Just wondered if any members are going to be watching the upcoming Olympics with any real interest.I don't really care for most of the events with the exception of gymnastics Add the covid business which will kick a few competitors out.I prefer the winter Olympics more interesting competitions and hate to admit knurling has become my favorite..something intense about tossing stones.Just was wondering what my M8's think about the event.
I've always had minimal interest in the Olympics but this year my interest is at absolute zero due to the overt politicization concerning the "flag issue'. I'll leave it at that.
I've always had minimal interest in the Olympics but this year my interest is at absolute zero due to the overt politicization concerning the "flag issue'. I'll leave it at that.
what flag issue ? japan rising sun or is there something else ??
i might watch something here and there, but i dont care about olympics at all untill they add a coliseum gladiatorium with the world most dangerous criminals competing for a clean sheet release back into resocialization. Also aparently skating is now a olyimpic sport, so lol.....call me when game is officially acepted, i know its been talked about. speaking of wich why is chess barred from olympics ? brain is a muscle too,its very athletic to use it. in fact im tired, im going to lay down and play some games.
It's like summer camp. Who cares about any of that? Not me. And certainly not as olympic competitions. Men will be competing with (and as) women. And the politics will destroy what's left. I hope this is by far the lowest rated Olympics in forever, and I can't see how it won't be. If I tune out there goes my solitary ratings point, and the people hoping to make money on it all will get a little less. If enough people do it, perhaps they'll get the message when it hits their bottom line. And isn't that what the Olympic spirit is all about?
The Olympics have become stranger each time. It seems that the event turns out to be a financial boondoggle for the hosts city and the television ratings seem to become more and more dismal each time. It almost seems like the "controversial" news stories are the only thing drawing any media or public attention. The athletics seems to be secondary now. But you can say that about all sports now.
For a norwegian the winter olympics is more interesting. I am going to watch though. How much is depending on time of day since Tokyo is 7 hours ahead of us.
Curling is interesting rwatson. I used to play in the eighties. I have a third place in my clubs championship tournament. There were only 3 teams participating though.....
For a norwegian the winter olympics is more interesting. I am going to watch though. How much is depending on time of day since Tokyo is 7 hours ahead of us.
Curling is interesting rwatson. I used to play in the eighties. I have a third place in my clubs championship tournament. There were only 3 teams participating though.....
As a Canadian, I agree about the Winter Olympics. Hockey is all that really matters to me.
This kid lives on my street. In our small town of 1,300.
It would be utterly surreal for me to live in a town with 1,300 people. I'm pretty sure my townhouse development has more people than that.
It's wonderful. I live in a subdivision of about 25 homes, we all have acre lots. We are 10 minutes from a town of 12,000, less than 15 minutes to a City of 135,000. An hour away from the 4 largest city in North America, Toronto. Rogers just started installing fiber optic internet infrastructure. We will have real internet by March. I love having space between homes. We lived in the City before, people on top of people, no yard. The streets lined with cars. I hated it. No privacy at all.
The Summer Olympics have lost my interest. I miss the fierce competitiveness and excitement of Synchronized Swimming. The face paced action, the drama, the potential danger at the speeds as which they performed.
No. It never really held much interest for me. Maybe with streaming being an option for more extensive coverage I might look for some boxing.
I remember the day when Olympic boxing was at it's best. I don't think we will ever see that again. Some of those U.S. vs Cuban rivalry matches were classic.
The Olympics stopped being compelling with the end of the Cold War IMO.
Agree. I remember people being madder than hell if an East German judge didn't give a Western athlete a high enough score for a dive or a gymnastics routine. Of course, the 1980 U.S. hockey win over the Soviets was the pinnacle Olympic event for most of us northern U.S. boys. The Olympics has not had that us vs. them feel to it since. Now it feels all it is about is finding an athlete to attach to a large corporate sales push to and that's it.
... i might watch something here and there, but i dont care about olympics at all untill they add a coliseum gladiatorium with the world most dangerous criminals competing for a clean sheet release back into resocialization. Also aparently skating is now a olyimpic sport, so lol.....call me when game is officially acepted, i know its been talked about. speaking of wich why is chess barred from olympics ? brain is a muscle too,its very athletic to use it. in fact im tired, im going to lay down and play some games.
Doesn't chess already have a world tournament for its top players? Putting it in the Olympics would seem redundant and let's face it, being an Olympic event won't increase interest in the game.
Doesn't chess already have a world tournament for its top players? Putting it in the Olympics would seem redundant and let's face it, being an Olympic event won't increase interest in the game.
My point is that outside of Russia, hardly anyone is going to bother watching a televised chess match. Certainly not enough to satisfy the advertisers who spend millions on ads during the Olympic game airings.
The Olympics shouldn't be a collection of things that people can turn in to a competition. Otherwise why not make pinball an Olympic sport? Bass fishing? RC plane racing?
In my view it should be limited to athletic competitions, and I'd even advocate for the removal of any competition that determines the winner by judging, with perhaps the exception of boxing. If it can't be decided by a score, a distance, a time or this sort of thing than I'd like to see it gone. Judges awarding scores with any and all inherent bias (whatever that may entail) seems a poor way to decide any competition, and it's proven so countless times in the past. Competitions like figure skating, diving and gymnastics are marred by the way the winners are determined. Even ski jumping, which I like, has 'style' points partially used to determine a winner. Why? Who jumped the farthest? That should be the winner. All in my view of course.
That’s why Synchronized Swimming was such an enthralling event. The action and high intensity of the event left you on the edge of your seat tense for the final outcome.
The Olympics shouldn't be a collection of things that people can turn in to a competition. Otherwise why not make pinball an Olympic sport? Bass fishing? RC plane racing?
Who will take the gold in Tiddly-Winks? Or Monopoly? Personally, I'm looking forward to competitive sleeping.
Originally Posted by DBond
In my view it should be limited to athletic competitions, and I'd even advocate for the removal of any competition that determines the winner by judging, with perhaps the exception of boxing. If it can't be decided by a score, a distance, a time or this sort of thing than I'd like to see it gone. Judges awarding scores with any and all inherent bias (whatever that may entail) seems a poor way to decide any competition, and it's proven so countless times in the past. Competitions like figure skating, diving and gymnastics are marred by the way the winners are determined. Even ski jumping, which I like, has 'style' points partially used to determine a winner. Why? Who jumped the farthest? That should be the winner. All in my view of course.
The motto for the Olympics needs to be changed. "Faster, higher, stronger" does not apply to the vast majority of events.
My point is that outside of Russia, hardly anyone is going to bother watching a televised chess match. Certainly not enough to satisfy the advertisers who spend millions on ads during the Olympic game airings.
There are plenty of olymic competitions that get barely any coverage, but true, chess is not exactly a crowd magnet. Currently there is the FIDE World Cup ongoing, and the online streams hit like ~20k viewers. Point being, you need a certain level of expertise as viewer to appreciate what's going on, That's obviously not the case for the usual athletic competitions, or swimming etc...
there have been some odd sports in the past Olympic: Rope Climbing. Tug-o'-war. Poetry. Town planning. Barrel Tossing. Pistol Duelling. "Are the silver and bronze winners not mounting the podium sirrah?" "Due to the nature of the sport, they are somewhat indisposed Excellency"
I'm on the fence. Would it be judged for style and difficulty, or would we just measure where the little person hit the sandpit?
They would land in sandpits?
Or we could combine it with curling and see how far along the ice they'd slide, with the broomers sweeping a path?
I like vonbaur's Monopoly shout. I live near Atlantic City and have been there countless times. I think that gives me an advantage and I could represent America proudly. I'd be all over Ventnor Avenue you know it.
I'm on the fence. Would it be judged for style and difficulty, or would we just measure where the little person hit the sandpit?
I'd put it with things like discus, javelin, hammer throw*, and shot put...farthest distance wins. Although I could see it divided into two or three categories; distance, height, and hang time.
With things like surfing and skateboarding being accepted I don't see why skydiving shouldn't be. Sequential relative work...how many different formations a group of four or eight skydivers can make in a given period of time...is very fast-paced and requires little technical knowledge to be exciting. More exciting than things like floor exercises or vaulting, in my opinion. And with current capabilities of GoPro-style cameras to transmit a signal to the ground in real time the viewers can be right in the middle of the action.
Overall, I was very interested in the Olympics when I was young, in the 60's when satellites beaming things halfway around the world was new. In the late 60's and early 70's I became more aware of the geopoliticalization and the shenanigans that some countries were pulling, and the gold, silver, and bronze began to lose some of their luster. Nearly the rest of my interest was killed when they started allowing professional athletes to officially compete, and particularly the pride that so many of my fellow Americans took in the best of the NBA somehow dominated the basketball competition. It just struck me as cheering for a professional boxer to beat up a high school kid. And the final nail in the coffin was (and if this is deemed to stray to far into PWEC, please edit this sentence out) all the SJWBS that has recently been added, again primarily by my home country.
*It's NOT a hammer. But if they called it "ball-and-chain throwing" I suppose it could lead people to think it involved domestic violence.
I love it when a friend wins the internet tonight.
Can't really give Ms RappinHo what she deserves, you know like ZSPN and her anti-male, guy gets a soccer ball in the face.
I can give her the whole song, for her and her "sisters". Hard to believe they and others are allowed to represent the America my forefathers fought for.
The World Cup is just as bad. Instead of just awarding it to a nation with the infrastructure already in place, the geniuses at FIFA tend to give it to a nation that has none or little of this, so that it needs to be built, costing enormous gobs of money. See South Africa, Qatar, Brazil, etc. These nations then spend hundreds of millions, or even billions, to get it in place, and when the circus leaves town these edifices to greed and corruption then sit vacant and unused. A decaying symbol of their own ineptitude, with the price costing them long after their usefulness has dried up. Only thing left is the plight of the people to bear the burden of the cost.
How much public money has Japan spent to host this Olympics? How much do they stand to get in return? Especially without any gate?
The Japanese people appear to be in opposition to the Games, and it's not like it's a split. It's nearly all of them. I'm not the leading expert on Japanese culture, but they strike me as a people who are often willing to bear a burden if it's good for the nation, a real national spirit. And for them to be so strongly against these Games seems to be quite telling.
By the way, I looked in to the cost for Japan of hosting these games. Estimates vary, and these things tend to be under-reported to make it more palatable to the masses. Original estimate at the time Japan made its bid was 7.4 billion. But now, and again the figures vary according to who is talking, it is looking to ultimately cost Japan between 15 and 20 billion.
With foreign visitors banned I can't see how they will come anywhere close to recouping the outlay. TV rights go to the IOC, I would expect. So how is Japan going to get its money back? How much will this ultimately cost the Japanese people?
As regards the London site, it is a great legacy success, turning a brownfield derelict area into a great asset to the city, with both parks and sports and leisure facilities which are well utilised today. I do recall the litigious stance regarding the words 'Olympic' and '2012' within a certain radius of the Park. I had to hoon round East London removing bin graphics I supplied to a Waste Container company which contained those words. There was even a legal action to order an East London Greek family-owned eatery, which had been trading as the 'Olympic Cafe' for at least two generations, to 'cease and desist' using the word, and to change their signage at their own expense to 'Olympia'. Despite our endemic English pessimism, the 2012 games was one of the most enjoyed and successful of the events.
Many small businesses were kicked out to make way for it. The roads around London were all roadworks for ~1year- just so visitors wouldn't see the state of our normal cart tracks. I'm in live events and many events didn't/couldn't happen that year (eg Glastonbury cos Olympics had taken over all the portable toilets in the country). Personally I lost alot of regular work that summer, ~half never came back. Of course there were some who raked it in that summer
I lived in Atlanta for 8 years (late-1988 to late-1996) leading up to and including the Summer Games in '96, and what I remember about the Olympics (besides attending one event, some obscure handball game) was the incredible job market.
I was an AutoCAD/Intergraph/MicroStation CAD Operator (draftsman) with only a high school education, but I had my own CAD 'workstation' (a stout 486DX2/66 w/large NEC monitor: ~$10,000 when including software) and was moonlighting contract work in the evenings and on weekends. The opportunities (quantity of jobs and pay) were insane in the construction fields for both full-time and contracting jobs (many of us with our own machines did both). It was the closest I ever came to matching my wife's salary (degreed Accountant) if for a relatively short period of time.
I don't know how it is structured, but I would bet that the ratings risk isn't on the IOC, but on the broadcasters. In other words, the IOC sells the rights, for whatever price they can get, which is billions upon billions across the world as they negotiate each nation separately. This is paid way in advance, for example NBC locked up through 2020 in 2011, and then in 2014 extended it through 2032. Total outlay was in the region of 12 billion dollars. To this add all the other nations' broadcasting rights.
So if ratings do indeed tank at any point, the risk is assumed by the broadcaster. They may indeed negotiate some sort of pro-rate to soften the blow for the broadcaster if ratings tank, or make adjustments for a pandemic, but in general I think the IOC gets its money regardless of how the actual ratings pan out.
So if ratings do indeed tank at any point, the risk is assumed by the broadcaster. They may indeed negotiate some sort of pro-rate to soften the blow for the broadcaster if ratings tank, or make adjustments for a pandemic, but in general I think the IOC gets its money regardless of how the actual ratings pan out.
The networks can simply choose to drop the Olympics from their broadcast schedule or they can demand deep price cuts on the rights to broadcast them. Either option WILL affect the bottom line of the IOC.
The only ones who make any money on the Olympics is the IOC who get their total money no matter how well the Games do financially.
Not if the TV ratings for the Olympic games continue on their current downward trend.
The last Olympics I watch on TV was the Australia, that was awesome. Also London 2012, I still remember the bikini wearing cheerleaders dancing between sets during the Women's Beach Volleyball.
I've broken my vow and tuned in a little. Far less than in years past, but I still flip to it to see if there's anything interesting to watch.
But what I have watched is boring. Maybe I've changed, I don't know. Maybe it was always the investment I felt in my country that rose above the actual competition, which I still feel, but diminished in some way. I feel no real emotion watching it. And partly that is due to how uninteresting I am finding the actual competitions, at least those that have been on when I tune in.
Women's handball? Horrible game. I'm sure it's the same for men's handball too.
Women's fencing? Or any fencing for that matter? Seriously boring, as they dance back and forth pointing their flimsy swords at one another. One match I saw the players got yellow carded because they weren't actually 'in combat', if that's what it is called.They just shuffled forward and backwards. And when they get a strike in they screech. It's all pretty embarrassing.
Beach volleyball? Boring too.
Canoeing? Come on. In the Olympics?
Water polo? Lame.
I watched a little BMX racing. Not the worst thing ever, but by the fourth heat it was like I had seen it all already. Every race looked exactly the same, the course has lots of dipsy-doos, but not enough turns and there's little overtaking or even crashes. Also boring.
I did enjoy the archery, believe it or not.
Maybe the track and field will breathe some life in to these games for me, I dunno. But so far, of what I have seen, it's been dull. I find it hard to care about it anymore. probably says more about me than the Olympics, but there ya go.
I wonder if the ratings are bad because of the time difference and that you are able to stream the events instead of watching them on linear television?
I think a lot of young people aren't watching because they just don't care. Most of these types of competitions are "old school". I think even skateboarding (X-games) interest is starting to wane. I think older people aren't interested because the sports entertainment industry is over saturated and bloated. There were several other kinds of sports on TV last night to chose from other than the olympics. Heck, there even was Championship Cornhole on. Add the fact that it is summer and people are getting outside after long periods of lock downs, and of course the whole thing about every sporting event becoming a platform for virtue signaling athletes who are more interested in drama and endorsements than the sport itself.
I think they should have just cancelled the 2020 olympics because of all the COVID stuff, instead of "shoe horning" it in right now. It is all bad timing. The world, especially here in the U.S., is just not in the mood for it right now.
I wonder if the ratings are bad because of the time difference and that you are able to stream the events instead of watching them on linear television?
That is indeed one major factor. The bottom line is that at least in the US, the days of scheduled network tv programming are rapidly coming to an end.
edit: I just saw LB4's post and I agree with it 100%
Simon Biles, who many consider the Greatest of all Time (a rather pretentious sobriquet, considering "of all time" includes future gymnasts), has taken herself out of most or all of the remainder of her events. She cites mental health issues due to the stress of practices and competitions. Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French open earlier this year for the same reason. Fellow athletes from many sports have voiced their support and related similar experiences. AND people around the world are making excuses for them, some saying they deserve special treatment.
Does anyone else remember when one mark of a TRUE champion was not only how well he or she competed, but how well he or she handled the pressure of "the big stage" whether that was the Olympics, a Grand Slam tennis tournament, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, or whatever? It seems like it was only yesterday.
And they want to talk about about pressure? Try going to a job that you don't particularly love, day after day, knowing you could be fired if you don't meet the company's expectations, all with a family that depends on you for support. Billions of people face that pressure every day of every week of every month of every year of their working adult lives without the support team...including emotional support...that athletes at her level have and don't earn a fraction in their lifetimes of what most of the poor, unfortunate athletes will in just a couple of years in salary and/or endorsements.
A "greatest of all time" would not crack under pressure and drop out of a tournament. They would power through, Pete Sampras style, and never give up.
When I was a kid, if an athlete quit, shame followed them for the rest of their lives.
If you step up to the plate in baseball, if you never swing, you will never hit the ball. The ball, however, might hit you... But if you swing and miss, at least you tried to do something, and that's a lot better than giving up, or worse, never having swung at all.
The SImon Biles thing is another example of the "drama" that has suffocated sports. Not only are the biggest stories coming out of the Olympics "controversial", if you have the wrong opinion about them you are chastised. What a tedious and exhausting way to have the Olympics. Can't wait for them to be over. NFL season starts in a few months, so everyone can just move on to the next round of "controversial" topics to get upset about.
As for SImon Biles. I don't care one bit. Let her have her Wheaties box cover and Today show appearances. It doesn't matter.
I renewed this thread this morning with some thoughts and I purposely left out the Biles thing. But now it's out there so I'll comment.
I'm in no position to pass judgement on what she did. I don't know exactly why she felt that way, nor any other issues she may be dealing with. I'm a big advocate for liberty and I would be hypocritical (and I despise hypocrites) to suggest she isn't in control of this, that it isn't her decision alone. Therefore I don't pass judgement on her decision to quit.
But what I do pass judgement on is the rush to frame her as some sort of heroine for doing so. I'll leave it at that.
I'm not following the Olympics closely, but the Simone Biles thing is pretty hard to miss while consuming news.
I don't want to push this into PWEC territory, but I will say that I think a number of commentators from the same portion of the political spectrum that I occupy have been misguided in their criticism of her decision / actions.
What is often overlooked is that in quitting the team competition, she saved the opportunity for the team to win the silver medal. Had she continued vaulting the way her first vault went, the team would not have had a chance to take silver.
On top of that, in light of how technically demanding/dangerous the vault moves are that they execute, she may very well have injured herself severely had she continued vaulting while her head was not in the right place. Maintaining correct spatial orientation while performing all that twisting/flipping at high speed is absolutely critical to landing safely. Think about how easy it would be to get that screwed up while distracted, and how hard it could end up being to regain your confidence in getting it right.
A wimp/wuss/snowflake does not accomplish the things that Simone Biles has in her career. Given her current age, this was probably her last time competing in an Olympics. In my mind, she deserves to be cut some slack on this.
Who called her a "wimp/wuss/ snowflake"? Not I. NFB questioned the legitimacy of her claim based on her past experience, which showed that she'd handled it before, but he didn't denigrate her in any way. She's great. Possibly the greatest of her generation. But to be the greatest of all time you need to be able to handle the pressure. Every time. That was what I said then, that's what I say now, and that's what I'll say tomorrow. And in my opinion, to say otherwise denigrates the efforts of those who do handle the pressure every time.
I looked a bit on the internet for a picture, but was unable to find it. It was from the Olympics in the '70's or 80's, so some of the "more seasoned" members may remember it. It was of a female gymnast, Eastern Bloc IIRC, on the balance beam. She was lying on her chest with her legs bent over her head and her feet touching or almost touching the beam. The photographer had a perfect angle, right down the beam, looking right into her face. The look of concentration and focus wasn't one of someone who felt no pressure, but of someone who knew how to ignore the pressure when she had to.
Originally Posted by CyBerkut
What is often overlooked is that in quitting the team competition, she saved the opportunity for the team to win the silver medal. Had she continued vaulting the way her first vault went, the team would not have had a chance to take silver.
I'm not familiar with scoring team sports in the Olympics. Is it not the cumulative scores of ALL of the competitors on that team? If it isn't, it should be. The only way I can think of for her dropping out to benefit the team is if it's an average, which is BS because then you enter only your top two. A member of a team who does not compete should score a 0 for each missed round and/or event. I wrestled in high school. If we didn't have someone at a certain weight class, for whatever reason, it was a forfeit and it hurt the team.
ps If you felt my referring to her as "Simon Biles" was some kind of insult, I assure you it was not. It was a typo that got past some obviously shoddy proofreading on my part, and by the time I noticed it it was too late to correct.
Who called her a "wimp/wuss/ snowflake"? Not I. NFB questioned the legitimacy of her claim based on her past experience, which showed that she'd handled it before, but he didn't denigrate her in any way. She's great. Possibly the greatest of her generation. But to be the greatest of all time you need to be able to handle the pressure. Every time. That was what I said then, that's what I say now, and that's what I'll say tomorrow. And in my opinion, to say otherwise denigrates the efforts of those who do handle the pressure every time.
I looked a bit on the internet for a picture, but was unable to find it. It was from the Olympics in the '70's or 80's, so some of the "more seasoned" members may remember it. It was of a female gymnast, Eastern Bloc IIRC, on the balance beam. She was lying on her chest with her legs bent over her head and her feet touching or almost touching the beam. The photographer had a perfect angle, right down the beam, looking right into her face. The look of concentration and focus wasn't one of someone who felt no pressure, but of someone who knew how to ignore the pressure when she had to.
Originally Posted by CyBerkut
What is often overlooked is that in quitting the team competition, she saved the opportunity for the team to win the silver medal. Had she continued vaulting the way her first vault went, the team would not have had a chance to take silver.
I'm not familiar with scoring team sports in the Olympics. Is it not the cumulative scores of ALL of the competitors on that team? If it isn't, it should be. The only way I can think of for her dropping out to benefit the team is if it's an average, which is BS because then you enter only your top two. A member of a team who does not compete should score a 0 for each missed round and/or event. I wrestled in high school. If we didn't have someone at a certain weight class, for whatever reason, it was a forfeit and it hurt the team.
ps If you felt my referring to her as "Simon Biles" was some kind of insult, I assure you it was not. It was a typo that got past some obviously shoddy proofreading on my part, and by the time I noticed it it was too late to correct.
I didn't say anybody in here called her a "wimp/wuss/snowflake". My reference to "commentators" was to political opinion writers/podcasters/etc. such as Matt Walsh and Charlie Kirk who have been saying/writing some very negative things about her over this.
I get that they see a change occurring in the culture that puts less emphasis on toughing things out, and see that as a bad trend... and that is probably at least part of what is driving their criticism... but I think it is misguided in this case. What these young women do is physically dangerous. Note the reference to the "twisties" in the following article.
I didn't mention the sexual abuse earlier that many of these young women suffered at the hands of the former team doctor. Simone Biles was one of them. Maybe that was a factor, maybe not.
A couple more worthy opinion pieces on her decision to drop out:
To the degree that accomplished athletes can be viewed as heroes, Simone Biles was an established sports heroine coming into this Olympics. Her decision to drop out didn't make her a villain, nor was it heroic. I do think it is fair to say it was selfless, as it appears that she set her ambition aside to preserve her team's chances to earn a spot on the podium.
In industry, we put a lot of emphasis on safety. One of the most important aspects of that to grasp and internalize is that the person most responsible for your safety is you. Nobody else has as much motivation and opportunity to protect me in the workplace as I do. If conditions are not safe, or if I become unfit for duty, I am expected to stop the job until the problem is resolved. I see no reason to afford Simone Biles any less consideration in her "workplace".
Who called her a "wimp/wuss/ snowflake"? Not I. NFB questioned the legitimacy of her claim based on her past experience, which showed that she'd handled it before, but he didn't denigrate her in any way. She's great. Possibly the greatest of her generation. But to be the greatest of all time you need to be able to handle the pressure. Every time. That was what I said then, that's what I say now, and that's what I'll say tomorrow. And in my opinion, to say otherwise denigrates the efforts of those who do handle the pressure every time.
I looked a bit on the internet for a picture, but was unable to find it. It was from the Olympics in the '70's or 80's, so some of the "more seasoned" members may remember it. It was of a female gymnast, Eastern Bloc IIRC, on the balance beam. She was lying on her chest with her legs bent over her head and her feet touching or almost touching the beam. The photographer had a perfect angle, right down the beam, looking right into her face. The look of concentration and focus wasn't one of someone who felt no pressure, but of someone who knew how to ignore the pressure when she had to.
Originally Posted by CyBerkut
What is often overlooked is that in quitting the team competition, she saved the opportunity for the team to win the silver medal. Had she continued vaulting the way her first vault went, the team would not have had a chance to take silver.
I'm not familiar with scoring team sports in the Olympics. Is it not the cumulative scores of ALL of the competitors on that team? If it isn't, it should be. The only way I can think of for her dropping out to benefit the team is if it's an average, which is BS because then you enter only your top two. A member of a team who does not compete should score a 0 for each missed round and/or event. I wrestled in high school. If we didn't have someone at a certain weight class, for whatever reason, it was a forfeit and it hurt the team.
ps If you felt my referring to her as "Simon Biles" was some kind of insult, I assure you it was not. It was a typo that got past some obviously shoddy proofreading on my part, and by the time I noticed it it was too late to correct.
I didn't say anybody in here called her a "wimp/wuss/snowflake". My reference to "commentators" was to political opinion writers/podcasters/etc. such as Matt Walsh and Charlie Kirk who have been saying/writing some very negative things about her over this.
I get that they see a change occurring in the culture that puts less emphasis on toughing things out, and see that as a bad trend... and that is probably at least part of what is driving their criticism... but I think it is misguided in this case. What these young women do is physically dangerous. Note the reference to the "twisties" in the following article.
I didn't mention the sexual abuse earlier that many of these young women suffered at the hands of the former team doctor. Simone Biles was one of them. Maybe that was a factor, maybe not.
A couple more worthy opinion pieces on her decision to drop out:
To the degree that accomplished athletes can be viewed as heroes, Simone Biles was an established sports heroine coming into this Olympics. Her decision to drop out didn't make her a villain, nor was it heroic. I do think it is fair to say it was selfless, as it appears that she set her ambition aside to preserve her team's chances to earn a spot on the podium.
In industry, we put a lot of emphasis on safety. One of the most important aspects of that to grasp and internalize is that the person most responsible for your safety is you. Nobody else has as much motivation and opportunity to protect me in the workplace as I do. If conditions are not safe, or if I become unfit for duty, I am expected to stop the job until the problem is resolved. I see no reason to afford Simone Biles any less consideration in her "workplace".
Even a right wingish guy like me was freakin appalled by the crap spouted off about this amazing young lady.
Loss of self confidence involving physical danger is not something a keyboard hero should even try to relate to, never mind even understand.. Just told one site I subscribe to that if I don't see some kind of serious repercussions for this clown they "employ", then they can kiss my little pittance goodbye.
Biles dropping out when she did wasn't brave (except for knowing that she would face major criticism), but it wasn't cowardice either. It was a safety issue. The Olympics are not a war. The only life on the line was her own. Make no mistake, developing a loss of proper spatial orientation at those speeds/maneuvers could put someone permanently in a wheelchair or a casket.
The people in the best position to judge her decision are her teammates. As far as I know, there hasn't been any criticism of her decision from them. Realistically, they can thank her decision for preserving their chance at winning a Silver medal in the team all-around competition.
As for being qualified... per USA Today Sports: "In qualifications, Simone Biles became the first woman since 1992 to qualify for all six possible Olympic event finals." That sounds like she was pretty "qualified" to compete in the all-around competition, and that she wasn't having a severe problem with spatial orientation at the beginning of the Olympics.
Well that explains more than I'm knowledgeable of, Cyberkut, thanks.
I put the Olympics on my ignore list before they started when the PWEC type stuff started happening. If she had a legitimate health concern, then that is reason to step aside. I don't think she should be lauded as a hero, though.
I don't think she should be lauded as a hero, though.
Simone Arianne Biles (born March 14, 1997)[4] is an American artistic gymnast. With a combined total of 31 Olympic and World Championship medals, Biles is the most decorated American gymnast and is considered one of the greatest and most dominant gymnasts of all time.[color:#3333FF][/color]
May be not for you,
but she is a legend. I would have been very proud if she had represented my nation.
Well that explains more than I'm knowledgeable of, Cyberkut, thanks.
I put the Olympics on my ignore list before they started when the PWEC type stuff started happening. If she had a legitimate health concern, then that is reason to step aside. I don't think she should be lauded as a hero, though.
I too, was ignoring the Olympics for the same reason. I ended up taking notice of the Simone Biles situation due to a number of conservative writers (that I normally agree with most of the time) having some really negative criticisms. The criticism struck me as misguided, so I looked into it. I'm still not watching the Olympics though.
Simone has been on a therapeutic dose of Ritalin for years. Ritalin is banned in Japan and could be considered a stimulant by the Olympics, therefore she had to stop taking it and it caused problems for her concentration and her ability to perform. Any criticism of her decision to step away is ignorant. She didn't let anyone down but herself and I'm sure that missing this opportunity weighs heavily on her. You just can't put all your Olympic Gold dreams on one single athlete