2014 Winter Olympics - Sochi

  • Thread starter Jimlaad43
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prisonermonkeys
That depends on what you call "good". If someone performs a trick and is forced to put their hand down to stop themselves from falling, then they have clearly made a mistake somewhere. Why on earth should you award points to someone on the basis of how good it would have been if they had got it right? And how on earth is that worth more than someone who performed a less-impressive trick, but got it right?

Look at the gymnastics in the Summer Olympics. If one gymnast performs a triple somersault, but is forced to break their stance to stop themselves from falling, they will get marked down for it. Not as badly as if they had fallen over, but it still shows a lack of precision. On the other hand, if they perform a double somersault and land perfectly, they will get a good mark. So why should it be any different in bordercross? The landing is as much a part of the trick as the speed, rotation and the altitude. If two people perform the sane trick and one lands perfectly while the other puts a hand down to stop themselves from falling, why do they deserve the same score?
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I am talking about small mistakes, not a faceplant.
In your gymnast scenario, I would imagine the scores (in my mind) should be (highest to lowest)
1. triple somersault done well
2. triple somersault, landed but had to more one foot forward/back for balance
3. double somersault done well
4. any faceplant

You can swap 'step forward/back' with 'hand on snow' in the slopestyle. Ass on ground I agree is a massive deduction.
Also think of the degree of difficulty in diving. That allows for small mistakes in a tough dive to score more than a well executed easy dive.
 
I disagree, but we are now going around in circles now.
Back to discussing the Olympics themselves...
 
If you award points based on how impressive the trick was rather than how well it was performed, then all you do is encourage competitors to attempt tricks that they are not ready for because they will know that they can get more points for it. Sooner, rather than later, you will get someone trying something too hard and injuring themselves. One of the competitors in the womens' slopestyle final made a mistake on her landing last night and hit the ground with enough force to crack her helmet open, and one of the favourites in the mens' competition broke his collar bone during practice. They are regularly clearing twelve to fifteen metres of air when they go off the lip of the jump, and the surface is made of compacted ice and snow so that the competitors can build up speed. By awarding style before ability, someone is likely to get themselves killed.
 
I understand that injuries can happen, the best make mistakes too - I watched the slopestyle too. None of these competitors are stupid enough to try something in competition that they havent landed dozens of times in practice, so doing something too hard and hurting themselves as an argument is a bit of a moot point.
I am not talking about giving points for a hard trick that is botched, I am talking about a hard trick that is done almost perfectly being punished disproportionally.

I will mention it again - degree of difficulty score in diving. I assume you think that is wrong as a concept.
 
I think you over-estimate the ability of teenagers to know their limits.

And your point about diving would be a valid one if divers were travelling in excess of sixty kilometres per hour and diving onto compacted ice and snow.

It is not about being proportionate. It is about awarding proficiency over style. If you disagree with that, there are eight Olympic slopestyle judges who support the idea, since that is how they scored the competition.
 
Omnis
I've never seen a door made out of cardboard like that. What the hell? Were they planning on demolishing the entire complex once the olympics are over?
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Cheaper interior doors here in the UK are made like that and its probably like that across the EU, I've seen ones which have styrofoam board inside. I don't think they are going to demolish the buildings but they likely will be gutted to turn them into apartments.
 
I'm so glad the moguls are over and done with. All we have gotten for the past three days is the moguls, because we had two full teams of four. And, of course, the commentators talked us up because we have had past success. I particularly like it when our athletes don't live up to the hype and the commentators talk about how disappointed they will be ... but our athletes look overjoyed.

Seriously, is it like this for every country? I could understand expectations being high if it was a dominant nation, like Canada in the moguls or the Netherlands in long-track speed skating. But if I were competing, I would probably ask to compete under the IOC's spirit of competition banner because our media put massive pressure on our athletes to score medals. They were already expecting three golds by now, and we have won nothing so far. And here I was thinking that lessons had been learned from the London Games
 
Big, big crash in the womens' ski slopestyle. A lot of the competitors have been falling, but this was a big hit. Slushy conditions are making the course very slow - so slow that they are having trouble building enough speed to clear the crest when jumping. One of the Canadians hit the crest *hard* and had to be stretchered off.
 
Sounds like really bad conditions. Hitting the knuckle on the kind of jumps these guys/girls are doing is going to do a lot of damage to a athlete's body. I've hit the knuckle many times when I used to be able to ski, it was really really hard on your knees, and that was a small 30 boot.
 
The problem was that the conditions got progressively worse, making the slope slower and slower, but the competitors kept going for the bigger jump.
 
Just saw a video of the Canadian girl hitting the crest of the landing. Ouch. Haven't seen the other falls though.
 
They were all minor by comparison. Nothing injured except pride.

Regarding the awful commentary, my mood has lightened considerably since Roy and HG came on. They are very good at mocking the commentators.
 
I just saw the crash as well, and I have the same reaction as Chris; ouch. Does anyone know how severe the crash was? I mean, it looked quite severe.
 
Oh crap. The one I saw was the other Canadian (Turski), I think it must have been the qualification run. Just saw the bigger one with the stretcher (Tsubota). Triple ouch. It took a while for the channel here to upload the clip.
 
Akmuq
I wish that Gymnastics in the Summer games had the snowboarding commentators.:lol:
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I had my pen and paper out, ready to write in to Points of View about that. It started off quite funny and good-humored, but it quickly became annoying, and then became just downright wrong. I mean, celebrating when a competitor falls is simply not on. Also, in their excitement, one of the commentators actually said that Jenny Jones was bringing home a gold medal (oops) and another said something along the lines of 'Britain dominated that event'... (apart from the two people who were better, presumably). Anyway, they got hundreds of complaints...
 
Akmuq
I wish that Gymnastics in the Summer games had the snowboarding commentators.:lol:
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The snowboarding commentators are brilliant, been so entertaining. They sound like a bunch of frat boys who have had too much Red Bull! :lol: So hyper and over excitable every time someone gets air or does a trick and when Jenny Jones did her run they were nuts.

World class commentary with lines like.... "We need to calm down or the BBC will fire us" and "If that's his underpants he needs to be shot with a sniper rifle"
 
Oh my god!!! Halfpipe final was unbelievable. Some humongous runs went down!
 
Aldo
Oh my god!!! Halfpipe final was unbelievable. Some humongous runs went down!
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That was epic. Great runs by the medallists and a genuinely classy reaction from White when he came up short.
 
Touring Mars
I mean, celebrating when a competitor falls is simply not on.
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Ours do that, too. "She's fallen, and we hope she's okay, but the good news for Australia is that (athlete's name) is still in a medal position!". They also contradict themselves, describing errors by the Australians as nothing serious, but claiming that other competitors will be punished by the judges for those same mistakes.

But at least we get two comedians doing their own commentary every night, and they usually get stuck into the commentators. One gets extremely upset when Australia loses, while the other gets pissed off at the Australian competitors for letting him down. It's even funnier when the serious presenters introduce them or start the next segment, because they always talk about how funny the comedians are, totally unaware that they're being mocked relentlessly.
 
I'm watching a replay of the half-pipe final, and one of our commentators dropped the best description ever: "Shaun White is going to be more disappointed than the parents of Miley Cyrus right now".
 
:lol: The American bobsledder who got trapped in his bathroom and has now got stuck in a lift!

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Unfortunately can't break out of that one!

He better make sure he is not in any enclosed spaces come the day of his event! :lol:
 
We won our first medal, a silver in the womens' half-pipe. Of course, the broadcaster has already spent the past few weeks telling us that said competitor was going to win gold, and since there was half a point's difference in the final standings, the commentators immediately called the judging controversial.
 
That was to be expected from the commentary, but to be fair, the BBC also thought she was hard done by. What surprisd me was the story on news.com.au - it celebrated her winning silver and just described it as agonisingly close to gold
 
It's one thing to describe it as "agonisingly close", but it is another thing entirely to describe it as "controversial". Controversy implies that a lesser rider won the medal. At Vancouver in 2010, figure skater Evan Lycacek won a gold medal without performing a quadruple turn in his routine, the first time in nearly twenty years that this had happened. The Russian guy who came second (and whose name I cannot spell), *did* perform the quadruple turn. Both skaters performed equally well, but a quadruple turn is much more technical. Hence, there was controversy because he was beaten by a skater with a less-difficult routine.

The womens' half-pipe was not controversial. Two competitors performed similar runs equally well. In the end, half a point separated them. To describe the result as controversial is to imply that Bright had the superior routine, but was unfairly denied the gold. She lost on merit, and it is irresponsible of the commentators to suggest otherwise.

Although I did like the way Roy and HG carried out an investigation into the standard of the half-pipe and found that it was a conspiracy among New Zealand contractors to rob Australia of medals by deliberately building an inferior half-pipe.
 
Sorry, I typed my post in a hurry on my phone before - my point about the news.com article was that they described it as close, without calling it controversial. Debatable, yes. It is a judged competition, there will always be debate. We did that ourselves talking about the slopestyle.
It would be more agonising for the poor girl who came 4th - 2 points from the gold medal and goes home with nothing. I dont think 1st and 2nd was separated by that few points in any of the other style events, let alone 1st to 4th.
 
USA swept in slopestyle skiing. Watching USA Hockey team right now blowing out Slovakia. Currently 7-1 with 4 minutes left.
 
Robin.
:lol: The American bobsledder who got trapped in his bathroom and has now got stuck in a lift!

View attachment 114450

Unfortunately can't break out of that one!

He better make sure he is not in any enclosed spaces come the day of his event! :lol:
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They couldn't afford an Otis so they had to install a Boris.
 

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