I've never been one to get all that excited about the Olympics. To me they are one of those things that if it is on I will turn to the channel every now and then and see what is going on, but I don't really know much about the various games and I certainly don't plan my day around what event is going to be on.
Normally, when I do find something that I am interested in it is just because it happens to be on at the time and I don't really know enough about it to really get too committed to any of it.
src
one sport I never really saw myself becoming a fan of is curling and I want to say that I am not alone in this. I wouldn't say that I really have any idea what the strategy could possibly be in this game, I do find it rather fun to watch. It is also very amazing to me that these guys and girls seem to get the giant rock thing to land exactly where they want it to be every single time. It also seems to me that the person who goes 2nd has a huge advantage as far as the overall score is concerned.
I'm not super patriotic, but I do root for "my team" whenever they are rolling or sliding or whatever it is called. Since these games take a really long time it seems to be on basically at all hours too. Who is the best at it? I have no idea. All the people I have seen play it seem to be extremely good and I guess that makes the events even more exciting despite the rather slow pace of it. It's fun to have a commentary with me and my friends who clearly now next to nothing about the sport but still make up our own terms for what is about to go down.
src
Another sport that I really enjoy watching is the biathlon. I saw a funny joke the other day about how since a triathlon is running, cycling and swimming so a biathlon must be two of those things right? Well, not exactly.
Whoever decided that cross-country skiing should be mixed with firing a rifle is an absolute genius. Going fast is always a big part of it, but if you don't hit the targets well enough at the shooting stages now you have to do punishment laps that are going to put you behind in your skiing. Being able to do one of the two better than anyone else but being average in the other is NOT going to win you the event. What a crazy duo of skills to have huh?
I really enjoy watching this although I have to say that I rarely know what the hell is going on. It's just fun to me. Regular shooting and regular cross-country skiing is quite boring to me, but somehow the two together are just absolutely awesome. Unfortunately, I don't get to see this very often because they have to do it during the early day in Italy and this time zone doesn't match up with my life. We always have highlights I guess.
src
There is one aspect of the Winter Olympics that I am "meh" about though and that is almost all of the snowboarding events. I believe that snowboarding being in the Olympics at all is the result of the popularity of the X-games in the past (I don't think those still exist do they) and this pressured the Olympic committee to take it on board (pun intended.) But a great many of the snowboarding events to me seem either very subjective (who did a twist flip the best?) or they seem like something that you can't possibly do any better than the person before and it all just becomes a question of who weighs the perfect amount?
I don't know what the event is called but it looked like the pic above. There was a track of easily accomplished bumps going down a hill and there wasn't any way for the participants to move any faster than they were. It also didn't seem to be particularly challenging to any of the people involved so what he ended up with was times that were within a second or two for each and every person that did it.
When we compare this to the ski slalom for example, there are people that realize they have to push the limits in order to have a chance at getting in the top 3 so they really do crazy things to move perhaps a lot faster than they should. This results in about 20% of the racers crashing and burning. In the aforementioned snowboarding event there was no chance for the participants to even take a big chance and no one came even close to falling down. It was just really boring and didn't make a lot of sense to me.
If I see a snowboarding event is on I will search for something else to watch or to just not watch the Olympics at all.
They will never take these events out though because there is too much money to be made with sponsorship.
Well that is two events I love and 1 that I could do without? You have anything to add?