Sports that should be dumped from the summer Olympics

[Flamenspiel]

Originally Posted by taco.vidal

Lots of sports are expensive especially when kids get older and compete at an elite level. Swimming and gymnastics are two that I can speak to that are not cheap.

Activities such as equestrian take these expenses to another level if you start competing at an elite level.
Modern pentathalon is probably the best example of how the cost is unaffordable to almost anyone but the upperclass.

They are expensive in Canada because the sports are not publicly funded to the level of other countries. GB, Hungary, and Australia are examples of heavily funded sports programs that dwarf Canadian funding and punch above their wieght at the olympics. That being said their is no great demand for increased funding but it definetly co-relates to success. They did a study in the UK and it costs about 25 million per gold medal.

[DiracSpike]

Originally Posted by octothorp

Yeah, the stupid number of medals available in swimming is a quadrennial rant for me. The increasing trend towards athletes that complete in multiple disciplines at an elite level further shows that these are not actually different disciplines, but variations on the same discipline. The number of events has already doubled just from 1956 to today, from 7 to 17 on the men's side. And other than the 10k marathon, I fail to see what any of them add, beyond more medals, which serve only to force countries to dedicate more resources to swimming and line the pockets of the programs at the expense of less medal-rich sports.

This is a pretty popular take on swimming that I think is misguided and mostly comes from people who don't know a lot about the sport. It's incredibly difficult to become elite at all four swimming disciplines, and the fact that people like Phelps and Ledecky can rack up multiple medals says more about them than how easy it is to transfer between strokes. Even Phelps, the greatest swimmer of all time, is only elite at two of them. You will never see him attempt a breaststroke or backstroke pure race because he would lose. You'd have a stronger case arguing cutting down on the different distances (ie 50m vs 100m free) but still, even the difference between swimming 100m to 200m events is vast.

[GirlySports]

i think the 4x200m freestyle relay is overkill. So take 2 medals out

[TheyCallMeBruce]

I think there's not enough sports included, not dumped. We're missing awesome sports like
- screaming
- walking backwards over obstables
- Sleep walking
- Vampirism
- Talk fighting
- Ghost hunting
and last but not least, cosplay rugby.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by TheyCallMeBruce

I think there's not enough sports included, not dumped. We're missing awesome sports like
- screaming
- walking backwards over obstables
- Sleep walking
- Vampirism
- Talk fighting
- Ghost hunting
and last but not least, cosplay rugby.

Dwarf tossing baby, dwarf tossing!!

[troutman]

Beach volleyball and gymnastics have me switching to CNN every time. Zzzzzz.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by troutman

Beach volleyball and gymnastics have me switching to CNN every time. Zzzzzz.

gymnastics has totally gone downhill. Not exciting anymore and CBC was even showing it tape delayed most of the time. Too many events maybe? Boring Routines maybe?

Or the scoring system is messed up? When you watch diving for example 8.0, 7.5, 8.5 makes sense to everyone (cue russian judge jokes). When a gymnast does a routines and gets a score of 15.156. What does that mean?

[NuclearFart]

Originally Posted by troutman

Beach volleyball and gymnastics have me switching to CNN every time. Zzzzzz.

Interesting, I find beach volleyball to be one of the more appealing events to watch.

Agree that the "art" of gymnastics is completely lost on me, ever since the buffoonery of curricular gynmnastics in elementary/junior high.

[polak]

Volleyball and beach volleyball are true sports through and through. How could you possibly argue they shouldn't be in the games?

Mentioned this in the Olympic thread but how about we drop the North American tradition of counting overall medals? I know it makes us feel better but you don't "win" silver and bronze. There's winning an event and losing an event.

[killer_carlson]

I actually liked the gymnastics more this year. I really enjoy Kyle Shewfelt as an analyist.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Or the scoring system is messed up? When you watch diving for example 8.0, 7.5, 8.5 makes sense to everyone (cue russian judge jokes). When a gymnast does a routines and gets a score of 15.156. What does that mean?

They're essentially the same with both using a score for execution (the old gymnastics 10 score) plus a difficulty score. Diving just multiples execution with difficulty while artistic gymnastics adds the two.

Ultimately if you watch enough, you realize that 100 points in diving is an amazing score, like 16.0 would be in artistic gymnastics.

[GirlySports]

But in diving the scores are displayed. I can see 4 scores thrown out 3 kept, added up times DD.

In gymnastics i dont understand how the judges got to 7.5+7.8. What is the DD? How many judges are there?

[Alberta_Beef]

I'm not going to comment on what should be eliminated, but I would like to see the athletes from the decathlon and heptathlon be viewed as the premier well rounded athletes that they are.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by polak

Volleyball and beach volleyball are true sports through and through. How could you possibly argue they shouldn't be in the games?

Mentioned this in the Olympic thread but how about we drop the North American tradition of counting overall medals? I know it makes us feel better but you don't "win" silver and bronze. There's winning an event and losing an event.

We count medals the way that shows us higher.

In Vancouver they switched to counting golds first.

[Alberta_Beef]

Originally Posted by GGG

We count medals the way that shows us higher.

In Vancouver they switched to counting golds first.

Yeah I've noticed that the media likes to count them that way, but IIRC officially they are counted by the number of gold, with silver being the first tie breaker and bronze the second.

[Erick Estrada]

The only sports I found hard to watch was soccer, basketball, golf, and tennis. Just too long to watch without any emotional interest. That said I don't want them or any sports removed. Every single athlete in these games regardless of the sport put a lot of hard work and years of preparation into their event and who am I to say they shouldn't have their day when they get recognized for it.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

This is a pretty popular take on swimming that I think is misguided and mostly comes from people who don't know a lot about the sport. It's incredibly difficult to become elite at all four swimming disciplines, and the fact that people like Phelps and Ledecky can rack up multiple medals says more about them than how easy it is to transfer between strokes. Even Phelps, the greatest swimmer of all time, is only elite at two of them. You will never see him attempt a breaststroke or backstroke pure race because he would lose. You'd have a stronger case arguing cutting down on the different distances (ie 50m vs 100m free) but still, even the difference between swimming 100m to 200m events is vast.

While I agree that it's extremely difficult, it still makes no sense. It's like hurdles vs. Speedwalking vs. Running forwards vs. Running backwards and sideways and crab walk and any other variation of running you can think of. I think only freestyle should exist, and you do whatever stroke gets you there fastest (generally front crawl).

Basically I think the sport distills to "I need to traverse a distance in a medium. Who is fastest at this?" There is basically no real world situation where butterfly is useful so not sure why it has to be a sport.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Alberta_Beef

Yeah I've noticed that the media likes to count them that way, but IIRC officially they are counted by the number of gold, with silver being the first tie breaker and bronze the second.

Officially the IOC doesn't rank medals by country. It's entirely a media thing

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Regorium

While I agree that it's extremely difficult, it still makes no sense. It's like hurdles vs. Speedwalking vs. Running forwards vs. Running backwards and sideways and crab walk and any other variation of running you can think of. I think only freestyle should exist, and you do whatever stroke gets you there fastest (generally front crawl).

Basically I think the sport distills to "I need to traverse a distance in a medium. Who is fastest at this?" There is basically no real world situation where butterfly is useful so not sure why it has to be a sport.

If that's the standard say good by to most of the events.

Soccer, basketball, pole vault, high jump, all throwing but Javilin, most swimming, most athletics. All of the horse stuff, diving, track cycling, bmx, gymnastics, trampoline, tennis, table tennis, etc.

I think your left with the 100m, the marathon, the 100m freestyle and the 10k swim, all the fighting and all the shooting and maybe the long bike races. Sounds like a pretty boring 10 event Olympics

[Flamenspiel]

Originally Posted by Alberta_Beef

Yeah I've noticed that the media likes to count them that way, but IIRC officially they are counted by the number of gold, with silver being the first tie breaker and bronze the second.

There is no official IOC standard for medal counts. In fact if you go to the RIO2016 IOC site, there is a button to switch between between number of golds and overall medal count.

Clearly its not like the Stanley cup or Superbowl, if you win a medal you are in the history books, and that's pretty damn good.
From a fans perspective, if you are from Jamaica, you had a couple of great nights at the athletics venue. On the other hand Canadians got to feel the excitement of a wide variety of events throughout the 16 days.

I thought Canada did well in this Olympics, but to move into the elite class that our winter athletes are in would take a financial effort that most Canadians would not agree with. To put it into perspective, the UK has spent about 1 billion dollars on the Olympic sports for the last three Olympics that is federally funded through their lottery and other means. We spend a very small fraction of that.