than they do in MMA or other forms of kick boxing (because TKD roundhouses are often thrown full body, meaning you pivot 180 degrees into the kick, and the spinning back kick interrupts that full force). There are so many matches at a competition and so many competitions each year for every participant, I imagine there would be a lot more injuries without the chest guard.

Also you can't kick the legs in taekwondo (this obviously leads to a lot of standing on one leg that would never happen in a sport where you can just kick out that kick).

I think they should acknowledge that people competing are professionals, they do sport for living, and they are consenting to possible risks.

The only thing I would say here is I tend to agree but I also think you want to protect fighters to the best possible limit without impacting the purity of the sport (and I think what constitutes pure can vary from one combat sport to another depending on what they are trying to do). It is very disturbing when a fighter dies in the ring or shortly after a fight. And every time that happens there are always more calls for bans. So I think it behooves the sports to do what they can to keep the fighters safe. Again avoiding mismatches is a huge part of that, having refs er on the side of caution and stop fights the moment a fighter looks like they are not defending themselves well or getting into trouble, etc. Too many of the boxing deaths I can think of off hand seem to result from fights where one of the fighters demonstrated a lot of heart, but at the expense of their life. So I think moving away from pressure to go the distance would also help. It is still risky, people sign up knowingly but if you force yourself to watch fights when people die (and when I hear about a fight where someone dies I always force myself to watch the whole thing, and usually watch it multiple times so I can understand what happened), you see how fuzzy the line can be, but also how often obvious signs of a problem are missed because the people organizing the fight or the ref, or the doctor, aren't prioritizing the safety of the fighters.

 

[Bedrockgames]

We've been finding that's a pretty loaded concept, particularly since we are increasingly learning about long term effects of certain sports on brain damage. Whether that consent is fully informed is questionable. And since most of these athletes start to pursue their sport as kids when their ability to provide well-informed consent is undeveloped, that's further loading the concept.
Don't get me wrong, lots of sports are fun to watch. It's fun to watch people exceed the bounds of what seems to be possible and continue to push the envelope on human achievement. But make no mistake that they are paying a price for it that they probably don't fully grasp and cannot fully predict for our entertainment (and, hopefully, their appropriate paycheck).

I don't know. I think you have to give people autonomy over their own bodies. People should be informed. But these convoluted arguments about all the factors involved....at the end of the day people choose to do this, provided they aren't being pressured by someone else or something. I got into combat sports because my grandfather was a boxer. I felt it was important to test myself, see if I could do it, but I also had a compulsion towards it from an early age (I loved boxing and used to get my friends when I was a kid to box with me for fun). I would like them to do everything they can to minimize head injuries and brain damage, and I am glad to see softer sparring between matches and fight becoming more the norm, but I don't like the paternalism of this argument against combat sports. People who don't participate in them simply don't understand why someone would willingly take punches to the head. But if you have done it and enjoyed it you get how alive it makes you feel. I don't think I have ever been as happy as I was when I was actively participating in these kinds of sports. And there are places where their presence makes a difference. A lot of gyms operate where things like gangs are a problem, and where shootings are a problem and there is a guns down, gloves up philosophy that I have seen work firsthand.