Flatwater canoeing??

Is there some sort of defined cutoff point that separates flatwater from whitewater, or is there an in-between category like Mildly Choppy Canoeing?

Flatwater means it's ona lake/open water not on white water where they've opened the big damn at the top of the river before you kayak on down

garcia wrote:

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i'll watch swimming, athletics, diving, gymnastics.

i'm curious to know why swimming is inherently more boring to watch than any other form of racing in the olympics. in fact, given how hard it is for swimmers to maintain their rhythm and stroke while experiencing intense physical pain you could argue swimming has dimensions you don't find in track racing. i suppose it helps to understand what you are looking at.

A load of people's backs. Perhaps it is difficult to maintain a rhythm, but they manage it and in the absence of any meaningful closeups of people in agony or crumbling under the pressure of performing on the big day then you may as well watch eight metronomes in a row. Boring, boring, boring.

The sooner they make darts an Olympic event the better.

Sometimes the running is fun to watch, especially if there's some animosity between a couple of participants like Lews/Johnson or Thompson/Hincksen or Coe/Ovett. Sometimes the field events like the javelin are entertaining. I do enjoy watching the floor exercises in the gymnastics even though it isn't a proper sport. Beyond that I'm struggling. Generally it's just a bad day on Eurosport stretched out over about three weeks.

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Is there some sort of defined cutoff point that separates flatwater from whitewater, or is there an in-between category like Mildly Choppy Canoeing?

Not in the olympics. The whitewater courses are really sporty by the standards of normal people, plus they go through gates and - and this is insane - have to go through some of the gates moving upstream. As somebody whose done a bit of canoeing but not an expert, I'm in awe of those paddlers.

Flatwater canoeing is on a similar course (the same?) as the rowing. The water is completely placid. The canoes are very shallow and slim and the paddlers just haul ass.

I'd like to watch canoe/kayak, baseball, softball, soccer, water polo, indoor volleyball, wrestling, BMX and some of the stuff we never get to see except in the olympics like track cycling, fencing, team handball, badminton, etc.

But I don't think I'll watch much of these games because I won't be able to watch much outside of prime time, which NBC usually fills with swimming, gymnastics,* basketball and track. I'm not really interested in any of those. I may watch some of the basketball, actually. I think the USA is going to put on a show.


That and I don't want to contribute to the Chinese government getting smug about a huge success, the fuckers.

*Gymnastics would be ok if it weren't for the obnoxious announcers "oooh, she's going to lose points for moving her foot an eighth of an inch there...really disappointing!" Oh fuck off you prissy, uptight cow! You get out there and do that.

That's one of the things I like about the X-Games compared to other "stunt" sports like gymnastics or diving. There's a lot more emphasis on originality and brass balls, not fiddly little minutiae.

Purves Grundy wrote:

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Sometimes the running is fun to watch, especially if there's some animosity between a couple of participants like Lews/Johnson or Thompson/Hincksen or Coe/Ovett. Sometimes the field events like the javelin are entertaining. I do enjoy watching the floor exercises in the gymnastics even though it isn't a proper sport. Beyond that I'm struggling. Generally it's just a bad day on Eurosport stretched out over about three weeks.

Yes, exactly. I'd go further, though, I think. Where athletics (transl.: "track and field") is concerned, I can't work up any enthusiasm for anything but middle-distance running, in which those rivalries can play themselves out in something approaching some kind of dramatic way, sometimes, a bit. Sprinting is, as a sport, dull, as is full-on distance running. And while I can sort of see the entertainment value of chucking stuff long distances, I'm in practice overwhelmed by its fundamental pointless silliness.

In a year in which we've had an international sporting event that regularly hit the heights of both drama and tactical interest, the fundamental shitness of the Olympics is going to be thrown into especially stark relief. Take one shit sport with no fans and multiply it by a hundred, and for my money what you get isn't, by some sort of alchemy, a worthwhile event. What you get is a hundred shit sports with no fans.

I do enjoy watching the jumping events in athletics. This may have something to with the fact they were the only sporting activities I was any good at at school.

The racket sports might give us some excitement.

Query "us".

None of it. I'm upset about the environment and about the reported lack of progress in human rights. Bollocks to it.

Although diving is sometimes fun to watch. But still, none of it.

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Take one shit sport with no fans and multiply it by a hundred, and for my money what you get isn't, by some sort of alchemy, a worthwhile event. What you get is a hundred shit sports with no fans.

To be fair, some of the sports do have fans and will probably draw a lot of genuine interest from the locals (as opposed to just corporate people on freebies) - table tennis, basketball, football and badminton are all pretty big over there, I hear.

But I think that strengthens your basic point. Take a few events that would stand alone as compelling events (at least to the people who like those sports) and dillute by constantly cutting away to coverage of a whole lot of other sports that those people don't care about.

Is there going to be any kind of streaming internet coverage? That might be the way of the future. For example, I wouldn't mind being able to watch uninterupted coverage of the football with actual football commentators covering it like and actual football tournament.

Anyway, the Winter Olympics are way better.

I think there will be some video on NBC's site.

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None of it. I'm upset about the environment and about the reported lack of progress in human rights. Bollocks to it.

Although diving is sometimes fun to watch. But still, none of it

I am upset about all that as well, that is why I am not going there

Nada.

I'll second that "Nada."

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

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Anyway, the Winter Olympics are way better.

No, they're even worse, because every single "sport" is about sliding. Sliding, sliding and more fucking sliding.