Help! I'm being forced to watch synchonized swimming!

[Elefantino]

Thank goodness for laptops.

Quick, somebody distract me. Oops. I forgot. Everyone is in New York for TdFL. Darn! :crap:

[vaxn8r]

Yeah Baby, Yeah!

I can't think of synchronized swimming without thinking of the opening scene of Austin Powers II :)

[Climb01742]

was that painful or what? with all that track+field, why did they make us suffer thru that!!! :crap: :crap: :crap: i almost yearned for gymnastics again...no, no i didn't. ;)

[JohnS]

I think that everything that has subjective judging should be dropped from the Olympics. Synchronized swimming, gymnastics, etc. They are athletic, but are they sports? In my book, sports can be judged objectively: most points, lowest elapsed time, distance...

[Ozz]

I think that everything that has subjective judging should be dropped from the Olympics. Synchronized swimming, gymnastics, etc. They are athletic, but are they sports? In my book, sports can be judged objectively: most points, lowest elapsed time, distance...
My wife and I were talking about this last night. Unfortunately, the gymnastics is a big TV viewing draw.

We thought that maybe you still invite the gymnasts (et al), but they don't get gold/silver/bronze medals. No judging, just exhibition and give them "participation" medal or something.

[rwl]

'Objective scoring' is what gymnastics have been moving towards - more rigorous, contemporaneous scoring using computers.

When you think about it, refereeing and judging are pretty similar, the later is deferred in time. Imagine football with flags thrown a couple of minutes after the down. That's pretty much what happens in gymnastics - they start with a max score, and deduct the penalties. Now when they do that realtime, there's less chance of fudging the result.

That's not to say synchronized swimming should remain. Maybe replace it with more women's beach volleyball. Actually, how about a 24 hour channel for that?

Rick

[rhg]

I gave up on the Olympics after 1996. If I wanted to hear real-life stories of inspiring struggle, loss, and victory, I'd have bought a Reader's Digest... the coverage is hateful (U.S.-centric to a fault), stupid, and choppy.

As for gymnastics: well - the men's seems to (mostly) be reasonable, but the day that a butt-ugly woman (say, 25 to 35) who can nonetheless move like nothing else (and I've seen women who can do this!) wins a gold medal, I'll begin to believe that gymnastics (like ice skating) is a sport. As it is, I think that prettiness so often gives the margin of victory, and that's not a good sign.

Ok, ok, so maybe 24-hour bike-racing coverage wouldn't be practicable.. :rolleyes: :bike: