Wisconsinite wrote:
I've asked all my cycling friends this question, and none of them can answer it:
If the badminton players got kicked out for "not giving their best effort," HOW IN THE WORLD do these bikers get to pedal 1 mph and slower for a full lap? They clearly aren't giving their best effort, right?
I guess the same applies for distance events, but c'mon. If you can bike 40+ mph, just do it. Stop dicking around at the beginning.
(1) Time doesn't matter, but position does. They are trying hard to maintain or take the more advantageous position. As an aside, I'd say there is something wrong with the badminton tournament structure if playing poorly is an advantage. I don't know anything about it, so maybe I'm saying something dumb, but shouldn't the more favorable tournament spots be awarded to the strongest teams?
(2)If you don't like seeing races strongly affected by positioning.tactics, there are events in cycling where you just go: the road TT, the team sprint, the 500m/kilo TT, the individual & team pursuits, and the flying lap in qualifying. Is it so bad to have events that differ in more than just distance? The individual pursuit and kilo TT (or 500m for the women for some reason) were axed from the olympics to make room for BMX in 2008, although they still exist as part of the omnium event.