f13.net

Tells us why the French judge is a conniving whore here.

Viva Games!

Cause he's french *shrug*

What was with the 80s American pop that accompanied every single team entrance at the opening ceremonies?  For some reason, I don't associate Ireland with Funky Town or Senegal with YMCA.

"Olympics -- your tax dollars at work"... buuuuuut not for you

Eh, I don't mind funding student/amature atheletes (which is most Olympians.)  The ones I know pretty much kill themselves for about 15k a year of carefully regulated and closely watched funds.  The few good enough to get an endorsment deserve it.  The professional atheletes, on the other hand, should not be elegible for government subsidies.

You mean professional like most of the hockey players and tennis players?  I know it makes for better watching but it doesn't really seem fair, does it?

Erm, are you guys trying to say that pro players, such as hockey players, shouldn't be able to go to the Olypmics (and not get paid) simply because they can make more money in their sport, compared to....Skeleton?

I'm just saying that if someone makes moeny off thier sport, i.e. it is a profession, they shouldn't get gov't funding.  I was directly replying to the comment about my tax dollars funding the olympics.  My resposnse was: I don't mind that they do.

Next time, read the fucking thread.

No, people are saying that pro athletes shouldn't receive government sponsorship for going to the Olympics because they don't need it. Here in Canada most of our Olympians (and we're only really good at the winter olympics, 100m sprinters aside) work at Home Depot or Walmart for most of the year. The money we do have needs to go to those guys, not NHL'ers who make a metric fuckton already for playing their sport.

And where is the evidence that NHL'ers and getting Olympic funds?

Are you mentally retarded?

You, simply another person on the internet, proposing something as fact means jack and shit to me without something to back it up.

No link, no credibility.

Though I don't follow the olympics Too closely, I've never heard of any of the atheletes being paid simply to go to the Games.

Please, prove your point, or drop the issue. No need to get worked up over it. They are simply games, after all.

Point out where I said something about the NHL players recieving funds?

Do it fucktard.  You fucking can't can you?

Go make up things to troll about somewhere else.

Heh.  This went bad fast.

I don't have a clue how he went from, "I don't mind tax money funding olympians as long as it's not funding pro-atheletes who are olympians" to "Prove that NHL players are recieving funds."

My only conclusion is that he decided he needed to take a crap and this thread is where he decided to lay it.

At this point I think the thing should be denned and allowed to start anew.  Like a mushroom.

The Olympics always causes this sort of reaction.  All that figure skating and ice dancing is emotional stuff, you know.  Just den the forum boxing bit so we can still call Strazos names and stuff in there.

I just hate the pervs that wait for the gymnastic events to drool.

It's a self-loathing thing.

And NHL players are pros. You're implying, by design or accident, that NHL players are recieving money somehow to play in the Olypmpics. I simplied asked for clarification.


This only went bad fast because Murgos has sand in his fucking vagina or something, and made a big stink about being questioned on his not-crystal-clear posts.


Get a grip.

There are other professional atheletes than NHL players, your trying to make something an all inclusive statement when it was never intended to be.  It was a statement of my preference of when I would be comfortable with my tax money funding olympians and when I wouldn't, I SPECIFICALLY STATED AMATUERS AND COLLEGIATE.  Jesus Christ, lay off the stupid pills.

On that note, if there is an NHL player recieving gov't funds (and that includes housing at the olympics, air fair and even uniforms) I don't think they should accept it and I would not be happy with my tax dollars funding that.

We're not even debating the "funding" of amateur or college atheletes, so why even bring it up. I was only using NHL players as an example. There are plenty of pro skiiers and riders there also, among others I am sure.

As far as I know, Team USA covers equipment (if manufacturers don't outright give it away) and air fare for their participants. Housing is provided by the host country. Expecting anyone to provide their own living quarters at an invitational event that attracts thousands upon thousands of is entirely unrealistic. Without the Olympic village, the atheletes would have nowhere to stay, or you would be shutting out fans.

With the amount of sponsership that goes on at these things, I'm not even sure the amount of "tax money" that is spent directly on the atheletes themselves is worth mentioning - most of these costs are probably mitigated by the influx of spending by fans etc at the games. I reckon the lion's share of the money is spent on facilities to host the events. If you object to that, then I don't know what else to say.

(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f286/kazbakid363/TAG.jpg)

So anyway, about the games....when are they actually being broadcast in the US? I saw that the opening ceremony on NBC was broadcast in the middle of the night. Arre most of the other events going to be done live like this, or is there going to be a tape delay?

No, you're not.  Everyone else is though.  See the fourth and fifth post in this thread.  You know, the ones from just before you stuck your dick in the punch.

It's only six hours away for us East coast folks. There's live stuff happening, and tape delayed stuff too. They've televised almost everything, not just highlights. You missed Chad Hendrick's first gold medal. Jonathan Myles is currently in line for a medal in Luge. You can't watch it now, because oval track qualifying is SOOOOO exciting.

There was an interesting moment in cross country skiing when a dude from Norway fell down in the first ten meters, breaks a ski, gets way behind, gets a new ski, his teammates get up front and slow the pace, he catches back up, and he takes the silver. Pure moxy.

I saw that. It's possible he could have won were it not for that start and the need to push a bit harder in the early sections, but the Russian made an awesome finish.

They carry rifles, don't they?
Why don't he just pop a few rounds at the guy in the lead and swipes his skis? Or is using skis from other teams against the rules?

Now that's a biathalon in the true spirit of the Olympics.

I just caught the tail end of this and the announcer mentioned something about how the Norway guy will always be the one remembered for the great comeback and then something about ignoring the Russian dude because of his poor sportsmanship. They never mentioned what exactly the russian dude did that was shitty though.

I plan on only watching the US Men's Hockey, because that's really all I give a shit about.

Ski jumping, downhill, maybe some luge- anything with people going wayyy too fast that might result in horrific injuries (and yet, I can't stand NASCAR- go figure). Men's hockey for sure, although the US team is gonna get beat like a rented mule.

A medal for Canada is like a victory for all the US teams (except the Olympic one).

Anyone have a video clip of the Kildow crash? Not finding anything with a cursory google. I am sure NBC has a tight grip on all clips.

Slideshow here (http://www.nbcolympics.com/alpine/5103479/detail.html). Haven't seen video of it yet, but it looks relatively painful. As an aside- wtf is up with the spiderwebs on the uniform? She looks like a fucking CoH character.

Sounds like Allison Forsyth's crash was more painful - she's out of the games with several tears to her knee ligament.

WTF is up with the BBC's coverage? Nothing except Ice skating? The British pair don't stand a chance, and the Scots, er, Team GB are defending a gold in curling. NBC is showing curling - mens, US team matches, so we have to wait til the weekend for USA vs Scotland, er, Team GB.

Best coverage is CBC. The Canadians are in damn near everything, so you get to see a wide variety. Plus they say a-boot, which is quite endearing.

The webs on the suits is because they all wear Spyder ski gear - it's some of the best out there.

The only entertaining part about the olympics is when people fuck up. Sure, it's their dreams crumbling to nothing in front of the world, but damn.

(http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/2483/skating0jq.jpg)

So...she's dead, right?

You are so innocent.  Of course she's dead.

like dead for real? That's not really nice :/

Sorry... I apologise.  I didn't realise you came here for the "nice".

Nothing here is real.

Anyone listen to Bryant Gumbel go off on the Winter Olympics on his HBO sports show (Real Sports, I think it is)?   Basically, he said that the winter olympics were like a GoP convention in their ethnic diversity and nothing but filler for broadcasters until March Madness.  While I can see where he was going with the whole thing, it did make me feel badly for the kids that had devoted their lives to training for the winter events. 

Because white people can't be REAL atheletes, am I rite Bryant?

The only people keeping black people out of winter sports en masse are themselves....well, that, and there are not many opportunities to Ski or play Ice Hockey in Africa.

And lets be serious, dumbass Gumbel is pulling the race card. Fucking moron. If the Winter games are like a GoP convention, then what is the NBA, an NAACP conference?

Stinging commentary from Bryant Gumbel, the whitest black man that ever lived.

Although I don't think it is based on racism, he does have a point- not many Hispanic and African countries have the weather conditions to make training for many Winter Olympic sports feasible. I was happy to see that Kenya and Ethiopia both had 1 representative apiece- both cross country skiers. I would think that with the number of great distance runners that come out of Kenya especially that the cross country might be something they would gravitate toward.

Also, there's nothing stopping countries with poor winter training conditions from training in other countries. I believe the UK does this for their Skiing atheletes (I am assuming they do field skiiers, etc).

Silly you.  Don't you know that the first statement is ok while the second blatently racist?  Making discriminatory comments only matters if you do it in a non-politically correct fashion!

My favorite comment by Gumbel was that there were no winter sports at the Greek Olympics, making them a farce.  Perhaps he could tell us what the score of the basketball game was at the first Olympic games.

When you are having trouble feeding your populace, battling AIDS, hemmorhagic fevers, and civil wars, sending a few folks off to learn how to ice dance is pretty low on the radar.

While there are obviously concerns with background (You are going to get better skiiers in a country where people learn to ski when they learn to walk) saying that since there are few black people in the winter olymipcs the sports are somehow less of a 'real' competition and that even though many millions of people watch it and there is near constant coverage on FOUR different stations that it is a "farce" is rather, err, farcical.

*snicker*

Has anyone else noticed how insanely young the snowboarding "experts" are? I think the chick that won the gold for the US halfpipe is 19. It's a very big indicator of who patently ridiculous the event is in the Olympics since the Americans almost swept the medals. The rest of the world seems to not have snowboarding on the radar while Americans have indulged in it for over a decade. I just think the inclusion was like, hmmm America needs more medals...snowboard!

Winter Olympics are barely sports.

Everyone knows how to run and has some idea of how fast they are. Everyone jumps a few times in their lives. A lot of people ride bicycles.

NOBODY does Luge or Bobsled or Ice Dancing. Sports like that are impossible to take seriously because there are so few competitors. When you watch the NBA you know the guys there are good because there are millions of people all over the world who want to be in the NBA, and only a few of them can be. How many people in the world want to be a top Luge person? How many people in the world have ever tried something even remotely similar to Luge a single time in their lives?

The entire competitive nature of sports means nothing if the pool of potential participants is tiny. It's being the best out of 10 people - wow!

There are millions upon millions of people who ski and ice skate.  Possibly even more than play basketball, large parts of the Earth get covered with ice and snow at various times of the year.

PS Your frame of reference is showing.

I set up a luge run in my backyard. But is only 3 feet long so I don't get much practice at any one time.

On the upside, the crashes are much less painful.

Reading is hard I guess. Yes, people ski and skate, which is why I did not mention those. Luge though? Ice Dancing? Bobsled?

I'm fine with basic ski events. But about half of the winter olympic events are the equivalent of synchronized swimming. The summer olympics do have this problem as well but to a much lesser extent.

I can't even tell you what it takes to be good at Luge. I have some idea of how to be good at gymnastics or high jump - what skills does Luge even use? I literally have no idea. You lie on something and shift your weight around - did I leave something out?

No I read fine you said, "Winter Olympics are barely sports." and followed that with pointing out how things people do all the time somehow make for better, more 'real', sports.  You used, "NOBODY does Luge or Bobsled or Ice Dancing." as specific examples but no where did you exclude any winter sports from your opening all inclusive statement.

I think I was quite correct in pointing out common activities of normal people as represented in the winter Olympics to counter your premise, since you made no effort to exclude those things.

Maybe you should pay attention to what you write?

How about this: MOST PEOPLE don't do do MOST Winter Olympics sports.

Good enough?

Clearly NOBODY was a purposeful overstatement. Yes, there are at least 10 people on earth that Luge.

Edit: Let's settle this like real men - (Ice) dance off!

No, because many people do actually do most winter sports in some form.  Down hill sledding?  Done it.  Ice Skating? Done it.  Snow Skiing?  Done it. 

Your point sucks.

(http://images.ucomics.com/images/amuniversal/press_release/calvin_sled.gif)

I once sledded (is that a word?  I'm sure the spell checker will tell me)  from the 5th ski lift in Taos, through the trees to the valley, on a toboggan.  It was the fastest ,most uncontrollable, scariest ride I've ever taken... including the one where Righ took me around Brand's Hatch.  It was also one of the most stupid things I've ever done and I do a LOT of stupid things... I couldn't see, I couldn't scream and I couldn't properly control the sled.  I'm lucky to be alive!

Spell check likes the word!

I used to luge when I was a kid. One of our local ski resorts had one.

We also have a luge at one of the metroparks near me. It's set up next to the sledding hill. No room for ski slopes there though so you actually have to drive 20 minutes further to the south for skiing. I also live about 5 minutes away from a year round ice skating rink.

And speaking of winter vs. summer sports I'm honestly not sure if our high school had a track & field team. I don't think we did, I think it was just cross country. But we definately had a ski team.

I hate you.  :cry:

Well I never got to participate as it was one of the pay-to-play teams at our high school and I was always the poor kid at the rich kid school (poor me). A season was something like $600 + equipment and if I wanted to do it would have had to pay for it myself. $600 is a lot of money to a 15-16 year old...

Fine, I give up. Clearly the winter olypmics are full of very universal sports, which is why they are immensly popular. I forgot that nearly everyone on earth belongs to a ski club that has a luge track - silly me.

To sprint you need 100 meters of unobstructed terrain. To luge you need snow, a luge, a luge track, membership to a ski club, and a reason to luge. I don't know why I didn't see that they are basically equivalent.

Basically every person in the world runs at some point. I suppose most people luge as well. I'll count myself as part of the tiny non-luging minority.

I would also point out that to do winter sports of any kind you need snow and ice, whereas to do most summer sports you just need a roof. Although again that's just me being silly.

People laugh at me when I try to sprint.  Evidently, I run like a girl.

What the fuck? Why does something need to be immensely popular to exist?

Actually in a lot of nordic countries these kinds of sports ARE immensly popular. Is the winter olympics for everybody no but there is a good chunk of the populated landmass of this world that lives in areas that get enough snow and ice to enjoy these sports.

Hell look at some summer games.

Pole vaulting while neat to watch how many people really head out to the field with a long pole and start hurdling themselves 15 feet up?

Crew racing. Um if you can find a more elitist sport you would have to look hard.

Shot putting. Ya there is a huge following of people who watch burly guys chuck lead weights.

Both have some silly sports that you would likely never participate in nor probably even know somebody who does. This does not mean that the events are not sports. Hell for things like this the olympics are the one time every four years that they get to shine. Let them have their time in the sun and you can go back to watching months and months of NBA games with jackasses I can't stand again.

Kaid makes a solid point.

Both sides of the games (Summer/Winter) have their obscure sports. Weightlifting, fencing, field hockey, PING PONG? Those tend to get shadowed out by soccer, track, gymnastics, and swimming.

As for the huge followings, skiing is enormous in many countries. Skating as well, whether figure or hockey. The fact that they have a few, and I would hazard to say less, obscure games doesn't detract from the similarities between the two.

(http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/twentieth_century_fox/planet_of_the_apes/bryant_gumbel/apespre2.jpg)

Maybe I am weird, or its because the GF is Norwegian, or I lived with an ice dancer for a year, but I like the winter Olympics more.

It kills me that the games have me all psyched up for cross-country skiing and its 40 in Chicago right now.  I may have to take up curling in frustration, there is a club about 20 min from me.

The only thing that is cutting into my enjoyment is that ass short tracker Apollo Ono.  I was pissed when he blamed the other skater for his fall, but then he showed up late for his consolation round.  Real classy that one.

Edit : he did show a lot of class when he came in 3rd in the 1000, I take most of it back.

Strangely, the downhill skier guy doesn't bother me.

You won't get any argument from me on the first two. Shot putting is pretty universal though. While not many people shot put, most people throw things and have some idea if they would be good at throwing heavy objects or not. It's pretty understandable.

The popular summer olympics sports are track and field (mostly the simpler events like sprinting, long jump, etc - the track really), swimming and gymnastics. I would argue that gymnastics is a bit of a special case in that because of the nature of the sport and the nature of the judging, the age of the competitors, and other factors it's appeal is based more on drama value than sports content. (Watch with your eyes half-covered to see if anyone royally screws up) Ice skating is often the same thing.

The summer sports like whitewater rafting, steeple chase, gymnastic/dancing (whatever they call it), synchronized swimming - not so popular, not so universal. I think the summer olympics have archery and shooting - again not universal, especially archery.

My opinion is that there are an infinite number of somewhat athletic things people can compete in, and the olympics should try to capture iconic ones.

We got Silver, bitches! Short Track – Women's 500 m. Yeah. I can taste the almost Victory. All other Nations tremble in our presence! (http://forums.gottadeal.com/images/smilies/victory.gif)

My question is: would UT2K4 be a winter or summer sport?

Blood sport. So, the X-games.

Okay I just watched mens snowboard cross last night. Okay this is obviously something people pulled out of their asses for a sport but by god it is amusing for me to watch. Crazy buggers. All they need now is russian chicks and LL cool Jay and it would be roller blade the movie on snow!

kaid

Having finished watching the Latvia vs. USA game (haven't watched the second USA game so don't spoil it for me), I can safely say the NHL needs to do whatever it can to make the game more like Olympic Hockey. Holy shit, that was some fast-paced fun. Lots of breaks, rushes, shooting, some good hits but with plenty of ice room for skating. The NHL needs no-touch icing. It looked like the rink was bigger... is it? There was also much more room behind the goal than in the NHL.

For a 3-3 tie, that was a great game.

Americans don't pay to watch "hockey".  They pay to watch thugs_on_ice.  It's a tragedy.  I've commented on this in a few hockey threads here over the years and think it's a market-driven phenomenon.  When the NHL goes back to real hockey, I'll be one of their greatest supporters.  Until then, if I want to watch boxing, I'll watch two professionals do it.

Olympic rink is 15 feet wider. Or longer. Or something like that. Maybe taller.

A point some astute sportstalk guy made a while ago that I am 100% in agreement with:

The sport which has outgrown itself the worst is Ice Hockey.  Simply put, when the dimensions which the NHL plays by were put into place the average size and speed of the top pro hockey players was one thing and today they're much bigger and much faster.  The rink has become prohibitive to the game.

Next in line is probably football and basketball; basketball already tried to adapt by creating the 3pt line and widening the key.  Problem is that things like "100 yard gridiron" and "10 foot hoop" are pretty much ingrained in the national sports psyche.  I could definately see them widening the football field though.  (I think Canadian's are larger?)

Baseball is baseball; it will never change and probably doesn't need to.  60'6" from mound to plate and 90' basepaths aren't going anywhere and they already have some latitude on where to place the outfield fences.  Both the pitchers and batters strengths tend to offset each other at the plate.

Aside: Soccer got it right from the start.  The pitch seems always large enough to not need tampering unless you're in favor of enlarging the goals to increase scoring which I'm not.

Not quite. The late 60's they lowered the mound because they thought it would keep guys like Bob Gibson from striking out everyone. They also added the DH in the 70's. Plus the addition of the wild card has been big. :)

Incase anyone didn't notice, the NHL changed dozens of rules this year. They are doing everything they can to eliminate the hooking, holding, interference, etc. Its resulted in higher scoring, faster paced games.

As for the fighting, fighting will always have a place in hockey. I'm not a fan of the designated thug - nothing is worse than two guys fighting because "its their job". Fighting in hockey is about protecting your stars, standing up for yourself, and most importantly - settling things without resorting to hitting the guy in the head with a stick. If two guys throw down in a spur of the moment, that's exciting and its part of the game.

Olympic ice is bigger, its 10 - 15 feet wider. This can be good or bad. If the ice gets too big, teams are forced to take a more deffensive style. It seems ok at the olympics, because of the skill level of the players, but if you watch say a Swedish Elite league game, which uses big ice, its nothing but deffensive traps and counter-attacks. Big ice is too hard to deffend so the players have to stay back. Leads to rather boring hockey actually. Smaller ice on the other hand leads to more hitting. As long as the NHL continues keeping the hooking and interferance out of the game, the smaller ice will be fine.

10 yards longer field, wider field, longer end zones, one more player, one less down, no fair catches, single points on missed field goals, no Michael Irvins, etc. etc.

You spelled basketball really really wrong.

Basketball is by far the worst as far as this goes. The court is so crowded now that most basketball consists of isolation plays, which are just plays designed specifically to artificially increase open area on the court by shoving most of the players off to the side.

Sucks to be Lindsey Jacobellis.      (http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/buttkick.gif)

And the US Women's Hockey team...

I do like the way Lindsey handled it, with her "I gotta be me" attitude.  Normally showboating gets me angry, but she is a snowboarder.  It is part of of it all.

She still has one more olympic medal than I do.

Having been watching that from a hotel room in San Fran, I must say that that was officialy the second most stunned I have ever been watching something on tv. The time I was first most stunned, something really bad happened, so I'll just not go there.

The woman's hockey team were just not up to snuff.  At least they didn't try and do some pirouettes before they smacked the puck around.

Lindsey Jacobellis is a dumbass.

So it's over for this time, and it really feels like Sweden won it all after having won the mens hockey gold ( the only gold I care about atleast ). And against our arch-enemy the evil Finns no less. Haven't been this pumped about sports since 94!

I am so glad the Olympics are over- I am jonesing for some NHL in a bad way.

Standard NHL rink is 85'x200'.

Standard Olympic ice rink is 100'x200' (15 feet wider).

Having played on both surfaces I can tell you that the wider ice makes defensive coverage a real PITA.  It really emphasizes fast open skating and agility rather than brute force.  Two or three 6'5" guys weighing 250 pounds can lock up an NHL blue line, but on Olympic ice they would be dog meat to the faster skaters (trust me I know this from experience).

I've heard 1000 conspiracy theories as to why Olympic ice is larger (or why the NHL is smaller), but consensus is that it more closely mimics the outside open ice sheets that people play on when they are growing up (especially in Europe).  The other popular theory was that in the US the ice surface was shortened to reduce the size of the stadiums and make it much cheaper to maintain the ice surfaces (shrinking the side by 15 feet is a 15% reduction is surface that has to be maintained).

Obviously the kind of hockey that is played is greatly influenced by just that 15 feet of ice surface.  Dump-and-chase plays are fairly useless on Olympic rinks, where there is much more room to just skate in the zone.  Neutral zone traps are damn near impossible as well (this is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on which teams you like to follow).  On the flip side, people who are used to the bigger surface can end up handicapped and stripped of the puck repeatedly on the smaller ice surface.  I think there is a lot more strategy and positioning on the NHL ice surface where Olympic ice surfaces tend to showcase the star players more.

Just some food for thought.

Also, I think the close quarters of the NHL rinks emphasize more physical play. Seeing good checks are still some of the most satisfying moments in watching hockey. With more room on an Olympic rink, there are just a lot fewer physical confrontations.

The Olympics seems to feature a lot more set plays, more skating with the puck around a defenseman into the offensive zone instead of dumping, and more spectacular cross ice passes than the NHL, where it's easy for five 6'4" guys to completely clog the ice.  It also seems to be a lot more demanding on defensemen.  In the big upset game, while Russia was skating and passing, the Canadiens were headhunting on the boards waiting to smash someone.  That's why I think they lost.   Well, that and the fact that the average age on their roster was something like 87. 

Don't forget the fact that they scored 1 goal in like 4 games. It was pathetic.

Grats to Sweden and grats to the old US for edging us by one medal.

I want to defend my boys, but I can't.  *sniff*

So:

Go Brad Gushue! We still rock at Curling!

Oh, and we absolutely shit kick at Women's long distance Speed Skating: Cindy Klassen - 5 medals.

Only because you don't have to bring your own stones.

I'm just glad that The Office and My Name is Earl are back.

And Love Monkey isn't. It's a cruel world.

It was a case where the title actually sunk the show. Nobody knew wtf that meant.