Womens Hockey: How Much Time Left?

[Henry Fool]

Originally Posted by Canada 02

Women's hockey must improve or else - IOC's Rogge

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Women+h...#ixzz0gaGfZUf8

Well, whatever it's worth, the Finland-Sweden game was really good, with some nice goals and a great atmosphere. I don't see how removing them from the games would help anything.

Finland at least has some kind of program in place with Canada and they're trying to learn as much as they can.

[Fire]

You have to give the women's game at least 40 more years to allow for other countries to catch up. It would be ridiculous to remove them from the Olympics now. All that would do is hurt the sport world wide.

[Geeoff]

The biggest problem with Womens hockey is that none of the best athletes get into it because there's no money to be made. You'll see most great female athletes getting into figure skating or tennis because the best women are wealthy.

[Shazam]

Yes, they are healthy... Very healthy.

Oh wait, wealthy. Carry on then.

[VladtheImpaler]

All I know is if the top two countries in women's hockey were Hungary and Romania, everyone one of you would be screaming for it to be axed.

[Resolute 14]

You actually don't know that, so lay off the stupid strawmen.

[Flame On]

How bumblingly-incompetently discraceful is it that the IOC is talking about it WHILE THE EVENT IS STILL GOING ON!!
I mean fine, have the conversation, debate it, hell even cut it if you want. But don't talk about the worthwhile-ness of an event while athletes are out there giving it their all for their country and the politics of it are nothing to do with them.

[Chump]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

All I know is if the top two countries in women's hockey were Hungary and Romania, everyone one of you would be screaming for it to be axed.

I think if that were the case most of us wouldn't care at all.

I think two man luge is a stupid sport and it isn't very competive but what does it really matter to me whether it is in the olympics or not.

[_Q_]

Whenever anyone points out that women's hockey shouldn't be in the Olympics, I just tell them to look at basketball. Save for 2 games that the US didn't compete and 2004 where something really odd happened, there has really been no doubt who will win the gold medal. Nobody will ever take basketball out of the Olympics and I see no reason why womens hockey should be removed as well. Yes womens hockey sucks, but it is still worthy to be an olympic sport nonetheless.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by _Q_

Whenever anyone points out that women's hockey shouldn't be in the Olympics, I just tell them to look at basketball. Save for 2 games that the US didn't compete and 2004 where something really odd happened, there has really been no doubt who will win the gold medal. Nobody will ever take basketball out of the Olympics and I see no reason why womens hockey should be removed as well. Yes womens hockey sucks, but it is still worthy to be an olympic sport nonetheless.

Difference being that basketball actually has a big following in a wide range of countries: us, spain, italy, germany, greece, latvia, china, argentina, israel, australia, russia. There have been 8 different medal-winning countries in the last four Olympics. It also has some of the biggest international stars of any sport other than soccer. No matter where the Olympics are held, it's going to draw fans, and it's going to get good TV viewership in a lot of countries. The lack of competitiveness doesn't hurt the sport in the same way that hockey does.

[Henry Fool]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

All I know is if the top two countries in women's hockey were Hungary and Romania, everyone one of you would be screaming for it to be axed.

I doubt anyone would care enough to scream about it, but in any case the more pertinent observation is that if it was a men's event that only had two teams that could win, there would not be such casual talk of just "axing" the sport from the games altogether.