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2010 Vancouver Olympics


SteelBunz
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Everyone talked about the luge accident......but is ANYONE watching the competitions?? :wacko:

 

I know it's offseason and all.....lol......but TG for the Winter Olympics! :D

 

The sprint to the finish in the alpine combined.......fabulous!

Short track.....unbelievable.

Moguls.....men's and women's.....down to the wire and awesome.

 

Since Monday will be a snow day here.....I can't wait to watch the snowboard cross......that looks wicked!

 

Men's hockey next week! :D

 

As bad as the weather is.....the way everything started on a bad note......etc....I love the Winter Games.

 

BTW.....RIP Nodar. Unbelievably sad and senseless. But a tidbit I thought extraordinary was that no athlete has ever died during competition. You'd think they go all out so much for a medal that if it were to happen......it would be during the competition. Pretty amazing stat I think.

 

Just thought I'd start a different thread from the Luge accident/debate.

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I used to love the Olympics as a kid, especially the winter games. I was thinking that maybe my lack of interest was because I prefer team sports until I realized that golf is my favorite sport to watch. Maybe it is the fact that we just don't know many of the athletes. I remember watching hours of skiing as a kid, but I just have no desire to watch anymore. I haven't watched a second of it yet and can't say that I plan to. It might have something to do with the addition of snowboarding. Why don't they just add snowmobiling? Or dirtbike races to the summer games? How about waterskiing? Maybe skateboarding? To me, the allure of the games is that athletes have given almost their entire lives to one day competing in the Olympic Games, but I'm not sure you could say that about snowboarders. I guess you could say the same about most of the team sports in the games as well. I dunno, just seems to make the games a little less special.

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Just turned on the TV last night for the first time, and watched the cross country ski mleg of the nordic combined.

FANTASTIC! Great drama, great stories, and a great race.

Obviously I was rooting for the frenchman who ran a perfect tactical race, but my hat is off to Johnny Spilane for running a balls out race.

 

Quick question. What was great about watching the race here in France is that it was totally and completely uninterrupted. No bios of all the athletes, no "but then tragedy struck..." story lines, no ads. Just the race with commentary. 10K is long enough to get the athletes strories from the commentators.

 

How was that event shown in the US? Were there brief commercial cuts, did they revive that shocking 'plausibly live' stuff that they used to do where they quickly did a montage, or were they cutting back and forth between other events?

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How was that event shown in the US? Were there brief commercial cuts, did they revive that shocking 'plausibly live' stuff that they used to do where they quickly did a montage, or were they cutting back and forth between other events?

Of what I saw: There were commercial cuts in that,, but were saying "Live" when it was live which is more than before. Did a bit of cutting back and forth in a couple instances. And were doing the "human interest" stories during the lulls. Looks like the women's hockey was shawn on a different channel.

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Just turned on the TV last night for the first time, and watched the cross country ski mleg of the nordic combined.

FANTASTIC! Great drama, great stories, and a great race.

Obviously I was rooting for the frenchman who ran a perfect tactical race, but my hat is off to Johnny Spilane for running a balls out race.

 

Quick question. What was great about watching the race here in France is that it was totally and completely uninterrupted. No bios of all the athletes, no "but then tragedy struck..." story lines, no ads. Just the race with commentary. 10K is long enough to get the athletes strories from the commentators.

 

How was that event shown in the US? Were there brief commercial cuts, did they revive that shocking 'plausibly live' stuff that they used to do where they quickly did a montage, or were they cutting back and forth between other events?

+1 That was awesome. It looked like Spilane got too worried about the Chinese & made his move a little too soon.

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Saw something on ESPN yesterday that women are not allowed to compete in ski jumping. That story and the fact that softball is no longer an olympic sport are sickening. The choosing of which sports make it in and which don't seems very random and seems ridiculous.
The whistling during the jumps was drowning out the cowbells. :wacko:

 

Seriously though, TIme had an brief article with a little bit of history of the matter. It sounds like there has never been a ladies ski jumping in the history of the Winter Games. While the IOC said in 1991 that future additions of events would be for both sexes, it didn't apply to existing events. The decision to continue to exclude the women's ski jump in Vancouver was made in 2006, and at that time there wasn't even a world champion competition for the sport. There also wasn't that many high caliber athletes at that time as what there may be today.

 

I'm not saying that gender discrimination isn't a factor, but what reasoning that has been presented seems reasonable in the explanation. If they get snubbed again in 2014 when those reasons don't exist, then I think there is a lot more to raise a stink about.

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The whistling during the jumps was drowning out the cowbells. :wacko:

 

Seriously though, TIme had an brief article with a little bit of history of the matter. It sounds like there has never been a ladies ski jumping in the history of the Winter Games. While the IOC said in 1991 that future additions of events would be for both sexes, it didn't apply to existing events. The decision to continue to exclude the women's ski jump in Vancouver was made in 2006, and at that time there wasn't even a world champion competition for the sport. There also wasn't that many high caliber athletes at that time as what there may be today.

 

I'm not saying that gender discrimination isn't a factor, but what reasoning that has been presented seems reasonable in the explanation. If they get snubbed again in 2014 when those reasons don't exist, then I think there is a lot more to raise a stink about.

fair enough.

Now, can you explain to me why my daughter, who's 11, cannot have the dream to grow up to play Olympic softball since it was (randomly) pulled?

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I used to love the Olympics as a kid, especially the winter games. I was thinking that maybe my lack of interest was because I prefer team sports until I realized that golf is my favorite sport to watch. Maybe it is the fact that we just don't know many of the athletes. I remember watching hours of skiing as a kid, but I just have no desire to watch anymore. I haven't watched a second of it yet and can't say that I plan to. It might have something to do with the addition of snowboarding. Why don't they just add snowmobiling? Or dirtbike races to the summer games? How about waterskiing? Maybe skateboarding? To me, the allure of the games is that athletes have given almost their entire lives to one day competing in the Olympic Games, but I'm not sure you could say that about snowboarders. I guess you could say the same about most of the team sports in the games as well. I dunno, just seems to make the games a little less special.

 

So let me get this straight. You think snowboarders don't put in a lot of time perfecting their craft. Do you have any clue at all?

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fair enough.

Now, can you explain to me why my daughter, who's 11, cannot have the dream to grow up to play Olympic softball since it was (randomly) pulled?

softball got into the olympics through politics, and the pull of the hosting country (atlanta in 96). It was cut through politics, but there certainly are many compelling arguments why it never should have been an olympic sport, and why other sports are much more deserving.

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fair enough.

Now, can you explain to me why my daughter, who's 11, cannot have the dream to grow up to play Olympic softball since it was (randomly) pulled?

i am pretty sure that is was because there is only 4 or 5 countries that have softball as a sport. :wacko:

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I can watch and enjoy almost every Winter Olympic sport except ice dancing (which IMO is NOT a sport, but a judged competition). So what does NBC show 90% of the time? Ice dancing.

 

I flip over and if they are showing something besides that, I'll watch a bit. I like curling the best and almost any sport where you keep score or jump further. I can't deal with "sports" where a judge scores your fate.

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like badminton, canoeing, ping pong, and trampoline?

 

Yeah....ok. :wacko:

 

I find your biterness a little weird. Can you not admit that softball is a relatively parochial sport? It is widely played in only a handful of countries in the world. It is also to a casual viewer (as is baseball) an INCREDIBLY boring stupid sport. I'm not saying it is, but if you could take off your parenting and jingoistic glasses off, you can be certain that a very large segment of the population of the world would rather watch badminton, canoeing, or even pingpong over softball. You do have me on the trampoline issue though....

While I agree that there are many sports that are ridiculous in the olympics. I mean a LOOOOOT of ridiculous ones. There is just so little objective reason that softball totally deserves to be there.

Pretty much every sport that doesn't involve ridiculously expensive equipment is played in 126 coiuntries. How many people actually play the sport is a better stat.

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