Olympics Thread

It’s the Lunar New Year holiday so I was stuck at my in-laws’ the past couple days with naught to do but eat, sleep, and watch TV. I saw some skeleton yesterday where some Korean dude in an Ironman helmet came from out of nowhere to win the entire thing much to the shock and dismay of more favored competitors. I also saw ladies arial skiing which was just ladies going off ramps on skis and doing flips and shit. The three medalists ended up being the three women who didn’t land on their heads in the final run of the evening.

Today I watched a bunch of man figure skating. A German skated to the Game of Thrones theme song and another dude fell down like six or seven times during his routine to the point that I started to feel embarrassed watching it. I think the dude was from Georgia the country but I could be wrong. Some Korean kid did okay for being either 15 or 16 years old but was outclassed by other dudes.

Olympics!!!

Nope...Modern Pentathlon still beat it...

"an Olympic sport that comprises five different events; fencing (one-touch épée), swimming (200m freestyle), equestrian show jumping (15 jumps), and a final combined event, now referred to as the Laser-Run. The Laser-Run alternates four legs of laser pistol shooting followed by an 800m run (3200m in total)"



LASER RUN!!!!

They did a quick cut to Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski on the couch, and Johnny looked like he was dressed for the Hunger Games, not the Winter Games.

I know what you mean, honestly unless you watch a TON of ice dancing it's really impossible to judge most of the more minute deductions in it. I have a friend who used to do it quasi seriously and she once got me to watch a video with a commentator explaining a bunch of stuff and while I could see some of it a lot required multiple views. Even at this point there's only a few specific moves I can see things on. The really blatant stuff is another thing of course, falls or notable desynchronization. On top of which the scoring system is so densely complex that I don't think anyone watching it who isn't a full time skater/coach/commentator can even tell whether they've hit lvl 2-3-4 or whatnot on the various manoeuvres.

That and of course the fact that while the scoring is oodles better than the days where it was just pre-arranged before the olympics via backdoor deals it's still super super shady. The French and US judges had the french couple above the V&M (my skate nerd friend says that US judge hates them from back when they were competing with their old American rivals and the French judge is being a typical french judge.) The Canadian judge overcompensates for that kind of laughingly as well. Most people seem pretty mystified at how high that french score was though I suppose maybe there was a "sorry your boob was out" bonus.

I also watched some ice dancing and it just adds to my confusion over how any of these things are scored.
"Big Air" should have also been a lot more interesting. If you're going to go big, I expect to see some flips or something, not 720-degree rotations. Boring!

And since I don't know how to do multiple quotes in a reply: MarkInTexas , I think the Russians now are just doping to see what they can get away with. See also: Politics Thread.

Tsk, that French nipple slip happened just after I stopped watching the ice dancing. Ah well, it's out there on the Internet. Sorry French girl, that erect nipple is archived on the Wayback Machine now. Anyway, how come the French pair came second? Shouldn't a wardrobe malfunction be a larger deduction? If the dude's pants fell off and we saw his erect and glistening cock I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have gotten second place.

Well they ARE french...

apparently you get a deduction if part of costume physically detaches and falls on the ice?

I liked Elizabeth Swaney, the woman who competed for Hungary, and basically did no tricks at all. I read some interview where she said it was because she didn't want to lose points for falling and after seeing the aerials competition in which the three medalists ended up being the three women who didn't fall on their face and concuss themselves while doing crazy flips I think Swaney had the right idea. Didn't end up working out for her in the end, but it easily could have!

Topical Beaverton article again:

www.thebeaverton.com/2018/02/pornhub-front-page-taken-clips-virtue-moirs-gold-medal-routine/

"That move where she climbs up him and sits on his face might actually be the dirtiest thing we’ve ever posted"

Amusingly, it sounds like the problem figure skating tried to solve when they decided to give skaters more points for attempting the riskier moves and falling than for sticking to easier moves and skating cleanly.

Like tonight, USA skater Mirai Nagasu attempted the Triple Axel and fell. Her final score for that element was higher than what a lot of skaters received for a clean Double Axel.

And now that I am talking figure skating scoring, I have a few more thoughts.

The scoring in the Women's Short Program tonight was suspect, and a lot of it has to do with the current code of points. I actually DO understand Singles skating scoring, so I know what I am talking about here. (It's Ice Dancing where I am slightly mystified.)

So, the top scoring skater after the short program is a 15 year old Russian skater. The 2nd place skater is an 18 year old Russian skater. I saw very clear, dramatic differences in their skating.

The #2 skater was a far superior skater. She had beautiful body line, extension, flow, lyricism and interpretation. I thought she had a loose landing on her Double Axel but nothing too bad.

The one who finished in 1st was sharp, angular, had bent arms and knees, and looked to just be moving mechanically from step to step, no flow or lyricism or emotional connection to the music. Granted, she is only 15. But, the judges gave her near identical marks in the musicality, interpretation and transition marks. That seems beyond bogus to me. She also had a severely unbalanced program with all the jumps in the second half. This scores higher technical points. But the "program composition" score was nearly 9.5.

The point of giving skaters a 10% bonus for elements in the second half was to stop them from loading all their jumps at the beginning of the program, thereby making the program aesthetically unbalanced. However, now less musical and less lyrical skaters are taking advantage of this and unbalancing the program the opposite way, by loading all the jumps at the end. Thereby extending a technical lead to make up for lack of lyrical skill at skating.

There are two obvious ways to change judging to stop this from happening:
1. Any time all jumps are in the first or second half of the program, the skater takes a zero on "program composition". This will automatically lose them 7-10 points, which should negate the 10% bonus on ALL the jumps.

2. Mandate that no more than half your program's jumps can be in the second half. Or, only half of them are eligible for the 10% bonus, or something like that.

What is happening now is quite literally defeating the purpose of the "10% bonus in the second half" rule. It was literally implemented to STOP skaters from loading all the jumps into one half of the program.  Instead it is being used by less skilled skaters to rack up technical points to beat more balanced, all-around skilled skaters.

Anyway, back to Ice Dancing scoring, I did find some helpful videos which slowed down the movement and had ice dancers explain what makes grade of execution and a little bit about how to score higher levels. So, I am less confused about this now. The problem is that I'd need a replay system and also slo-mo to see what they're talking about.

Even given that, the scoring in the Ice Dancing was a bit strange to me. Yeah, I didn't understand why the French team in that Short Dance got those scores. I also was a bit perplexed at the Shibutanis getting downgraded on a couple elements. I saw Ben Agosto on NBC's site attempt to explain one of the downgrades, but he did so because Tanith White said she herself didn't understand it. Even Agosto could only make a guess as to what the tech team saw. He said this was only a guess after watching it on replay and slo-mo a few times. So...... eh?

I watched NBC's online stream of the Ice Dancing Free Dance. This stream actually shows the element scoring on screen, showing levels and total scores for each element. They also have different commentators than NBC Primetime. This might be a generic IOC feed? One of those commentators said she thought the Shibutanis may actually be the best at pure technical footwork. Which was interesting. Once again, at first a level and scoring came up for one of the Shibutanis footwork sequences scored at level 3. I was confused. Before their final score came in, this was upgraded to level 4. But, their super fast rotational lift was downgraded to level 3. One of the videos I watched explained the levels in lifts. So, I am pretty confused as to why that was downgraded.

I actually thought the French team was overscored a bit in the Free Skate, too. But not as egregiously as the Short Dance. I thought their performance was a bit slow and dull, to be honest. I really thought Virtue and Moir outskated them in both rounds.

I was interested to hear Alex Shibutani speak to reporters after the event. For about 10-15 minutes straight, he and Maia got asked questions about being siblings and being of Asian descent. He started to look a bit frustrated. Interestingly he finally said that normally they would never talk about this, but since they "did just win an Olympic medal.... we know there is internal disapproval that we are siblings doing ice Dancing". He said he knows there are coaches and judges who disapprove. And knows that they're the first Ice Dancers of Asian descent to win an Ice Dancing medal. He said he knows that they are sometimes underscored because of these reasons. And then he moved back into his normal talking points about representation in the sport. Later I heard one of NBC's reporters prompt him with a similar "siblings in Ice Dancing" question. By that point, he was back to a simple "Haters can suck it. We just won a bronze medal!" type of response. But that earlier answer was quite interesting.

Anyway, onto something completely different: BRING NHL PLAYERS BACK TO OLYMPIC HOCKEY! This sucks. It is amazing to see the severe downgrade in skill. I watched a couple of the games yesterday and a couple games today. Just finished watching the USA lose in a shootout. (Speaking of bogus scoring systems to determine winners...) The women's USA v Canada game is going to be way more exciting than most of these men's games.

Edited to add: Oh, and back to "Big Air" snowboarding... This event gets a "nope" from me. This is not "big air". Go watch a Ski Aerials event. You should not be able to call your event "Big Air" when Aerials is an event that exists.

Yeah, slopestyle is more fun, aerials are more fun, the aerials in moguls are more fun.

Man I am a Ski/SB Cross fan though, I hope Chris del Bosco isn't too hurt though, that crash was insane.

I didn't get to watch the short program, figure I'll watch the replay at some point tomorrow as by the time I got home from a play it was 3/4 done so I just watched SkiX

The meltdown over the curling is going to be ugly I suspect, from never not medalling to not even making the medal round (and clearly not deserving to) for the women. There are already all sorts of messages of support from fellow curlers popping up everywhere for them but meh. I'm not a person who thinks anything but gold in the sports we're good at is bullshit but... but what hurts is that they DIDN'T leave it all out there. Fans know they can make those shots in their sleep, esp in those first games where gift after gift was wasted. It's not really that they lost but HOW they lost. They choked plain and simple (though yes I probably would too.)   Coming the games after Jen Jones went undefeated for Gold makes it extra painful.

Homan doesn't do herself any favours with her public presentation either.

As a reporter acquaintance put it:

On the plus side, Rachel Homan can now look forward to being asked about this at every big event for the next four years of her life...
“Rachel, how does the memory of that Olympic disappointment affect your mindset, going into this season?”
“Uh, I’m really just here to pick up my prescription.”

Now one of the russian dudes is blaming "U.S. Security Services"

Cause you know mixed doubles curling is exactly the sort of event you'd want to do that in

The USA women's speed skating uniform is... interesting, with a black torso that features a grey circle around the crotch, with a little black strip right over the vulva. It's a look that reads "I am a world-class athlete, but I really want you to think about my landing strip!" I want to know more about who designed them and why, but most of the sites I saw that talked about them were right-wing nutjob sites complaining, so I didn't look too hard.
Also, NBC's gonna NBC: two minutes into a usually-three-minute gold medal race in men's speed skating, NBCSN pulled away from the race to show some random American woman skiing on NBC proper (and I think she ended up like 12th place besides), because who cares about medals when an American can be on TV?