If they wanted to improve the Olympics (and it desperately needs it) they would remove all flags, anthems and national denominators and have everyone compete as individuals.
That's literally not what the Olympics is about. The whole thing is about representing your territory.
How would that work? Most people only watch it to cheer on athletes from their own country.
"And the gold goes to Artem Ivanovich!"
"Where's he from?"
"Dunno"
That does sound incredibly lame.
Would make it less parochial and more about achievement. The amount of money GB wastes on buying medals in minor sports is ridiculous. Life's not a competition.
Of course you'd know where people were from, it just wouldn't all have to be about nationalist fervour and medal counts.
Doesn’t removing Nationality just make it the X-Games but without the more interesting sports?
An Australian got silver in the men's moguls, but the guy who got gold was so much better than anyone else that it's impossible to begrudge him.
Apparently there's some limited grumbling about the OAR representative in the female long skate part of the team figure skating. She saved all her jumps to the last part of the routine, which is the opposite of how it's normally done. Apparently some people reckon this advantaged her, although I can't see how. Still, if it's in the rules, why complain?
Chloe Kim tho.
I'm a twit
lol at the Dutch speed skating absolutely wiping out the Canadian skater there in the relay.
Just went right through his arm.
The cross-country skiing sprint is surprisingly good watching. Three-and-a-half minutes per race.
Elise Christie will never win an Olympic medal.
It takes a lot for me to side with a British athlete, but I really hope Christie walks away from these Olympics with a medal of some kind to show for it.
Chloe Kim is baffling to me. How can you possibly get that good at the half-pipe by age 17? She can't have been doing the massive jumps for more than a couple of years, surely.
Also, she is verging worryingly near to "famous people who are young enough to be my kid if I'd made bad life decisions as a 15-year old" territory.
Well she did qualify 4 years ago too but was too young to compete.
She's obviously a natural talent.
Some of these American competitors are coming across as weirdly human. I'm worried.
I've been enjoying the hockey. If I was going to get into American sport, it would definitely be that. Probably because it's basically football.
I can never see the puck in ice hockey, it's basically invisible most of the time.
I find Hockey dull as tears to watch on tv but at a match it's almost second to none.
The whole ice hockey thing annoys me, too. The NHL not releasing players makes the competition stupid, and destroys the only international hockey competition anyone cares about. Someone should tell them that if the NBA can do it, then they (the inferior younger cousin of the NBA at best) can let the players go as well.
Apparently it's been an event since the 60s, but I've just seen luge doubles for the first time and oh my fuck what on earth?
Bit of a nothing day after the half-pipe final. Which was very good indeed.
Slovenia beating USA in overtime in the hockey
They were 2-0 down as well.
lol at our trick suits getting a seethe out of the competition. Suck it up, chumps.
Built by 'engineers in Northampton', it's enough to make you shed a tear of pride.
Two autistics and a spiv in a lock-up.
Picked up another medal today, which makes three for the games so far. That's definitely Australia's best performance in terms of total, although no golds yet.
Two in the final of the womens' aerials, so there could be another one there.
My understanding is that Parsons was basically a nobody in the world of skeleton (ie. hovered in the 10-20 region for his past World Championship efforts), and that's what is raising some eyebrows. It'd be like if some random chump who'd never made a final started running Usain Bolt times out of nowhere.
Still, if a sport can be dominated by a slightly better suit, that's an indictment of the sport. Swimming had to fix their suit issue a while back, when they realised they either had to ban the super suits or make them available to everyone.
Marginal gains.
Get that man some asthma medicine.
Does one even breathe at all during skeleton? The most aerodynamic way would surely be for air to go in through your mouth and out through your anus. Doubt they'd allow those suits in the rules so Dr Steve Peters it is.
Get a double diffuser on the sled.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-olympics/43083502
The Cool Runnings 2 script is coming along splendidly.
Nathan Chen fell badly in his short program and came 17th, which means he had to go very early in the free skate. But because he's technically the best skater in the world, he threw down a routine with six quads (nobody else has done five in competition), so the score to beat is about 50 more than any of the other competitors in this part of the event schedule are getting.
Why do they ruin ski jumping with judges and points? Furthest wins, it shouldn't need to be any more complicated than that.
I guess they don't want to encourage recklessness in the pursuit of distance. Or there's a conceivable limit given how guided the slope is?
We now know why the Netherlands are so good at speed skating.
Christie going well again and then wiped out on the last corner.
Looks injured too.
Commentator is blaming the Chinese but I think that's on Christie.
She was leaning and had her arm across to block the Korean.
Edit: Judges clearly saw the same.
Did she kill a black cat under a ladder at some point?
She seems incredibly aggressive in the way she maneuvers through the field.
British commentators during these things are on the point of embarrassing.
How many crashes before she realises it's her fault?
Probably doesn't help that commentators (and probably Brits who interview her) try to push the blame onto other skaters as well as call her unlucky. She's reckless and almost always at fault. She pushed the Chinese skater down there which caused her to slip but that wasn't seen/cared about by the commentator.
Her boyfriend is in the final though. Shaolin Sandor Liu, what a name.
That was perfect by Choi for the gold in that race.
Her overtake with a couple of laps left was great and then she just pulled away.
Choi was on another planet there.
EDIT: I do agree with the above points that Christie is aggressive and reckless as a racer. Plenty of her woes have been her fault. Would still like to see her grab a medal though, although she wouldn't have gotten near Choi.