The Olympic Games are a display of the world's finest athletes, but the winter Olympics makes obvious the greatest hoax in sports: figure skating.
Figure skating is subjectively graded, and therefore is not a sport. That may sound like blasphemy, but look at the facts. Figure skating is a contest, and should be held in the same arena as gymnastics, bodybuilding, beauty pageants, and synchronized swimming. An activity only qualifies as a sport if objectivity is the means for declaring a champion. Basically, the clock does not discriminate against athletes from one country or the next. The best athlete wins every single time in sports, something that can't necessarily be said of figure skating.
What exactly is the "best" in figure skating? It depends entirely on your opinion of what the proper routine should be, the best style of jumping and landing, and every other graded area of the activity. Figure skating requires intense practice and enormous levels of skill like the real sports it shares the spotlight with in the Olympics, but it lacks the truly competitive nature of sport. The greats of figure skating (whatever you consider the "greatest" to be) should be admired on a separate platform from hockey players, cross-country skiers, and bobsled teams.
I'll put it to you like this: instead of a uniform, figure skaters wear costumes. You don't play sports while wearing costumes.
Some may argue that referees in games such as hockey have the same influence as judges in figure skating. The difference is that a referee's or an umpire's job is to OBJECTIVELY uphold the rules of the sport. A judge's job is to SUBJECTIVELY grade how much a participant's performance appeals to them. Subjectively graded activities more closely resemble art than sport. Awarding gold medals to figure skaters is no less ridiculous than holding a contest for the best musical performer in the world.
Unfortunately, figure skating will always be a part of the Olympics because it is the highest drawing event. How would you feel about beauty pageant winners wearing gold medals? Probably the same way speed skaters feel about figure skaters wearing the same gold medals that they actually had to beat somebody to earn.
14 comments:
I would have to agree with most of that; however, my wife was watching some of this crap the otherday, and I watched a chineese girl get thrown about 20-30 feet by her partner, and she land on her knee. She was obviously is a shit load of pain, but after a few moments to get her senses back, she finished off her set.
I'm not into figure skating or anything, but I've seen plenty of pro athletes here in America that wont play with a sore pinky.
Great post Axe!
Dude, BlabberBasher is cheating on the "is Blabberbasher cheating" poll!
That's why I changed both answers to "Yes". Maybe he'll get confused.
Like I said:
100% of people who are not Blabber Basher know that he is cheating.
BND: I saw the fall you're talking about. That showed a lot toughness on her part. Of course, people get hurt worse than that on the job all time, and they keep going even though they won't get any applause or a gold medal for it.
It is simply a fact that there is a chasm between presidential authority in the domestic and foreign realms. In domestic affairs, we live in a single political community, the government has a monopoly on the use of force, and courts are imposed as a bulwark to protect Americans from executive and legislative overreaching. There, Congress has broad powers to regulate executive action. Not so in the international arena. There, we confront unpredictable contingencies including enemies claiming the power to use massive lethal force. The circumstances are not hospitable to the same kind of antecedent law-making that is practical in domestic affairs. That is why the framers provided for an energetic executive, not national security by committee.
It is also, no doubt, why, in United States v. Brown (1973), the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, in upholding the president's inherent Article II authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps for foreign intelligence gathering, asserted that "[r]estrictions upon the President's power which are appropriate in cases of domestic security become artificial in the context of the international sphere." It is why, when FISA became law in 1978, President Carter's attorney general, Griffin Bell, stressed that FISA did not (and, indeed, could not) vitiate the president's inherent authority under Article II. It is why, in 1994, President Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, testified that the president maintained his inherent Article II authority to order warrantless searches even when FISA was expanded to regulate such searches. And it is why, even after a quarter-century of FISA, the highest and most specialized court ever to review that statute, the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review, observed in 2002: "[A]ll the other courts to have decided the issue [have] held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information... We take for granted that the President does have that authority."
Cheating on the "is he cheating" poll. Priceless. Dude probably needs this to get laid or something.
true
What the hell does that have to do with figure skating? It probably wouldn't be hard to find a post on this site that talks about how corrupt our dickhead of a president is, but i guess your just too fucking lazy.
Going for the Gold (Dreams on ice)
Snow falls on my tongue.
Cold air my feet are numb.
Wind blows I begin to shake, as I skate upon the lake.
Dreams I have can be achieved, to be the best for all to see.
Jumping high, I’m ten feet tall.
Picking myself up when I fall.
Spinning around, I’m feeling weak.
Can’t find the words to even speak.
Too tired to think, I try again, one more time then I’ll head in.
Snow falls harder I begin to cry.
Catch my breath and visualize.
Practice hard, don’t give up because the gold means so much.
Kathleen Opalinski
i voted blabber basher
I can't wait for the Ice Dancing competition!
As in pair skating, dancers compete as a couple consisting of a man and a woman. Ice dance differs from pair skating by severely limiting lifts, requiring spins to be performed as a team in a dance hold, and by disallowing throws and jumps. Typically, partners are not supposed to separate by more than two arm lengths; originally, partners were supposed to be in a dance hold the entire program. This restriction has been lifted somewhat in modern ice dancing.
Ice Dancing? That's almost as gay as the two-man luge!
Nothing like a good Luge to clear the nasal passages
is that what Bryant Gumbal recently said about the Olympics
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