solarz
Brigadier
LOL yeah, it's pretty ridiculous the number of minor variations in swimming that can get you a medal.
Sports thread: Everything sport related here.
- Thread starter Gollevainen
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LOL yeah, it's pretty ridiculous the number of minor variations in swimming that can get you a medal.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
TBH I am having less and less interest in the Olympics.
It's becoming far too political in both the sports chosen, as well as the number of medals on offer in different sports.
Swimming and athletics are massively overstuffed with medals because a certain powerful country has historically dominated there.
You also have fringe sports like Golf, rowing, dressage and they like represented. Those are 'sports' only the 1% of the richest countries have any meaningful interest or participation in.
It's becoming far too political in both the sports chosen, as well as the number of medals on offer in different sports.
Swimming and athletics are massively overstuffed with medals because a certain powerful country has historically dominated there.
You also have fringe sports like Golf, rowing, dressage and they like represented. Those are 'sports' only the 1% of the richest countries have any meaningful interest or participation in.
solarz
Brigadier
Which is why I think Olympics needs to stop adding new "sports" and streamline the ones it currently has. Racing and swimming should have 3 events each, classified by distance: short, medium, long. Racing can have an extra relay event, and swimming can have a single medley to showcase other swimming styles. That's it.
Popular team sports like basketball and soccer should be dropped altogether. Why do we need them in the Olympics when they already have huge tournaments by themselves? Yes, I know it's a slippery slope, but the key is to define a set of games and leave it at that. This way, everyone knows what to expect.
Which sports to include and how many competitions and medals per sport will always be politicized as there are very few worldwide sports, all the more popular sports have been professionalized as commercial enterprises in richer countries, and many countries have made training Olympic athletes a nationalist enterprise.
Take the Olympics at its purest spirit, as a series of friendly matches involving the entire world, and just enjoy watching people who are really good at it play the sports you are interested in.
Take the Olympics at its purest spirit, as a series of friendly matches involving the entire world, and just enjoy watching people who are really good at it play the sports you are interested in.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
And don't forget to enjoy the coaches who strip down butt naked, throw their clothes on the ground, stomp all over them, and have to get removed by security as they protest unfair calls. LOL
After some thought I actually disagree with your take on my post. While the changing attitudes in China also work for encouraging acceptance of "mediocre" results that is not the most important point, though it is the most sensationalist one implying a China threat and China bashing all at once, but rather a different kind of putting things in perspective.
The common point I was referring to is about attitude, or perspective, as you mentioned the UK as having seen the Olympics as being for amateurs in certain sports at some point in the past, this indirectly refers to the drive for Olympic athletes being love of their sport and desire for self-improvement which is the attitude gaining traction in China today and what I was pointing out with the article I posted. That is the original spirit of the Olympics but it has obviously gone very far away from that for every country that can afford to professionally train athletes and for every athlete who can afford to professionally train themselves.
Equation
Lieutenant General
What do those Mongolian coaches have against clothes (sarcasm)?
There are quite a few branches of gymnastics: Artistic,Rhythmic,Acrobatic,Tumbling, and Trampoline
replys @ other comments
I will have to disagree with that. The cost is in the actual building of the pool. Whether one has 12or24 finals is neither here nor there. So to pad out the swim meet, the qualifying standard is lowered and have more preliminary heats as the resultant number of competitors is dramatically increased?
I do think the number of sports should be decreased and agree with your choices while suggesting that all sports that are judged subjectively be removed as well.
“LOL yeah, it's pretty ridiculous the number of minor variations in swimming that can get you a medal.”
In that case we may as well remove the walking race as it’s only a variation of running.
“Another solution is for the summer Olympics to go back to its ancient Greek origins, and only have gymnastics and athletics (and swimming too, since that's just aquatic athletics). This would cut down on the total medal count and make each medal more worthwhile.”
I think horses played a part in the ancient Greek Olympics. Bull leaping was a sport of the ancients , though I’m not too sure whether it appeared at the Olympics
“I'm an obvious fan of weightlifting, but to be fair, I think there should be 3 medals (snatch, clean and jerk, total) for each weight category (8 in men and 7 in women for 15 categories so 45 medals so far), then, men's team snatch, clean and jerk, total, (3 medals) and women's team snatch, clean and jerk, total (3 more) totalling 51 gold medals”
True or false, the story I heard was that weightlifting was a stigmatized sport at the Olympics and got very close to be thrown out because of steroid use by the competitors. Also it was a sport dominated by eastern bloc countries on the podium. The officials were not prepared to give extra medals to such a tainted sport so when the women were allowed to compete, the medals had to come from what was already allocated to the sport.
Ummmm I cannot agree with that.The Olympic motto is "Faster Higher Stronger" therefore winning is what counts.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
It is true. So many weightlifters have been busted, especially from the eastern bloc countries. Russia was not allowed to appear this year because of gross infractions accumulated within the past year or 2. Albania, Bulgaria, and Azerbaijan are currently serving team suspensions for mass-doping busts. Kazakhstan is the worst; all of its Olympic weightlifting champions within the last 2 Olympic cycles have been retrospectively disqualified for drug use. But, it still was allowed to compete despite Russia being banned no doubt because some corrupt deal that was made. HOWEVER, At least in the last 50 years, no Chinese weightlifter at the Olympics (champion or not) has ever been caught for drug use; and not for lack of testing. Just months ago, the IOC and WADA reopened all of the samples from Beijing and London, where there were a combined 20 Chinese Olympic weightlifters, 13 of whom are champions, for re-examination of performance-enhancing drugs using newer, more sensitive testing methods and found not one single violation from China.