Wednesday, August 08, 2012

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

So, go ahead and kvetch about the Olympics a bit. What are your favorite events? What events do you just not get? What events would you include or exclude? Granting that providing tape-delayed coverage is a necessary evil given the distances in time zones, what could NBC be doing better with its coverage? How weird is it watching Olympics without Jim McKay on the teevee? Do professional athletes in sports like basketball make for better, or lesser, competition? How big a problem IS doping, and what's the future of the very notion of 'performance-enhancing' medicine?

5 comments:

Call me Paul said...

I'm very much in the "stronger, faster, higher" camp when it comes to the Olympics. I don't think that any sport that required subjective judging of 'artistic elements' should be included. However, I understand that those sports are among the most popular to the TV audience, and so will always be included, regardless of the inevitable judging controversies that rear their head every single Olympic games. I would also exclude team sports, like baseball, basketball, and hockey, etc. Yeah, my Olympics would be pretty dull to watch.

Bill said...

Any sport that already has a prominent international showcase-- soccer/football; tennis. No Sailboats. No horses.

Lynn said...

I just wish I could recapture the almost religious feeling I had about the Olympics when I was 18. Now it's just a big worldwide sporting event, which is fine; that's what it really is but I miss it being special.

I like some sports better than others but I have nothing against including all kinds of sports even if I don't get them myself. They used to award medal for art so why complain that rhythmic gymnastics isn't really a sport?

Kal said...

I wish professionals would be excluded from the Olympics but that will never happen. Any event not judged by time should be gone. I watched some poor Romania girl loose her bronze medal because the American coach was able to pay the five hundred dollars for a protest which went in the American gymnists favor. I hate that shit so much.

Roger Owen Green said...

I assume Kal would also accept other concrete measurements, such as distance or height (pole vault, long jump, shot put) in addition to time.