If your competitive event is determined by judges, then I probably won’t be able to watch it comfortably.
There. I said it.
It isn’t that I dislike, to use the most obvious example, figure skating. I respect figure skating; I do not respect the way it is measured, and that is the crux of the problem for me. I personally require events to be determined by measured outcomes: score, distance, time. It’s the only fair way to judge competitors. It’s the only way to respect their great athleticism, and I think we can all agree that skaters are great athletes.
I don’t know how you can fairly judge an event like figure skating using precise measurements, but I do know that the judging system creates all sorts of unnecessary drama that is inherently unfair to the athletes.
So I will gladly watch curling, obsessively watch it if I am honest, but I will avoid figure skating almost entirely because I can’t get past the feeling that if the outcome is the correct one, it may only be so accidentally.
Comments (5)
You have to score a goal, run, point, touchdown, etc. before I will watch it.
I got all wrapped up watching skating this year, but I’m totally with ya on the scoring thing. It’s unfair, and it does make the whole thing seem kinda bogus as a sport. Then again, I’m not really into sports. Got nothing against them, but they do nothing for me. So the fact that skating is a bit bogus as a sport was no problem for me. I was in it for the bedazzled unitards.
Anything that requires judges is not sport. It’s art. By all means, let’s have a world dance competition where “on ice” and “balancing on a thin beam of wood” can be categories, but let’s not call it sports.
And the other tidbit of Olympic wisdom from your FriendFace wall:
I feel the same way. And yet I watch. And my husband sits beside me and says “if you hate this shit so much, why are we tivoing 20 hours of it?” And I say nothing, because there is nothing to say.
Let’s all keep in mind, however, that these are the Olympic Games, and that encompasses a slightly broader array of events than traditional competitive sports. While I appreciate the idea behind the pregnancy comment, I don’t see a conflict with a woman competing in certain types of events if she is fairly early in her pregnancy.