Discuss. This.
Discuss. This.
Anything that involves snow and ice.
the sliding sports. probably bob sleigh
I really love watching winter olympics, and enjoy the fringe sports, but probably luge and bobsled I'd guess? Only a tiny subset of countries have any interest at all and even within those countries I have to believe access to facilities is limited and with it any sort of participant numbers. That said I'm betting someone who knows more than I do about these sports my have a different opinion.
As much as I Iove nordic ski racing there are only about 8 countries with any real representation and of those only the scandanavian countries have truly serious national programs. There are some amazing endurance athletes racing nordic, no doubt, but the pond is really small.
You could really make that case for almost any winter olympic sport; even alpine ski racing. On the women's side after Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsay Vonn we basically have no one, and internationally only a handful of countries have well funded national teams.
Chloe Kim is a cutie but not legal yet wrote:
When do the games begin?
I see what you did there...
I'd say bobsled. It seems teams are formed with little preparation. Just work on your pushing skills on ice... And other than the driver, the other people dont do much once they stop pushing and get in the sled.
female ski jumping. they even only have 35 competitors at the olympics. generally if you are a female you have a good shot. female half pipe for example. as a decent male boarder you could probably instantly win
Not bobsleed. You have to be a good sprinter to get into one of the teams
semenyagoat wrote:
female ski jumping. they even only have 35 competitors at the olympics. generally if you are a female you have a good shot. female half pipe for example. as a decent male boarder you could probably instantly win
Remind me how many people are entered in the 10,000m in the Summer Olympics. Is that because of a small talent pool?
Women's hockey
Women's half pipe snowboard thing that the blonde Korean-American woman won
The pole licking competition was pretty weak this time. Not many athletes willing to practice when temps get below -10F.
qualifying standards? wrote:
Remind me how many people are entered in the 10,000m in the Summer Olympics. Is that because of a small talent pool?
Running is something done by a relatively very large number of people around the world and nearly every runner in the final is a world class runner or close to it. Women's ski jumping on the other hand, is done by hardly ANY women around the world.
Take the womens snowboard halfpipe final last night for example; there was a huge disparity between Chloe Kim and even the silver medalist; the last woman in the final of the OLYMPICS wasn't even on the same planet as Ms. Kim.
There is no comparison between sports done by a relatively large sample set of people, and a very small set.
unfortunately... wrote:
You could really make that case for almost any winter olympic sport; even alpine ski racing. On the women's side after Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsay Vonn we basically have no one, and internationally only a handful of countries have well funded national teams.
It's not just the winter Olympics, many of the events in the Summer Olympics have a very small number of people who have the opportunity and funding to compete. For example rowing (and the event even has weight classes!), sailing, modern pentathlon, fencing, equestarian, canoing, kayaking, track cycling, lightweight weightlifting, synchronized diving, and synchronized swimming to name a few.
Nowadays I prefer watching the winter Olympics, when I watch the summer Olympics these days I just think "drugs" and it takes away my motivation.
For the weakest competition at the winter Olympics I would guess skeleton bobsled or ski jumping, though for ski jumping you have be pretty darn brave so I resepect that.
not a valid comparison wrote:
Take the womens snowboard halfpipe final last night for example; there was a huge disparity between Chloe Kim and even the silver medalist; the last woman in the final of the OLYMPICS wasn't even on the same planet as Ms. Kim.
There is no comparison between sports done by a relatively large sample set of people, and a very small set.
I don't disagree with the disparity between Kim and silver, but do want to point out that it wasn't too unlike when Ayana nearly lapped the whole field in the Rio 10k. That had to be as absurd to the casual viewer as it was to us
Bobsledders are identified in countries that don't even have snow. The talent pool is larger than ever.
Curling?
Curling. It's the sport that the average fat middle-aged guy sitting at home could become good at.
The women's snowboarding half pipe and slopestyle were nowhere near as impressive as the men's (with exception of Chloe Kim). One thing I thought was weird was that none of the women (other than Chloe) could grab the board on their jumps. I don't know anything about snowboarding tricks, but it seems like that should be something that should be easier for the women.
A new event this year is the full track speedskating mass start. I encourage anyone to try and figure out what's going on
Equestrian? Don’t even need to be a talented human. Just purchase a talented horse and you can have an Olympic gold.
You can go curling in many major cities and it's popular in Canada. You can't say that about bobsled or luge. Barely anyone does luge.
Most expensive + most location/environmentally dependent + female