XX Olympic Winter Games
 

I have to admit, I'm a winter Olympic junkie and this year I'm practically foaming at the mouth... I think this will really be the golden age for broadcast Olympics. Why? Tivo (or in my case snapstream). Since all the coverage is tape delayed anyway I can Tivo it, watch it when I want and skip all the commercials, inane back-stories and best of all the endless figure skating!!! I get to watch the good stuff, My way, ha ha ha!!!! Power is mine!!!!

Love the Olympics, also find the backstories to be WAY overdone. Though the thing I can't take is figure skating. Love the downhill stuff, hockey, and even curling.

I prefer the Summer Olympics, though.

Agreed. Luge, Speeskating, Hockey, curling here I come!!

I LOVE Figure Skating! I think it helps that I used to hang with Olympians and know waaaay too much about the sport and the difficulties and the stupid revised rules.

But, I love most all of the sports. My favorites are Luge, Bobsled, Ski Jumping, downhill ski events, scary speed skating and.....yay for this year....Skeleton!!!!

Chris and I first started "dating" during the Sarajevo Olympics. We spend 2 weeks drinking slivovich in celebration. Good times. Good memories. Love the Olympics.

I'll watch the curling if I remember but all the rest can be cancelled for all I care. The only way they could provide any other compelling winter sports is if they added outdoor water polo.

Shrinkage!

I realize this debate happens every time the Olypmics come around, but the whole "judgement" aspect bothers me. I can remember ISM and I being on opposite extremes of this debate. I do not think figure skating is easy in the least. I just am uncomfortable with judges deciding that his double axel was just a tad better than the other double axel, and that makes the difference. Opinion rather than a quantifiable (albeit miniscule) 100th of a second.

I don't necessarily dislike figure skating. My family and I actually used to follow it pretty closely. I definitely hate the judging. But mostly what I hate at this point is the endless coverage. The judging stupidity combined with the fact that all other sports have been completely marginalized to make room for the hours and hours and hours of figure skating coverage have left me wanting to avoid it at all costs.

I'm not a big fan of judged sports but some of them are fun to watch and if the participants are willing to subject themselves to subjective evaluation who am I to complain.

When it comes to the Winter Olympics the judged sports are actually more entertaining to me than the objectively measures sports which mostly are in the form of finding a different way to fall down a mountain.

Let's go down the mountain on two long sticks! Let's go down on a single board! Let's go down on a sled headfirst! Let's go down on a sled feet first! Let's go down two at a time, no let's go four at a time! Let's take the sled and curl the rails! Now let's do it on a sled with no rail! Let's go down the mountain on a sheet of cardboard! Hey! What about inner tubes, those can go downhill as well! I once went down a mountain in a canoe made out of Dixie cups, it was gnarly!

I don't know, it is hard to get too excited about gravity as a sport.

That's because figure skating is more popular, and in turn that's because it's more visually interesting than a race. Something is going on when people skate ... lots of movement and showmanship, rather than mere forward momentum.

Don't get me wrong, I love bobsled and skeleton and speed skating and every kind of skiing, but I can certainly see why figure skating is far more interesting. It's similar to the way gymnastics is the more interesting (and more covered) summer Olympics sport, as compared to relay racing on foot or in water.


Judging may be a dicey subject of too much subjectivity, but I find the 100th of a second difference between race winners to be an absurd measure of championship, albeit a quantifiable one. I do not happen to exclusively equate quantifiable with winning ... and neither do the Olympic Games.


In any case, I enjoy far more of the winter sports than the summer sports, so I get far more excited about the Winter Games. Not enough to watch any of the inane network coverage, nor enough to bother with Tivo. But I'll catch some of it here and there. Heheh, I'll be happy just to watch the opening ceremonies and quick recaps of the days' highlights for the rest of the games.