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I like cycling, but it's only fair, isn't it? I mean swimming is so common, so many people do it around the world, both for leisure and in competitions. Track cycling is a complete niche.
(But I'm for cutting events in both disciplines.)
By that logic we should have at least 10 different road cycling events though.
IMO having 100 and 200 of 4 different strokes along with 3 different relays is just taking the piss.
A guy who's good at 100 and 200m can literally win 5 golds with that alone.
It was so niche that the British Olympic Committee realised that if they spent a few million they'd get a medal haul as so few countries take it seriously.
I already wrote something about that in another topic... I think discliplines where there are several contenders who do both should be cut (I would cut the whole program radically.) So something like 200m track sprint would be out. (In my world there would be a quarter of swimming events.)
Of course that should not be the only factor, so no 10 different road cycling events.
Danish team for a long time not convinced about the decision because of continued British people protest. Bennekou says Rodenberg never looks up in the last kilometre. There's supposed to be a flag when a team has been separated and that flag wasn't up. Rodenberg said:
'We are still waiting for the official announcement.
I don't register that we get so close to him. I see that he is there maybe half a round out and all of a sudden he is there. I don't see him. It's *** annoying. It's awful that it happens in an Olympic semifinal and I hope Charlie is okay.
It's awful. It's not cool for anyone. I don't say anything to him, I just stand and shout frustration, because I know what it means when you crash. Or what it might mean. I just stand there screaming to myself and am frustrated and tired. I'm all over the floor and can barely see anything. So it's not aimed at Charlie or the UK. It's aimed at why the hell should I be there rolling around.
I'm so finished by that time I see sun moon and stars. I don't really know what is going on to put it bluntly.'
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Hill climb. Relays. Hammer climb like points races. City bike race. Team mass start.
We can get so much more dank than this.
The simple answer to everything is to cut the keirin from the Olympic program. Jason Kenny has won enough already.
You can't just start cutting *** when the Dutch are the favorites smh
Mountainous Road race, hilly Road race, flat Road race.
Prologue, mid distance tt, long tt
Add in ttts for above and you've got 18 events between men and women! 21 if you do mixed ttts!
The more competitions, the less value an Olympic medal will have. I think the road competitions are fine as they are. A 100 km long TTT could be interesting once in a while, but it will become tedious as a regular feature like in the past. All the other disciplines we have stage races, one-day races and WCs to decide the winners of.
Realistically, I wouldn't mind a huge TTT, though doesn't have to be 100km, though surely over 60km.
On track, I'd just ditch the team sprint to get the individual pursuit back. I think it's a silly event, it's not that competitive, and even I could become an Olympic champion by doing the first lap in the frigging qualifying round lol.
I wouldn't mind a city centre criterium race. A long as the RR is kept hilly enough that no sprinters can win then you woyhave no doubling up of medals.
The swimming is a bit ridiculous the way one person can hoover up so much
The swimming is a bit ridiculous the way one person can hoover up so much
I actually don't really care, if you take away the team sprint, the regular sprint or the keiran. It's just competitions for sprinters, who are not good enough to ride on the road, and who can't even do it on the track for very long either
But that's the core of every swimming meet; that you can try to improve your records in your best disciplines and potentially win a lot of medals. That's not how it is in most others sports, because it's much harder to recover between the different competitions.
If it's about recovery between events then a possibility is always a combined event... several events, but only one medal.
I don't care much for track cycling, but it does seem strange that they scrapped the individual pursuit sometime ago. I guess the equivalent would be scrapping the 1,500 in track and field (which some consider the blue ribbon event outside of the 100 metres).
What I've long found interesting is that the best in shorter events in cycling are derided (or at least less heralded) compared to long distance (road cycling, and especially 3 week grand tours), so endurance appears to be valued more than speed/power, yet in athletics it's kind of the opposite (though people still care more about the marathon than the madison).
What I've long found interesting is that the best in shorter events in cycling are derided (or at least less heralded) compared to long distance (road cycling, and especially 3 week grand tours), so endurance appears to be valued more than speed/power, yet in athletics it's kind of the opposite (though people still care more about the marathon than the madison).
But that would just limit the amount of swimmers, who'll have a chance of winning a medal. We don't need an omnium for swimmers.
The mixed medley relay should be a thing for the EC/WCs only, and now that the women are allowed to swim the 1500m, there shouldn't be both a 800 and a 1500 race for men and women. But with all the other competitions having been on the program for a long time (most since 1964 or earlier), you can't really scrap much more than those.
They have too many relays, and there shouldn't be 50 metre events for the lesser strokes imo.
Maybe scrap the 800 metre freestyle, and replace with an 800 IM!
There's only the 50 metres freestyle in the Olympics, and though it is a bit like including both the 60m and the 100m in athletics, I still think it's a great competition to have, because it's just about pure sprinting power with no turns to slow you down.
But I may also be a little biased here, since Denmark has won two of its last three Olympic swimming medals in the 50 freestyle.
Yeah you are right. The 50 in all strokes is just at the world championships.
I watch a little olympic swimming, but obviously don't take that much notice of what actual events are taking place. All I know is that the Aussie women won a heap of medals!
Well, the thing is... at the moment I'm watching climbing. Pretty much everyone I know in my age and younger does climbing/ bouldering from time to time. Some do it regularly, in clubs. But there is only one Olympic combined event, and only from this year on. I'm an advocate that the Olympics should have their broad base in everyday, leisurely done sports. Like I said, swimming is also very important, but there is no denying there are new sports (well, most not soo new, when a sport has been done competetively for decades I think it deserves some respect as such), and, like you said, if there are too many medals, it devalues the meaning of a medal. Also, for viewers it's not great.
There is a perception that Olympic sports are certain, special, classic sports, including something like shot-putting, with which the everyday exercises, sports in clubs, things you do for fun, have nothing to do. But that is not the core, in my opinion, and it will make it harder for children and teenagers to persue a sport, if it is practically a part of an Olympic bubble not at one, high-performance point, but from the beginning on.
I would rethink the whole system... the problem is that often the money/ support in a whole sport in a country depends on the medals gained in the Olympics, and also that there is only recognition for the sport through the Olympics, so that if you have only one event, it just can't sustain. I would like for a way to be found to change this.
Well, it's a complex topic. If you leave everything else the way it is and only cut half of for instance, the swimming and the cycling events, of course that has rather devestating effects. Hence it's all just mind play from my side. But if I think about what the Olympics should be, what the core is, it's not medal hording in a thousand events which are all pretty much the same, by one athlete. It also shouldn't be about certain countries strategically investing all their money into equipment and structures so that they can gain a bunch of medals and rake the international success. It should be the pinnacle of sports that people know and at best even do themselves.
Finding a balance between tradition and contemporary is difficult of course, but I would like to keep the "core" of Olympic sports, like wrestling, running, swimming, gymnastics, but not necessarily with the rules/ distances they have traditionally had, while integrating broadly done sports like climbing and karate.
Yeah the Aussie women were flying. Cate Campbell though must still be angry at herself for attempting to set a WR in the 100 freestyle in Rio but ending up throwing away a secure medal. With the level she's had during her career, it's ridiculous that she's only a one time individual world champion.
The medal program is such BS atm, so focused on sprinters and not enough endurance track events. Why things like IP, Points, Scratch and Madison have at various times had to make way for the X-Games nonsense but none of the sprint events do, I've no idea (the kilo is the only major loss on this side).
The Team Sprint is my least favourite track event. It has neither the tactical attraction of the match sprint, nor the cohesive demands or endurance and tactical pacing requirement of the Team Pursuit. It's just a straight watts showdown.
The dominance of the Britons has not just been the result of the money ploughed into a relatively shallow field of competition, but they've also been fortunate with the changes in the track program, as these have reduced the available haul for the mass start events which have a wider range of variables (and a more varied field of entrants as well), and increased the available haul in the events with fewer variables, and where their increased funding and technology has a disproportionately larger impact, and that happening at the same time as they have some absolute monster riders for those formats has meant that the medal haul of a rider like Kenny is inflated compared to what would have been available to that same rider 20-30 years ago. Endurance events other than the TP have only existed as part of the Omnium for the last decade, the Madison is back but there are no other field start events and the IP remains absent too.
In 1992, Kenny only really has the match sprint available to him unless he fancies the kilo, while an endurance trackie would have points, IP and TP. In 2000, two sprint events (keirin and team sprint) were added while one endurance event (madison) was added, redressing the balance in the men's events while the women still had a very limited program. The kilo was removed in 2008 to make room for BMX. In 2012, the program was balanced between the genders, but the men's events saw zero sprint events removed while three endurance events (madison, IP and points) were removed. And while the omnium does largely favour endurance, it's also one event replacing three, and 2 of its 6 events are sprint events (the kilo and the flying lap) and it basically pays one medal for the entire endurance program whereas the sprint specialists have three medals available to them, which is BS.
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