Beijing Winter Olympics 2022

[Libertine Seguros]

Not sure if people have seen some of the food photos posted by athletes..there is one of a tray that includes pats,sauce on the side and some other tired looking veggies..and some kind of rib meat looking stuff that looks like a prop from Jurassic Park movies..
got to be a factor for some athletes..

The photo in question was apparently what was served for all three meals every day in quarantine, posted by Valeriya Vasnetcova, one of the Russian biathletes who had travel problems and hasn't been able to compete yet. Which, seeing as Mass Start qualification is reliant on the results of the other races and she hasn't made the sprint/pursuit start, means unless she does the relay that's it for her Games.

 

[KZD]

What a performance from Nils Van der Poel in the 10km, new world record.

 

[Red Rick]

What a performance from Nils Van der Poel in the 10km, new world record.

Clearly needs to *** about the ice some more.

 

[BullsFan22]

The photo in question was apparently what was served for all three meals every day in quarantine, posted by Valeriya Vasnetcova, one of the Russian biathletes who had travel problems and hasn't been able to compete yet. Which, seeing as Mass Start qualification is reliant on the results of the other races and she hasn't made the sprint/pursuit start, means unless she does the relay that's it for her Games.

I bet they serve better food in prison. That looked unhealthy, and imagine eating that multiple times in a short amount of time.

 

[Tricycle Rider]

Not sure if people have seen some of the food photos posted by athletes..there is one of a tray that includes pats,sauce on the side and some other tired looking veggies..and some kind of rib meat looking stuff that looks like a prop from Jurassic Park movies..
got to be a factor for some athletes..

I'm assuming it's this picture you are speaking of, it's been making its way around the webs. This is supposedly what the athletes who are in quarantine have to consume... I think I might be able to identify most of it, am not sure what that white stuff in the top right corner is, though. A boiled chicken breast maybe?

 

[Tricycle Rider]

Redemption for Jacobellis.

Good for her, I remember when she made that dumb kid mistake so many years ago. Hers is the ultimate in Olympic redemption.

On that note I don't normally follow snowboarding and X Games stuff, but being I couldn't find anything else to watch last night I caught some of the men's halfpipe. The Japanese kids are just phenomenal, and it was kinda nice to see Shaun White one last time - he's been kicking around forever. Considering what he's up against with these young'uns he did pretty well.

 

[PeterB]

I'm assuming it's this picture you are speaking of, it's been making its way around the webs. This is supposedly what the athletes who are in quarantine have to consume... I think I might be able to identify most of it, am not sure what that white stuff in the top right corner is, though. A boiled chicken breast maybe?

This is the whole story about the food in the quarantine, for anyone wondering: https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wireStory/olympic-teams-raise-concerns-quarantine-hotels-82692842

It's kind of weird someone neglected such an important detail as serving good food to athletes in quarantine, but arguably things have meanwhile improved. Otherwise the reports about the food directly in the olympic village seem to be mostly positive.

 

[Red Rick]

Netherlands wins women's 3000m short track relay.

That's 4 medals outside the speed skating, surely that has to be a record for us.

 

[Tricycle Rider]

Caught some of the ice dancing yesterday, it was lovely and I can certainly appreciate the artistry and difficulty. It was also refreshing to hear Donna Summer or even Billie Eilish, because, dear god, if I hear Bolero or Carmen just one more time... I'm sure we'll see at least one Carmen next week when the ladies take the ice though, so I'll just have to put it on mute.

The monobob looked fun, I'm looking forward to the 4-man sled. Germany probably has the gold in the bag.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I know I’m a traditionalist, but for me it depends on whether a new sport... can be a competition without judging.

I agree, and have posted this before. I've even argued that judged sports should be in their own category, or as "demonstration" sports only, for us to watch.

The other problem with judging, you sort of say, is that people at home can rarely see the subtleties that judges can, and are left to announcers to explain it. Granted, if a skater falls over, that's not good, but the rest can be very hard to tell. Just athletes doing impressive things. And judging can be subjective, influenced, even if not by outside illegalities (which has also happened). Go back to the 2008 games in Beijing when China won an absurd amount of medals in judged events.

That’s partially because I detest most announcing anyways (with the exception of baseball radio announcers), and that’s why I watch all my cycling and skiing in French, which I understand just well enough to hear them identify riders and situations but not well enough to understand if they are blathering on about something inane

I get that about baseball, the best sport to listen to on radio.

50+ years ago there was a sports announcer named Don Dunphy in the US, maybe most famous for boxing. He was very well known for letting the action speak for itself. You could see some fights of his where he would hardly say anything for a minute or so. Refreshing.

 

[BlueRoads]

I agree, and have posted this before. I've even argued that judged sports should be in their own category, or as "demonstration" sports only, for us to watch.

The other problem with judging, you sort of say, is that people at home can rarely see the subtleties that judges can, and are left to announcers to explain it. Granted, if a skater falls over, that's not good, but the rest can be very hard to tell. Just athletes doing impressive things. And judging can be subjective, influenced, even if not by outside illegalities (which has also happened). Go back to the 2008 games in Beijing when China won an absurd amount of medals in judged events.

In figure skating there are plans to introduce AI judging - not sure that helps much if the AI isn't fed with the right data, but computers can definitely help to at least get some things right that some judges refuse to see, and also to improve the image of the sport.

A big problem for viewers and explaining the sport in my eyes is the terrible tech box in the Olympics. For years there has been a way better tech box at other events, so I don't get why they still have this awful one at the Olympics, where instead of getting the name, base value and GOE of the element you only get "green/yellow/ red", which basically says nothing. Also many of the commentators are not helpful at all. They could do a way better job of explaining.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

If we're going to introduce a new sport in the Winter games, I vote for the Mountain of Hell (or Megavalanche) downhill bike race. No judges, just one winner!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_7gkhSjSjY&t=173s

 

[Sciatic]

If we're going to introduce a new sport in the Winter games, I vote for the Mountain of Hell (or Megavalanche) downhill bike race. No judges, just one winner!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_7gkhSjSjY&t=173s

Whoa. Must be quite a DNF list!

 

[Koronin]

I get the complaints about all judged events and for me they all have to be categorized together.
However, whether or not you like snowboarding, you can't put snowboard cross in the same category as the judged snowboarding events as that is a time trail for starting positions and then races down the mountain.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Yea, I have little problem with snowboard cross, except inasmuch as unlike ski cross there isn't a true analogue to the 'purer' Alpine discipline, and I wish there would be a real snowboard equivalent of the DH to bring it prestige, but I also appreciate the potential difficulty with that.

In all actuality, for all the slating I give it, I don't have a problem with Big Air, Slopestyle and all the other X Games stuff... but I believe it to have its place, and that place is the X Games, and not the Olympics. The IOC in both Summer and Winter Games seems to be pushing these X Game concourse events (often, like with the cycling, at the expense of more traditional disciplines) in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience, but for the most part what appeals about those events to their audience is not the competition, otherwise the X Games would be a much bigger TV draw. As ever, those events are cool to watch a compilation of tricks with a thunderous energetic soundtrack, like being trapped in a 90s MTV time warp or the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games, but the competitions are marginal at best in terms of their reach.

Another thing I think of as an element is the gear. Alpine skiers, Nordic skiers, ski jumpers, athletes, cyclists, swimmers, these sports all have specialised clothing that companies and teams invest a lot of money in to eke out the smallest benefits of aerodynamics. The costumes are calibrated around saving vital time or maximising distance. When I'm watching Aerials and the competitors are wearing hooded coats and salopettes, it doesn't feel as much like elite level competition. That's purely a 'feel' thing though, and others' mileage may vary.

I am by and large opposed to judged sports (at least where the judgement is the totality, obviously something like ski jumping is an unusual case, and it's one of the ways to try to balance out conditions so that wind / gate etc. can be accounted for and competitions held safely) and would gladly see all of them expunged from the Olympics, but I do think sports like figure skating, gymnastics and diving are traditional and ought to be grandfathered in.

 

[Koronin]

I agree that ski jumping is a weird different category. I don't see the "older' judged sports any different from the news and I personally prefer watching the newer ones. Truthfully I don't see any real difference between say figure skating and snowboarding except figure skating has a lot more controversies around it.
To me the only reason skis are "purer" is because snowboards are a "new" invention and that should not preclude events to be brought into the Olympics. There are always sports being looked at. I'm not sure how surfing ended up in the Olympics though.
As for an audience I highly doubt weigh lifting has much of an audience and doesn't really have much more in the way of controversies than figure skating and gymnastics. If we expunge judged sports no grandfathering in, they all go with the exception of Ski Jumping because it's in a different category. The distance of the jump plays a bigger role than the judging does.

 

[Red Rick]

It's not a proper winter Olympics if we don't bottle the team pursuits.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I agree that ski jumping is a weird different category. I don't see the "older' judged sports any different from the news and I personally prefer watching the newer ones. Truthfully I don't see any real difference between say figure skating and snowboarding except figure skating has a lot more controversies around it.
To me the only reason skis are "purer" is because snowboards are a "new" invention and that should not preclude events to be brought into the Olympics. There are always sports being looked at. I'm not sure how surfing ended up in the Olympics though.
As for an audience I highly doubt weigh lifting has much of an audience and doesn't really have much more in the way of controversies than figure skating and gymnastics. If we expunge judged sports no grandfathering in, they all go with the exception of Ski Jumping because it's in a different category. The distance of the jump plays a bigger role than the judging does.

Alpine is purer than ski cross - it is older, more traditional, and has a stronger field of competition and prestige. That's not a criticism of ski cross or saying it is 'better' than snowboard cross, it's still a race and a straightforward sporting discipline (and at first suffered from major "first out of the start gate wins" teething issues, but seems a lot better from that perspective nowadays), but just saying that traditional Alpine disciplines are 'purer'. I see snowboard cross and ski cross as being just as closely related as ski cross and Alpine.

Both skiing and snowboarding have a number of judged disciplines, none of which particularly float my boat. However, snowboard has an equivalent of ski cross but not of Alpine which is considered the oldest and purest of the downhill disciplines. There are myriad reasons for that, that's all.

 

[BigCoward]

Japanese women in the team pursuit. What were you thinking?

 

[Mayomaniac]

If it was up to me sled racing on real tracks and not in an Ice Channel would be Olympic. It's one of the oldest, purest wintersports.
I'd also add Ski Mountaineering because I like it, both the uphill race and the Marathon (not the sprint, that's a horrible sideshow), but that's probably just me liking the sport.

 

[King Boonen]

I know I’m a traditionalist, but for me it depends on whether a new sport introduced to the Games can be a competition without judging. So it makes complete sense that there are snowboard races where time to the bottom determines the winner. For that matter I would welcome snowboard jumping if that was determined by distance or time. I would still “grandfather” in sports that have always had judging, like figure skating and ski jumping.
obviously this is an individual opinion, with the primary reason that I don’t want to listen to an announcer in order who understand who won and why they were better. That’s partially because I detest most announcing anyways (with the exception of baseball radio announcers), and that’s why I watch all my cycling and skiing in French, which I understand just well enough to hear them identify riders and situations but not well enough to understand if they are blathering on about something inane

I've always been led to believe that far too much is made of the judging having an effect on these sports and, if you understand the sports, it's almost always clear who is going to win and why.

 

[BlueRoads]

Okay, the judging in the women's fs event today was ridiculous. I had hoped they would go a bit lowkey after all the attention, but no. The judging in men's really isn't bad, it's not perfect, but medals aren't decided by wrong decisions and overall it's pretty fair. The fact that the Russian men aren't scored like the Russian girls probably helps a lot.
Kamila / the Russian girls don't need any doping, they can simply rely on the judges.
It's very sad, because actually it's not at all subjective, but if the referees in football decided to just call handballs when they want to and ignore them when they don't want to see them and there are no consequences, I guess not so many people would like to see that sport either... The problem I suppose is that not enough viewers know the differences and what the judges should look out for, so there is no real public outcry.

I have no idea how this works though, whether it's really money the judges get or whether they are also threatened. The influence on them must be immense, though. Most screwed over today: the Japanese.

 

[Norbea]

If it was up to me sled racing on real tracks and not in an Ice Channel would be Olympic. It's one of the oldest, purest wintersports.

Sled racing on ice might be banned in the future. It is really unhealthy. The g-force and the constant shaking is dangerous and leads to brain damage. It might be up there in terms of head injuries alongside pro boxing and American football.

 

[Sciatic]

I've always been led to believe that far too much is made of the judging having an effect on these sports and, if you understand the sports, it's almost always clear who is going to win and why.

That’s true, if I watch enough I can learn all the nuances of the sport and judge for myself. But the fact that’s it’s judged on artificial standards (or maybe it’s better to say, more artificial than measures of time and distance) takes some competitive integrity out of the sport. Why for instance, even with judging, should it matter if a moguls skier keeps their knees together? What if some individual developed a more efficient way of doing moguls (and still aesthetically pleasing) but didn’t have their knees together? There could be a development like aFosbury flop equivalent, So what if a half pipe snowboarder who went higher and faster in their jumps (and more rotations—though # of rotations is also a budget problem) but didn’t add a board grab and gets less points.?These are style things, but become solidified into a necessary element. Peter Sagan can do some awesome tricks on his bike, which is cool, but he doesn’t get bonus seconds for those. Of course, some of us may have wished that they subtracted seconds from Froome’s times for his style on the bike. So we can enjoy or deplore stylistic differences but those don’t change the result, while also leaving room for innovations that make a functional difference. Which is how I think it should be.

 

[tobydawq]

Sled racing on ice might be banned in the future. It is really unhealthy. The g-force and the constant shaking is dangerous and leads to brain damage. It might be up there in terms of head injuries alongside pro boxing and American football.

I don't see American football being banned in the near future...

But I didn't know that the luge and skeleton were that dangerous. They just seem really bizarre as sports to me, I don't really get why anyone would watch it.

Ski mountaineering would be a good addition, I think!