Which of the following popular Olympic sporting events is not like the others:
B. Halfpipe (freestyle skiing)
C. Luge
The correct answer is B, the halfpipe. Why? Because it’s not a real sport. In real sports, the winner is determined by objective criteria – fastest, longest, heaviest, whatever. But in the halfpipe, and in all “judged” events, the winner is determined by allegedly “expert” judges who decide who they thought did the best job. These judges often don’t agree with each other, or with the viewing public, and they are famously subject to improper influences. Judges in sports are supposed to enforce the rules, not decide the winners. If the judges decide who wins, it may be a competition, but it’s not a sport.
Am I suggesting that participants in judged events are not real athletes? Of course not – figure skaters like Michelle Kwan [2014 update: and skaters like Gracie Gold] and snowboarders like Shaun White [2014 update: and freestyle skiers like David Wise] are spectacularly talented athletes. But the Olympics are supposed to be about winning because you are the best, not because some judge decided you were the best. If a “sport” is not susceptible of the former kind of victory, it shouldn’t be in the Olympics.
Of course, judged events will never be removed from the Olympics. The beloved figure skating events are the biggest draw in the entire Winter Olympics lineup, and we have to have events like the made-in-America halfpipe so that Americans are guaranteed to win at least a couple of gold medals. [/cynic] But I think that’s too bad.
I really liked all the stuff tonight about how the women were “closing the ability gap” between them and the women. As though there were some long-standing performance gap. As though this weren’t a totally new sport (is this the 2nd Olympics?) and as though men have some inante ability to snowboard that women, until recently, have not posessed.
not real sports because they have referees, umpires, etc. who make controvertial calls, toss out penalties, etc. that while supposedly based on rules too often show poor judgement (or lack of clear vision). Or are they spared due to no artistic/style measurement?
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Are the only true sports ones where it’s an individual against the clock? Where you are separated from you competitors so you can’t have an accident that would risk the “best” not winning on that day? Like the individual time trial in bike racing or the downhill in skiing? But then, what about equipment failures, sickness, etc. Ah well–sport is for the competitors alone–it’s all just entertainment for the rest of us.
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And I was going to vote for D since they’re just going around in circles while those other events are going from A to B.
You can’t seriously be that confused, to not know the difference between a REFEREE (who is bound by rules) and a JUDGE (who is not.)
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Simply put: referees can make mistakes. Judges cannot.
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A referee can screw up a call. Judges cannot.
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Why?
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Judges have few rules. They decide what THEY consider to be good.
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In baseball, a home run is a home run because the hitter hit the ball far enough to clear the wall, not because a judge said the swing wasn’t clean enough.
My daughter does gymnastics, which is another one of those ‘judged’ sports. As a gymnast’s parent, I had to work at the meet held by her gym. I was ‘timer’ for one of the events, and sat next to the judge. She had an enormous binder of rules for that event at that level of gymnastics. I’m sure skating is the same.
The judges certainly do produce idiosyncratic and seemingly subjective rulings, but it’s not accurate to say they “have few rules.”
Judges don’t declare someone The Winner; they assign scores. I am not naive enough to think that some judges intentionally weight their scoring to favor particular athletes or teams, but if the Russian skater plants her ass on the ice more times than the American one does, even the most partisan judge will be reluctant to score her higher.
there’s things like this, from disappointed American skater Ashley Wagner:
Sour grapes? Maybe. But she does have a point.
I don’t think everybody (who cares) is ever going to be happy with the way figure skating winners are determined because the “right” combination of artistry and skill is probably different for every observer. I think the pendulum has swung to the skill side currently, which at least in part explains the decrease in interest in the US (there was a Globe article about the time of the US nationals – another reason given was the lack of international success for US women).
But to Wagner’s point, sure the audience doesn’t want to see the skaters fall, but they also don’t want to see a performance devoid of difficult moves. I can stay on my feet for four minutes (as long as I’m on hockey skates) , but no one is going to pay to see that.
So the skaters tend to design programs that load up on the points and hope that even with a fall, they will remain in contention.
Referees/umpires/officials enforce clearcut rules. (0,1) events. Either something happened, or it didn’t.
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Sure, they may not actually witness or interpret what happened correctly, but that’s because eyes and ears are limited.
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Judging is wholly different. They do have criteria, but the reality is this:
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with perfect camera angles, any set of officials could consistently make the same call. Judges would consistently score within a range — but not give the same score. Totally different.
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Some winter olympic events that are judged (off of the top of my head): * half pipe * figure skating (singles, pairs, ice dancing, etc) * freestyle skiing (aerials, ballet, moguls)
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Some summer olympic events that are judged (off of the top of my head): * diving (from assorted heights, etc) * synchronized swimming * gymnastics (all events for men and women, and all rhythmic events as well) * equestrian (I don’t know much about horse-related show sports, but IIUC, there are judges of performance with sliding scales)
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I’ve been making the same gripes for years. To be honest, I’d love to see two broadcasts of the olympics: to be crude, mens and womens. Not differentiated by competitors, but based on sports covered and angles. The womens channel gets most of the performance events, and lots of in depth warm stories about the athletes. The mens channel gets the head-to-head competitives and the sports with great falls. Lots of “agony of defeat” highlights, replays of bone crushing ice hockey checks, etc. “True” team sports where the team is interacting directly against the other team (instead of something like making tennis or golf team sports).
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The olympics has some cool sports and some cool highlights. I never get to see them because NBC is too busy showing the athletes anxiously waiting for their judged scores and showing interviews with soft angles and softer questions. Bah.
but I absolutely agree about the ridiculous waste of time watching competitors waiting for their scores under the glare of the TV lights as the cameras desperately hope to catch a stray tear brought on by a disappointing score.
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The men’s downhill race, which was won in a surprising upset by a French guy who no one thought was a serious threat, was absolutely thrilling sports. Terrific camera work, no stupid judges, and no waiting around for scores. You knew the instant each run was finished where the racer was in the competition, and there was no room for debate about it – just each racer against the clock. Too bad the whole Olympics can’t be like that.
Whether the rules are clear cut or not has nothing to do with whether the arbiters are “judges” or “referees”. There are plenty of examples of rules in refereed sports that are highly subjective and not at all clear cut or where clear cut rules are simply never enforced. So it is really more of a continuum rather than a clear distinction between judged vs refereed sports.
…there is a final score that everyone can see what is, even if there are arguments about what should have been.
Have you never seen a baseball game where the home-plate umpire was clearly punishing a pitcher, hitter or team? Or just calling balls and strikes inconsistently or oddly? That one guy can affect the outcome of a game as surely as a partisan Olympic judge, or even more surely, since the judge is one of several.
No matter how awful the umpire is when all nine innings are complete the score will be Team A got x runs and Team B got y runs.
When the skating competition is over, the score will be skater A got X points, and skater B got Y points. The points are the aggregate of all the judges’ assignments, not just one.
I didn’t even mention bad umpiring calls of run-scoring plays, which have definitely cost games by affecting the score.
I know sometimes there’s a question of out vs. safe, but once it’s called the score goes on the board. A point means exactly one thing in baseball, that a run was officially scored. Ball players aren’t judged on the grace of their slides.
When the figure skaters have finished. They have scores that everyone can see as well.
Are you really arguing that something is only a sport if the scoring system is simple?
Certainly you can see the difference between object and subjective here. In skating the judges use their judgement, and the fact of multiple disagreeing scores shows that. In baseball, football, etc. you just count. To be clear, it’s not that these are not competitions. You can have skating competitions, gymnastics competitions, cheerleading competitions, synchronized swimming competitions, etc. Some are arguing that Olympics should stick to the objective and while I have more important things in life to worry about if I had to choose I’d be inclined to agree.
Also, subjective.
But others were making me jump through hoops to define it so I kind of gave up. To me its obvious which is which. You could probably name any event and I could tell you without much hesitation whether or not I think it belongs in the Olympics or better suited to a talent show.
I was trying to get you to examine your reasons for thinking the way you do, because you seemed to have not done that. I know I’m not the only one here who finds himself using those hoops a lot.
Objective score or achievement as opposed to assigned by judges. That is my criterion, but others didn’t like it.
Good thing the NFL hasn’t been banned as a fake sport. Downhill skiing, to use your example, has judges, oops, sorry, referees, to make sure the skier doesn’t miss any gates and follows all of the many other rules of the sport. Maybe we should petition to have No Rules Street Fighting added to the Olympics — but even there there are some rules (for example, presumably, a time when the match begins). The Olympics is better with all of the examples you cite, rather than just some.
of course they all do, and the role of judges/umpires/referees is to enforce the rules – and sometimes enforcing those rules involves judgment calls (was it really holding, or just an aggressive block?). That’s all fine. But in a football game, the winner isn’t determined by a panel of judges who get together after the game and decide who did the best job. It’s determined by who scored the most points, according to the rules of the game. And sure, there are occasional judgment calls there as well (the most recent example being the Steelers’ non-touchdown in the Super Bowl that the officials erroneously called a touchdown), but again, the call they’re making isn’t “was it a good job,” it’s “did the ball break the plane of the goal line, as the rules require for a touchdown.” It’s a difference of kind, not of degree.
I shamefully admit that back in college I thought a lot about what differentiates a “sport” from a “non-sport” (had a lot of free time back then…).
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One of the key things has got to be the possibility of a naturally decided winner, as you suggest. The reason I say “possibility of” is because boxing CAN be judged, but it doesn’t need to be (i.e. a knockout). For that reason I consider it a sport.
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Would you agree? Is boxing a sport or not-sport, based upon judges being involved in the outcome?
And if they are included in the Olympics, they are by definition Olympic sports. Let’s get NFL football in the Olympics, incidentally.
that they are all “Olympic sports” because they have been deemed so by the Olympic committee, but I’m talking about “sport” in terms of some objective definition. For example, is darts a sport? Poker? Monopoly?
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It seems there has to be a line drawn somewhere between a “game” and a “sport”.
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But anyhow, I do agree that American football should be an Olympic sport. The only problem would be competitive balance problems because it’s such an American-dominated sport, but maybe with amateurs it wouldn’t be as bad.
If american football were somehow sanctioned an olympic sport how do you suppose the schedule would go? I mean it if you only gave the teams 4 days off to recoup it would still last for weeks.
I thought about this, and came to the conclusion:
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sport.
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It’s not scored on style, grace, elegance, or any such. The judges tally a “1” for every time Boxer A hits Boxer B*. The scores don’t always match up perfectly because of judgement calls, different viewing angles, etc.
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But, in a perfectly visable world, I suspect they’d come up with nearly identical scores, consistently.
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On a side note, did you know that ski jumping is judged? I had no idea until yesterday. Longest jump doesn’t necessarily win. They’re judged on their takeoff, their mid-air form, and their landing.
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“The judges tally a “1” for every time Boxer A hits Boxer B*.”
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p>True in the Olympics, but not in the pros, in which the entire round is judged as a unit, on criteria including “ring generalship.” Hartford’s Willie Pep famously won a round without throwing a punch.
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p>While pro judging is easily (and often) corrupted, the amateur game is considered by many an incomplete form of the sport because the system can’t distinguish between effective punches and taps.
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p>It’s one of those sports where an objective system can’t capture the essence of the sport.
As was stated above, the difference between referees in something like the NFL is far different than judges in figure skating. Referees apply, to the best of their ability, the rules that exist. They are not there to decide who wins. A judge’s role is to decide who wins.
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Big difference.
Oakland lost just as surely as if they had been graded after the game, so the difference between the NFL and figure skating, so far as winners and losers goes, doesn’t seem to be as large as you suggest. The critical point is that both contests are judged. With respect to figure skating, the function of the judges is to assess how well the contestants meet pre-existing criteria that are allegedly as objective as whether a football broke the plane of the end zone. Personally, I’m tremendously excited by the recent U.S. curling victory over New Zealand. Now there’s a real sport.
In the Oakland game, thousands of factors went into the Pats winning, and the tuck rule determination (after video review) was just one of them. The two teams had a great many plays prior to the tuck to get the teams where they were, and these plays had little to do with the referees’ intervention.
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This is the difference. The result of a football game is based upon who gets the most points, which is itself based upon getting the ball within specified spots on the field (end zone, uprights). The result of figure skating, however, is based upon the score that is given to the performance by a judge.
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I agree that pre-existing objective criteria exist in the figure skating case. However, if there was no subjectivity, then why wouldn’t the judges’ scores all be pretty much identical? Further, if a bunch of judges were to watch slow-motion replays as to not miss anything, would they all give the same score? Perhaps, but they would not be bound to.
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Now curling, that’s a whole different matter!
Every one of those previous plays you reference in the Oakland game depended on the application of rules — penalties, placement of the ball, on and on. Millions saw the “tuck rule” in slow motion and disagreed about the outcome. If they had rated it on a 6.0 point scale or whatever there might have been even more variability than among the figure skating judges. The system of challenges, when multiple officials watch the replay, is similar to the post-event judging in skating in many ways. If Monopoly were included in the Olympics, then yes it too would be an “Olympic sport.” (I wouldn’t vote for it’s inclusion!) Anyway, I think claiming figure skating and half-pipe are not “real” sports when every sport depends on judgment calls is unfair, a bit inconsistent, and no fun. Go Olympics, and go USA!
you are clearly a big fan of the reductio – actually, I knew that already! 🙂 But it doesn’t work in this case. Try as you may to reduce all sporting events to the whims of the judges (who’s the “no fun” guy here, anyway?), the bottom line remains clear: in real sports, judges don’t get to decide who wins. In fake sports, they do. Period.
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Hoyapaul raises the interesting borderline case of boxing. The best resolution there would be to do away with the judges’ decision (notoriously unreliable in boxing) as a way of declaring a winner and require that all boxing matches be won by KO – if there’s no KO after 15 rounds, it’s a draw and they fight again another day.
Judges in most of these sports determine scores and do not directly pick a winner as they might in a talent contest or the like. In many cases, different judges are tasked with composing a score for only one component of the performance based on a detailed rule book. A lot of the difference is that in those cases the rules and the details of the scoring system are not known to the spectator which makes the entire process seem to be entirely subjective when it isn’t.
I can’t believe it has come to this, but I guess there is no alternative.
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“Sport: An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” Oxford American.
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Sounds to me like figure skating and half-pipe meet the definition, with no reductio required. Go USA!
Here you are, advocating for a “living” Oxford American definition of “sport”–which thus requires a dissertation and an 84-part totality of circumstances test (including degree of skill, exertion, and some general sense of where the other nations, especially those in Europe, come down on the rules of any particular candidate for “sport”)– all in order to exclude from “sport” all but those athletic competitions in which the rules are subject to strict construction only in accordance with the original intent of their drafters, and are not amenable to interpretation of any kind.
Seems to me it should be possible to play real sports competitively without officials. Pickup games of softball or basketball or football, for example, are easy despite the lack of referees, because everyone basically knows the rules, and everyone understands and agrees on the scoring system. Similarly with tennis, swimming, even downhill skiing (all you need is a stopwatch). But halfpipe? Figure skating? Nope – no way to tell who wins. Ergo, not real sports. One could even argue that they don’t meet the quoted Oxford American definition because the required element of “competing” is lacking unless officials are present, and surely whether something is a “sport” or not cannot depend on the presence of officials.
would be what, a sport or a game?
but what little I know suggests it’s a real sport – I don’t think there are judges sitting around deciding who did the best job, but rather who wins is determined by something about how many rocks end up in various parts of that big bullseye on the ice.
Click on the flash animation link on the CCA site here or just poke around the entire Canadian Curling Association page.
by any definition. No judges – winners are based on where the rocks end up. Much of the strategy of rock placement is based on anticipating (and limiting the options for) your opponent’s next shots.
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p>I remember watching curling as a kid on the Canadian station we could get in the Detroit area, back when they used real brooms. In 2006, we discovered that Broomstones Curling Club in Wayland was having an open house, so we went. It was a hoot. It also made it clear that it looks much easier to do that it actually is. In reality, it takes a lot of skill just to get the rock moving.
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p>They are having another open house this year on March 7. If you go, plan on waiting for an hour or more, some of it outside (at least if the crowd is as big as last time).
but we’re a little over-scheduled at this point. They have a fun Stephen Colbert video on their website that has some fun at curling’s expense. I imagine they will get a good crowd as curling, believe it or not, is experiencing a tremendous surge of interest in the states. Does my ol’ Canadian heart good….
Just because your friends and you are familiar with the rules of football makes it a sport? Most people in the world (maybe even most pick-up players) have no idea what an onside kick is, does that mean football in not a sport in those places. More to the point, I suspect a random group of people would have no difficulty judging Michelle Kwan a superior figure skater to you or me. As to curling, the judges determine who wins, and if the average viewer disagrees, too bad — just as in figure skating. I imagine everyone saw Miller DQ’d on the second run of the Combined Slalom yesterday — by the judges after he had completed his run (“judges sitting around deciding who did the best job,” to use one phraseology); and after he had posted a “faster overall time” than any other competitor before him. See, this is why it is a bad idea for people to go to Law School.
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PS: A friend suggests this whole discussion misses the point. To him, a sport is defined by the “level of exertion” (his words) required: figure skating and half-pipe, yes — golf, no.
what your point is about casual footballers not knowing what an onside kick is (anyway I suspect most of them do). My point is that given a group of people who know the basic rules of any real sport, they can play the sport competitively (i.e., one player or team wins, one loses) without the need for officials; not so for fake sports.
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Obviously any sane human would judge Michelle Kwan to be a better figure skater than you or me. But as we all know, all the best figure skaters are superb and have slightly different strengths. It’s there that the role of judging becomes so important and therefore so distressing.
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I believe you are wrong about curling. From the NBC Olympics site:
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Officials may have a role in that, but only to the same degree that referees call a touchdown in football. It’s a mechanical calculation that does not contemplate a “judging” role of the type that I object to in figure skating or halfpipe.
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Finally, Bode Miller was DQ’d because he broke the rules. Same as a penalty being called in football. Again, fits perfectly well within my paradigm.
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I agree, though, with your law school point! 🙂
I’m thinking the premise of the Olypmics is the althete and their ability. So it would depend on the type of competetive activity the athlete was engaged in as to how they are judged . It seems to me there are judges and referees in every “activity” some more subjective than others. Is absence of a time, score or distance going to define the althete or the “sport”?
Curling assocations exist all over Canada, sort of like bowling leagues, and do not require judging any more than bowling does.
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p>Canada is not faring well on this site today. 😉 Sheesh!
Minding 3 four year old children? Fire fighting? Child birthing?
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p>Exertion isn’t what’s “it”. Methinks you need three things:
1. Objective score keeping: refs, not judges.
2. Strategy based on opponent and/or scenario. The score, amount of match remaining, opponent’s skill set, etc. influencing strategy.
3. You’ve got to “do” it; abstractions are insufficient. The act of “doing” it requires motor control.
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p>Now, this means that billiards is a sport, it’s true. Not poker. Yes to golf. No to figure skating. Yes to bowling. No to cheer leading. Clearly, some require the physique of David whereas others merely require the physique of Charley. Clearly, participating in some non-sports requires tremendous strength, athleticism, skill, training, flexibility, speed, and fire. Some sports are also called parlor games, and some sports are unknown in most parts of the world.
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p>Put another way, Figure skating, ballroom dancing, diving, and gymnastics fail (1). Shooting, archery, and horseshoes fail (2)*. Monopoly and chess fail (3).
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p> * I could be convinced otherwise, but to my knowledge when competing you always simply try to shoot the bullseye, regardless of conditions in the field of play, opponents score, etc. This is different from golf, where players don’t try to put the ball in the hole on every shot, and will play more or less aggressively depending on opponent, score, holes remaining, etc.
I like your #1 and #3, but the second one seems too restrictive. For example, under this criterion, I don’t think sprinting would be a sport.
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p>It easily qualifies under #1 and #3, but there really isn’t any “strategy” involved whatsoever — you run as fast as you can in the time allotted, and that goal never changes. While sprinters are typically aware of the situation — who they are running against, which lane they are in, etc. — it doesn’t affect the strategy. They just run as fast as they can, every time.
Consider the start.
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p>If a world class sprinter is running against a really good sprinter, he never faults… he knows he can make it up. If that same sprinter is racing against another world class guy, he’s much more interested on a perfect start, despite the chance of faulting.
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p>They don’t run as fast as they can every time — the start (faulting) is the variable.
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p>If each runner got to run independently, and the time started when they left the blocks… then yeah, that’s an interesting question. Is it a sport anymore? But, that’s not how it’s done.
Cannot see how you think Shooting and Archery fail (2), but not Golf, unless you are strictly talking about “Match Play” golf.
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p>In a golf tourney, all it matters is what you score verses what everyone else scores. Again, unless you are talking match play, but even that really has no “strategy”, it is just broken down into 18 mini “competitions”, there is no “strategy”. There is a bit more strategy in “team” golf.
In shooting and archery, there is no strategy. Or, rather, the entire strategy is: hit as close to the middle as possible, by aiming straight for the middle.
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p>In golf, one doesn’t shoot to put the ball in the hole for about 50% of one’s shots. Instead, you choose: the aggressive drive which might slice into the weeds or the 3W on the fairway 25 yards farther from the pin? Thread the needle past the weak dogleg, or settle for two safe shots toward the green? 5 iron one hopper just past the trap, or layup?
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p>Furthermore, if you’re leading late in a regular tourney play, you’ll play more conservative. Behind? Go for the pin.
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p>Actually having a more complex strategy — and then changing it based on the performance of the other competitors — differentiates golf from shooting.
This is quickly becoming a tedious exercise in pointless classification.
What exactly is the utility in having a precise definition of what a “sport” is? Especially when in the popular understanding, there can never be a precise meaning.
Rugby is a sport.
American football is a game – for pu$$ys.
…to say that out loud in an NFL locker room:)
in both Football locker rooms and Rugby games – as well as the respective post-game parties.
I’ll stand by my statement up-thread.
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The judging thing, I guess I can see that. But that’s the only part of this post that makes sense, even though it completely disregards questions of “degree of difficulty” which are objective, mathematical measures.
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p>Okay…but not quite really. Figure skating is the biggest draw for North Americans, but Europeans are more into the skiing and speed skating. Ski jumping is tops in Japan and Finland. As for newer sports (that is, about 30 years old), they are more widely and popularly played than, say, the biathalon. I think they’re quite relevant.
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p>This post is, however, an improvement over hysterical accusations of a country killing an athlete.
Yes, “degree of difficulty” has some objectivity in it. But it doesn’t remotely solve the problem, because you’ve still got a judge saying “Athlete X executed that jump with an excellence level of 5.0, whereas Athlete Y only managed a 4.5.” At that point, you’ve got exactly the problem I’m complaining about. It’s still entirely up to the judge to decide who wins.
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p>As for your other complaint, yes, obviously I’m talking about American tastes. And I’m not saying that judged sports are not “relevant.” (Relevant to what?) I’m saying that, IMHO, they don’t belong in the Olympics. You didn’t see the ancient Greeks sitting around waiting for the judges to decide who did the fanciest triple toe loop.
You called ice hockey and figure skating “the biggest draw”, which is a narrow perspective. In European winter games, they’re not. I call sports relevant based on the number of athletes in the number of countries competing; in that sense snowboarding is more relevant than many others out there.
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p>As for degree of difficulty, I would say that it does lower the still-considerable degree of subjectivity in the sport. It’s nearly impossible to quantify such things as grace and artistry, and in some ways this nick-and-nack approach to scoring that you see in figure skating isn’t that productive.
The subjective performance sports are entertainment, in my view, not sport. I have long said that figure skating, ice dancing (??!) and the like don’t really belong, but that usually gets me booed out of the room. As for the jiggle in the air snowboarding, I watched it once and that was enough. Yikes.
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p>When I was a kid, the most fun thing about watching ice skating was listening to Dick Button do the commentary. He had a mega-crush on Peggy Fleming, and whenever Tenley Albright’s name came up, you could tell she was his first “love.” But then he’s get all outraged at the antics of Toller Cranston. lol. That guy was something else.
My feeling is: if you give ten judges/referees every angle possible to evaluate a competition and you get more than one answer of which competitor was the best… it is not a sport, but a beauty pageant. I am not saying that all referees make the right call every time, but after the fact the ruling body should be able to say if it was the right or wrong call.
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p>How is the judging of a beauty pageant any different that of figure skating?
A sport has either an objective winner at the point of the win, like coming in first in a race, or a final score, like a football game. All of what we have here as professional league sports (MLS, MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL) have final scores – the most goals, runs, baskets, goals, points preassigned to type of play, respectively). There are other sports of course, like volleyball. If you’re judgement call includes things like, “I like how she did that.” it’s not a sport. The very fact that judges score differently from each other proves its not subjective and not a sport. Yes, a ref may sometimes make a call that looking back has an effect on the final score, but that’s different from directly assigning the score.
After Salt Lake City, the scoring system for figure skating was changed so that the technical portion is scored objectively based on the jumps, etc. that the skater does and also on whether or not they completed them properly (i.e. did she land on the correct edge of the skate?). Instant replay is used to make sure the judges get this right, which is a significant part of the delay when waiting for scores. Anyone can look at the replays and tell if the scoring was legitimate, and I haven’t heard anyone who knows what they are talking about complain.
Sotnikova simply did more things to rack up more points. Anything that is done after the 2-minute mark also gets a 10% bonus, and apparently she made hay there also. All of the skaters know the scoring system and routines are designed to get a particular maximum number of points.
See this article in the Globe today.
I really don’t follow figure skating that closely but I have a niece who competes and my sister has explained a lot of this stuff to me.
Admittedly I didn’t read the globe article, but I am somewhat familiar (as the parent of a competitive FS) with the ISJ scoring system. I’m specifically not addressing whether skating is/isn’t a sport
Simply – there are two parts to a skating score. This changed a few years back (remember the 6.0 scoring system? that was scrapped in favor of the ISJ system now used)
Technical elements – what element was the skater able to achieve (there are different ‘levels’ for a given element.This is scored by the technical judges. Then the other judging panel assigns GOEs (Grades of Excellence) to each element. Up to +/- 3 (IIRC) per element.
Program components. Scored by the same panel that assigns the GOEs. Looks for artistry, transitions (what happens between elements), and a few other things.
The scoring is about 1/2-1/2 Technical & program components. There’s something about how the high/low for each of the GOEs and program components is tossed, the rest added to get the total component score; which in turn are added to get the total score for the skater.
Deadspin has a write up on this.
I notice that I mentioned curling and Broomstones upthread. They are having another open house this year on March 1, but they are doing it on a reservation-only basis and just filled up. I got my reservation in back before the Globe article last weekend (I think?) and at that point they had lots of openings.
They have asked anyone with a reservation who can’t make it to let them know, so they are probably keeping a wait list. Contact them if you are interested.
Is it because this was originally a Soapblox post that I don’t see the [X new] on the front page next to “Discuss” and the total comments number? Once I’m within the post, all new comments are labelled correctly.
I noticed the same thing, and I suspect that’s the explanation.
The back-end moves (jumps, spins, etc) of a 4 minute program receive bonus points. Yuna is the lovelier and more artistic skater. The numbers worked for the Russian figure skater, Adelina. She intentionally and successfully back-loaded her program.
The rules are known. Judging is subjective.
The Russian coaches, choreographer and skater came to win….not just skate great. Yuna skated great….her short program was exquisite.
Yuna is my choice for one of the best woman figure skaters ever – her presence is magnificent and spell-binding.
This was one of the deepest and tremendously talented field in memory.
There was also a completely wrong-headed placement of Ashley Wagner over the third place US champions on the US Olympic team. But, as any casual observer could see…..Wagner had been picked by the underwriters to be the face of women’s figure skating in the pre-canned corporate Ads.
Young US skater, Polina (Silver US Championship) is absolutely fabulous and she was also discriminated against in her short program at Sochi with low marks as there is an unwritten (but spoken…and everyone knows it) rule in figure skating that there is an earned hierarchy based upon paying your dues…..the newbies have to wait their turn. Lipinski was one of the occasional firecrackers to bust that ceiling.
Actually, while I might be inclined to side with David in his argument that figure skating is not a “real” sport, the overriding question may be what does it matter? The Olympics has, and should have, both formally judged competitions and refereed sports.
In both judged and referred sports/competitions, egregious mistakes can and have been made that have given the victory to the wrong person or team. It’s just as infuriating to the fans on the “losing” side in each case. In each case, there are charges that the event has been fixed. The question is, do those mistakes happen more often in judged competitions than refereed sports? I’m not sure that they do.
when the ump who blew the call in the would-have-been perfect game saw the replay, he owned up that, yes, he blew the call. Similar things have happened on other occasions in baseball, football, etc. But I’m not aware of anything similar happening in a judged event.
I believe the baseball game to which you are referring was when Jim Joyce blew the call on the 27th batter faced by Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers. Despite the fact that Joyce tearfully proclaimed that he blew the call, and universal agreement that Galarraga did get the 27th out, Major League Baseball would not award an official perfect game.
Compare this to the pairs skating controversy at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter games. Initially, the Russian pair had been awarded the gold over the Canadian team, who took the silver. Once an investigation revealed that a fix was in for the Russian pair, the International Skating Union and IOC upgraded the Canadians’ medals to gold.
Who wins is determined by number of runs per team.
It didn’t become a bigger controversy because the next batter was out and the game was over. But we’ve all seen games where a pitcher loses composure after innings of no-hit or perfect ball. So the potential was there to change the outcome of the game.
…and anything can happen until the final out. What I’ve been arguing is that there is a single score at the end, arrived by a specific count, as opposed to multiple subjective judges’ scores.
Let’s concentrate on baseball.
No judge or umpire decides the final score / number of runs. That is correct.
However, to concentrate on the judgements that have the most impact on the game, the home plate umpire makes a judgement on every pitch that does not make contact with the bat. When watching almost any game, you’ll hear about the “strike zone” of the umpire. Does he give the pitcher the high or low strike? Is he consistent between batters and/or pitchers? Does he give the successful veteran the benefit of the doubt on a close pitch that he would not to a rookie? Does he just miss some? And, in conspiracy corner, might he be making calls to affect the outcome of the game?
Calling strikes and balls in subjective, and whether a team scores a run or not depends on how those judgements go. So even though you have a number for each team at the end of the game, that number is partially dependent upon the judgment of the umpires.
Kind of like figure skating…
it seems inevitable to me that electronic balls and strikes are only a few years away. Now that the TV shows whether or not the ump blew the call on pretty much every pitch, it’s hard to see how the electronic version doesn’t eventually take over. Baseball has probably been the slowest major sport to adopt electronics (well, maybe basketball), but even they are starting to move.
After writing my reply to christopher above, it occurred to me that the only real non-judged sports are those that do not rely at all on humans to make decisions during the competition. A foot race seems to me to be the gold standard for non-judged, assuming electronics are used to time the runners.
Most sports we watch do involve a certain amount of judging, whether you call it refereeing or whatever. The decisions that are made have an effect upon the numbers that become the final score. We could probably try to draw a continuum and argue about where certain sports get placed, but it seems obvious (to me at least) that track-and-field events would be at one end while skiing aerials would be toward the other.