|
|
Post by phil on Feb 23, 2006 14:22:24 GMT -5
Half-pipe competition is the pits !!
Boring !
Mont Ste-Anne got rid of its half-pipe this year
and it wouldn't surprise me that the Olympics will do the same
somewhere down the line ...
|
|
|
|
Post by luke on Feb 23, 2006 19:27:20 GMT -5
Yeah, I was doing some exaggeration and a bit of prodding in my previous posts, but in all seriousness, I think that the summer is loaded with the more definitive events.
The summer is when the athletes fight (wrestling, boxing, the various martial arts stuff.) It's got the track and field. There's just more Olympian to those summer athletes. The winter games have too much shit that's off the wall. The summer games just FEEL like the Olympics, and the winter games have far too much, "What the fuck am I watching?" going on. They're good for hockey, but the rest just feels too X-Games-y.
And yeah, any "sport" judged subjectively is no sport at all. Gymnastics and figure skating ain't easy, but they're not so much an athletic competition. They're more theatre, no different than ballet in that regard.
Off-topic, but talking about athletes, I've come to worship this guy Scott Jurek. He makes Lance Armstrong look like a fucking pussy. This dude has one the Western States 100-Miler foot race seven years in a row. Last time he completed it in only 16 hrs, and then only a couple weeks later he won Badwater, which is a 135 mile race that starts in Death Valley and soars 8500 feet up Mt. Whitney. He finished in 24 and a half hours, destroying the previous record.
All ultra-runners are goddamn amazing.
|
|
|
|
Post by chrisfan on Feb 24, 2006 9:13:28 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'll admit, I don't know a GREAT deal about the sport) ... but short of a knock out, isn't the winner of a boxing match determined by judges?
|
|
|
|
Post by luke on Feb 24, 2006 10:03:42 GMT -5
Figured that'd be brought up...but in boxing as well as MMA, the judging is a last resort. So yeah, you've got some somewhat subjective judging...after two guys have gone round after round beating the shit out of each other, trying to avoid being thrown to the judges.
So yeah, for that and other reasons, I'd consider "professional fighting" to be more sport than showboating, like gymnastics, figure skating, synchronized swimming, half-pipe, ballet, or pro wrestling.
|
|
|
|
Post by chrisfan on Feb 24, 2006 10:07:24 GMT -5
It may be the last resort, but it's a very very very common resort. It's like of like the plate umpire in baseball. The goal for the batter is to hit the ball, so the umpires call really won't matter. But the fact is that in more cases than not, the umps call for the pitch DOES matter. Boxing is the same way. Hell, all judged sports are the same way - the judges aren't juding based on "That was pretty, I liked it, I'll score it high". There are very specific rules and regulations that determine how things are scored.
Further, you've got just as many "judged" sports in the Summer games as you do the Winter games - perhaps even more. Don't confuse what you like and dislike for what is more relevant.
|
|
|
|
Post by luke on Feb 24, 2006 10:16:32 GMT -5
My main argument (within the last couple posts...not when I was just winter Olympics bashing) was that the summer Olympics have the more traditional Olympic events, like track and field and fighting. Even if I "liked" the winter games more, I'd still have to admit that most of the games are off-the-wall bullshit, and the summer games have the type of events that have "defined Olympians through the ages."
So even if there's more fluff in the summer...there's still more substance.
|
|
|
|
Post by Dr. Drum on Feb 24, 2006 16:15:43 GMT -5
We interrupt regular programming for an important announcement: "Team Newfoundland" wins the gold medal!!!
Newfoundlanders celebrate medal win
Canadian Press
St. John’s – The celebrating is expected to last well into the weekend.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians rejoiced in triumph Friday as local hero Brad Gushue led his rink to a gold medal in men's curling at the Turin Games.
The win marked Canada's first Olympic gold medal in men's curling and the first Winter Olympic medal won by a Newfoundlander since Dwayne Norris of St. John's won a hockey silver in 1994 in Lillehammer.
Across the province, schools were shut down for the afternoon and offices closed early to give people the opportunity to watch as Gushue's rink defeated Finland's Markku Uusipaavalniemi 10-4 in eight ends.
Gushue, the team's skip, is from St. John's. The other members of the rink are Mark Nichols of Labrador City, N.L., Russ Howard of Moncton, N.B., Jamie Korab of Harbour Grace, N.L., and Mike Adam, also from Labrador City.
For the 350 people jammed into the St. John's Curling Club, the match took on historic proportions.
Brendan Murphy, 13, said he was in awe of Gushue.
"It's quite nice seeing him there, knowing he's from St. John's," said Murphy, who has been curling at the club for five years. "You seen him practising here, so it's pretty real. Playing in the same place he does . . . that's pretty great."
Lloyd Ford, head of the club's junior curling program, said interest in the sport has grown since Gushue won the junior nationals three years ago. More than 300 kids are now in the program.
"This has been the pivotal moment, I would say, to see Brad at the Olympics playing for the gold medal," he said.
At the Olympic curling rink at Pinerolo, Italy, Gushue raised his arms in victory after the final rock was thrown. He then reached for a cellphone to call his mother in St. John's.
"That you?" he said when she answered. "We did it."
Back in Newfoundland, home to 516,000 people, most residents were glued to their TVs Friday.
About 600 people, most of them dressed in red and white, gathered at Mile One Stadium in St. John's to watch the match on a huge video screen.
Big screens were also set up at Memorial University in St. John's, O'Donel High School in nearby Mount Pearl — the school Gushue graduated from in 1997 — and in a once-vacant bank in Harbour Grace.
"We're just so proud of what Jamie [has done]," Harbour Grace Mayor Don Coombs told the St. John's Telegram. "They represented themselves well."
In Labrador City, town officials have already talked about naming streets after Nichols and Adam.
Canadian male curlers have won silver medals in each of the previous two Winter Games.
Since curling became an official Olympic sport in Japan, one Canadian curling team — skipped by the late Sandra Schmirler — won gold, in 1998.
Gushue and his team will be awarded their medals Saturday in Turin.
Sweetest medal of the Games, almost makes up for the Canadian hockey team. Well done, b’ys, ye aced ‘er. George Street will be rockin’ tonight!! ;D
|
|
|
|
Post by RocDoc on Feb 24, 2006 17:01:42 GMT -5
Korab?
He didn't have a brother...or (after all these years) maybe a Dad named Jerry who was a player for the Chi Blackhawks years ago (the 70s probably), did he?
He was a bit of a goon for us, but he was OUR goon and we liked him...Haven't seen that last name on a long time, that's all.
|
|
|
|
Post by Dr. Drum on Feb 25, 2006 7:18:37 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by maarts on Feb 25, 2006 20:31:03 GMT -5
Unrepentant Bode: 'Man, I Rocked Here'
By JIM LITKE
The Associated Press
Saturday, February 25, 2006; 6:53 PM
SESTRIERE, Italy -- Unbent, unbowed and ultimately unsuccessful, Bode Miller said in an interview Saturday he is skiing away from these Olympics on his own terms _ content without any medals and impressed by the local nightlife.
"I just did it my way. I'm not a martyr, and I'm not a do-gooder. I just want to go out and rock. And man, I rocked here," Miller said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press soon after he skidded off the slalom course in his fifth and final race, completing an 0-for-the-Olympics.
"I'm comfortable with what I've accomplished, including at the Olympics," Bode Miller says. "I came in here to race as hard as I could. That was my obligation to myself."
Miller came to the Italian Alps cresting on a wave of expectations and was considered a medal threat in every Alpine event. But he failed to finish three of them and his best showing was fifth in the downhill _ part of a games with few highlights for the U.S. Ski Team.
"The expectations were other people's," Miller said. "I'm comfortable with what I've accomplished, including at the Olympics. I came in here to race as hard as I could. That was my obligation to myself."
As for his obligation to prepare, Miller said he was less ready for these games than the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, where he won two silver medals.
"I've been living my life as if I might have died two weeks before the Olympics started," he said. "That left me the opportunity to dig deep, to go down that other route, to make more sacrifices and get back to where I was."
Miller said that while he might have prepared differently, he isn't one to second guess and he started each race fully focused and determined to win.
He called his Olympic experience "awesome" and cited the gold medals by teammates Julia Mancuso and Ted Ligety as one reason. Another, he said, was Sestriere's bar scene.
"My quality of life is the priority. I wanted to have fun here, to enjoy the Olympic experience, not be holed up in a closet and not ever leave your room," he said. "People said, 'Why can't you stay in for the two weeks, three weeks? You've got the rest of your life to experience the games the way everybody else does.' But I like the whole package. I always have."
He compared his Olympic experience to fellow American Daron Rahlves, who was a favorite in the downhill and a contender in the super-G but didn't come close to the podium.
"Look at what happened to Rahlves. He was holed up in his RV, he's probably the fittest guy out here and he made a point of talking about how important the Olympics were to him," Miller said. "And then look _ a little bad luck and he's got nothing to show for the whole thing.
"Me, it's been an awesome two weeks," Miller said. "I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level."
So good to see people enjoying themselves on American taxpayers' account...
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Feb 25, 2006 21:13:28 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'll admit, I don't know a GREAT deal about the sport) ... but short of a knock out, isn't the winner of a boxing match determined by judges? Nope ! The winner is determined by the number and quality of punches ... Only in case of a very tight(or fixed like figure skating !  !)match is the result determined by judges ... |
|
|
|
Post by phil on Feb 25, 2006 21:16:35 GMT -5
"I came in here to race as hard as I could.
[Bode Miller]
Fuckin' bullshit !!
He simply gave up the Slalom today ...
Didn't even tried to make it look like he tried !!
|
|
|
|
Post by rockysigman on Feb 25, 2006 21:18:42 GMT -5
I can accept that he's unrepentent, but I'm curious as to what he means when he says that he "rocked" at these Olympics. I mean, he was pretty much a failure in everything he did, and didn't come close to reaching the expectations that everyone seemed to have for him. So how did he "rock" exactly? Must have hooked up with some figure skaters or something.
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Feb 25, 2006 21:22:19 GMT -5
He "rocked" Turino's Night Life alright ... LoL !!
|
|
|
|
Post by phil on Feb 25, 2006 21:25:02 GMT -5
Right now, Better-Half is watching the short-track skating competitions ...
and screaming her head off at every single Corean skater competing against the Canadians !!
LoLoLoL !!
|
|
!)match