Sochi 2014 - XXII Olympic Winter Games

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Just caught up with Luge. Holy shit, these guys are crazy fast. Love it. Enjoying the close shave right now going between Russia and Germany.
 
Luge has nothing on skeleton in the speed department.

I don't think anyone is arguing that figure skating is easy, but it gets an inordinate amount of coverage for a showy thing that belongs in exhibitions, not the Olympics. Of course then again part of my dispute is the fact that it's judged and not clear cut like athletics should be in my mind, but I admit to being a total hypocrite when it comes to adrenaline sports like freestyle snowboarding and skiing competitions, which I love. I love how we finally have slopestyle in the Olympics and Kotsenburg brought home the first gold by pulling a ridiculous trick out of his ass on the last jump. Figure skating happens to be judged, and really, really like a boring dance recital, it's a "sport" that appeals to little girls, not the greatest athletic stage in the world.

Tuned in now to see what Bode can do in the downhill, I need to be up in a handful of hours, I'm an addict. I love how I had to sign in with a cable subscription to utilize the live-streaming despite the fact that NBC is a fucking over-the-air broadcast network.
 
Fuck Hannah Kearny whining about ONLY getting a bronze medal. Part of it was realizing this is the end of her career, but a lot of it came off as sourgrapes because she's so used to winning everything and she couldn't become the first repeat moguls champion. Even Sven Kramer deals with defeat better, not that he's had to in world championships since 2010 though.
 
At least figure skating doesn't get wall-to-wall coverage in Australia. The big fuss here at the moment is about Torah Bright in the snowboarding. I've been thoroughly enjoying the slopestyle, and the alpine skiing at the moment is pretty exciting.
 
Yeah, downhill is possibly the most thrilling sporting event, 80 MPH+ on courses like this? This is the longest downhill course in Olympic history, though it does look slightly less dangerous than Vancouver's games were because of the lack of ice.
 
I know I'm in the minority but the figure skating is awesome. Especially since I saw a couple people fall on their ass. Missed some but watching now.
 
I've been watching a fair bit of it, and I feel like at least 60-70% of what I've seen has been figure skating. There was some awesome slopestyle on today, but you had to switch to the main channel's secondary station to watch it because they were showing more figure skating on the main channel.

Anyway I'll shut up about it now.
 
IWasBored said:
I have no idea what skeleton is.
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Skeleton is luge ' s scary, scary cousin.

It's luge, but on your stomach.

Gives me chills just watching it.

I don't know why gymnastics is OK if figure skating isn't.

I hate Olympic snowboarding, at least the American Team. They (White) bring that individual sport mentality from the X Games to the Olympics and it just doesn't sit right with me. Only seem to care about individual results, not the full U. S. team.
 
bono_212 said:
I don't know why gymnastics is OK if figure skating isn't
.
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Don't worry, it isn't in my book, same category for me: judged event that appeals to little girls & doesn't belong on the Olympic level. It's harder to argue that about the summer games though as they have a ton of really inane things like table tennis, target shooting, synchronized diving and fucking speed walking. But then I don't care as much about the summer games.
 
I love the crazy sports in the summer games. Honestly, the only Olympic sport, period, that I don't get is the floor routine. Is that the one I'm thinking of, where they just kinda dance for two minutes?
 
powerhour24 said:
judged event that appeals to little girls & doesn't belong on the Olympic level.
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Oh, come on now. To both halves those statements.

BUT

Agreed that both get way too much airtime in the US coverage.

For gymnastics, they should just get rid of the "dancing" crap that's the filler in the floor routine (the tumbling runs are awesome, but the rest is just unnecessary - they don't make the men do that bullshit). But all the other events are nothing but sheer athleticism.

(I'm talking about the "regular" gymnastics and not rhythmic gymnastics, but I'm pretty sure that never gets any airtime anyway.)
 
I think I have a higher tolerance re: gymnastics because Canada sucks at that sport so our networks don't carry it endlessly. Unfortunately with figure skating, whether I watch the Canadian or US broadcast, there is no escape.

I also find figure skating to be more subjective than gymnastics, or at least that's my view of it. Now rhythmic gymnastics is utterly ridiculous and should not be there. But like somebody already said, when you have events where horses compete in the summer, gymnastics is not high on the list of wrongs.

Way to choke Bode Miller.
 
Yeah. I have no problem with people being annoyed at how much coverage it gets, or even at the subjective nature of the judging.

It's the dismissiveness that pisses me off. "It's not a sport" or "appeals to little girls." Statements like that just dismiss the strength and athleticism that are required to do either, even if someone decades ago declared you have to wear a spangly skirt or leotard to do it.

Fuck that.
 
corianderstem said:
You know, I agree that it's a definite outlier because of the totally subjective measurement of the "artistic" requirements, but ... "it ain't a sport"?

Have you ever tried leaping off an icy surface, spinning around 2 1/2 (or more) times in the air, and landing back on the ice, on one foot, on a blade that's 4 mm wide?

It does, you know, require quite a fucking bit of athletic capabilities to do that. And do it multiple times within the span of 4 minutes.
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:up:
 
cobl04 said:
I've been watching a fair bit of it, and I feel like at least 60-70% of what I've seen has been figure skating. There was some awesome slopestyle on today, but you had to switch to the main channel's secondary station to watch it because they were showing more figure skating on the main channel.

Anyway I'll shut up about it now.
Click to expand...

Huh, I didn't even notice. Since One's broadcast started earlier, I just watched that from the beginning and got all slopestyle and downhill skiing, no figure skating. It was great, except for the fact they just kept slapping in ads with really poor timing. "Here's so-and-so from-" AD! AD! AD! "-was their score. What an exciting run. Next competitor is..." I was pissed off the one time they showed a New Zealand competitor in the slopestyle, they didn't even bother to show her score because ads.

bono_212 said:
I hate Olympic snowboarding, at least the American Team. They (White) bring that individual sport mentality from the X Games to the Olympics and it just doesn't sit right with me. Only seem to care about individual results, not the full U. S. team.
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The one thing we noticed immediately about the women's slopestyle last night was the camraderie between all the competitors, not just amongst their own team but amongst the whole group. The men the previous day definitely came across more individualistic, but hell, most sports are like that, full of people with inflated egos. If you've got a problem with that in the slopestyle, I don't know how you watch any other sport.

anitram said:
But like somebody already said, when you have events where horses compete in the summer, gymnastics is not high on the list of wrongs.
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I think it's a shame people always seem to rag on the equestrian. The dressage is boring as fuck, but the show jumping and cross country are two of my favourite Olympic events and have been since I was little. Legitimately exciting, especially the cross country. I'm not even a horse person either, and I hate regular horse racing.
 
Though my one big complaint about a lot of Olympic events, winter and summer, is that they're just essentially time trials. It would be far more exciting if more of them were actual races. So I can't wait for the short track speed skating to start.
 
corianderstem said:
Yeah. I have no problem with people being annoyed at how much coverage it gets, or even at the subjective nature of the judging.

It's the dismissiveness that pisses me off. "It's not a sport" or "appeals to little girls." Statements like that just dismiss the strength and athleticism that are required to do either, even if someone decades ago declared you have to wear a spangly skirt or leotard to do it.

Fuck that.
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Again, I have stressed time and again that I recognize the skill and hard work it takes, but so do acrobatics and circus and we're not giving medals and tv coverage for that.
 
Time trial or not I love most of these events, especially long track. Sadly America's speed skating team can't hack it of late, we had started to give the Dutch a run for their money and now they're taking the entire podium while we finished 10th at best. Hopefully our sprinters have better luck than our distance skaters.
 
I didn't realize equestrian events were in the summer games. I know dressage is boring, but I have friends that did it and I'm aware that it is one of the more difficult things to do well.

End of the men's singles luge was brilliant, btw. Loche may be taking home the gold in that event for a few more Olympics to come.

This amused me greatly:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/news/us-...n-trapped-bathroom-breaks-through-door-escape
 
I've taped the last few evenings of prime time coverage and thinking "Ehhhhh" and deleting them.

I did watch the opening ceremonies, though! (*cough* fast forwarded through a lot *cough*)
 
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