$300 for a gold medal and no monetary compensation

[WarPhalange]

Just to add a little controversy to the thread.
Is any sport that requires judges to decide the points really a sport?

If you are going to have 'running around with a ribbon' in the olympics why not ball room dancing or playing bass guitar?

Yes, they are sports. Judges are needed whenever there is a sport that requires you to do something better, just just heavier or faster. Like Gymnastics. A human can tell a bad jump from a good one.

There are problems with that, such as judges being paid off or just dicks, but on the whole the sport is very legit.

I on the other hand think we should do away with sports that simply have you beat another person indirectly, such as lifting more or whatever. If you can lift 300lbs in the gym, why would you even compete? Just send in a tape of you doing it.

Competitions where you base your winning on the offchance that the other person will screw up is pointless.

Plus you reach an asymptote of human capability. Whereas with sports where you compete directly, ever match is different, since there are a lot of variables.

 

[LowlyPion]

You haven't seen schools in Scotland !

A herd of tartan garbed beefachoos thundering across the recess yard?

And I hope never to even have to visual that image either.

 

[LowlyPion]

There are problems with that, such as judges being paid off or just dicks, ...

Imagine that countries who invest their national identity in fielding their teams, that buy into such totally bogus metrics as medal races, would even think to tip the balances of fairness to support some national agenda.

Surely they must have the highest aims of competition in mind and would never grind the true spirit of fraternal competition in the grist mill of gain.

 

[Übermensch]

I find NFL just awfully boring ...
They stop every 5 second

Then a 10 minute commercial plays.

 

[D H]

Competitions where you base your winning on the offchance that the other person will screw up is pointless.

Olympic-level athletes do not base their chance of winning on the off-chance that the other person will screw up. They base their chance of failing to win on the off-chance that they themselves will screw up -- and then do their best to ensure that that will not happen.

 

[tribdog]

If Olympic athletes didn't get paid a penny for winning a medal you would still see the exact same people fighting to make it on to the team. They don't do it for the money, they do it to try to become the best in the world at their event. If these athletes had to pay for their own plane ticket to China they'd still be there.

 

[WarPhalange]

If they could afford it.

 

[WarPhalange]

Olympic-level athletes do not base their chance of winning on the off-chance that the other person will screw up. They base their chance of failing to win on the off-chance that they themselves will screw up -- and then do their best to ensure that that will not happen.

If everybody plays their A-game, the person who can lift 305 in the gym will beat the person who can lift 300 in the gym. The person who can lift 300 is counting on Mr. 305 on screwing up.

 

[tribdog]

If they could afford it.

that's what I'm saying, nobody is doing it for the money and they would spend every penny they could afford to be there.

 

[BobG]

Or their contracts with their clubs don't allow it.
It's the start of the soccer season, how would you feel if your new $50M striker went away for 2weeks to play in a competition for his own personal glory?

But on a personal level why should they? The olympics doesn't represent your country, it's a money making operation that doesn't pay profesional performers to appear.
Listing atheletes by their country makes no more sense than a F1 victory by Kimi Räikkönen in a British car with a German engine being a victory for Finland.
Why not list athletes as part of the Nike or addidas team like in the tour de france?

Sometimes, it goes further than that. I watched some of the Olympics this morning while drinking coffee and getting ready for work. The women's beach volleyball competition matched Russia against Georgia. Talk about an emotional matchup!

Except the Georgian volleyball players were Brazilian. They were born in Brazil, lived their whole life in Brazil, and looked Brazilian. They were an average team in a professional Brazilian beach volleyball league. They also happened to have some Georgian ancestry, so Georgia hired them to represent Georgia.

Somehow, I'm not sure the Georgian players really understood the significance of the match, although it was a very good match between two 0-2 teams trying to avoid elimination.

Likewise, a US-Russia matchup in womens basketball could be an emotionally significant game for the fans. Russia had better hope their starting point guard, Becky Hammon from South Dakota, has a good game or they'll be blown out as badly as they were in a pre-Olympic tournament.

And, several years ago, Mexico's Womens World Cup team was composed predominantly of US college players with at least some Mexican ancestry, even if most of them couldn't even speak Spanish. They were players not invited to try out for the US team, but they were still good enough to qualify Mexico for the World Cup.

National teams just don't always mean what they used to.

 

[mgb_phys]

National teams just don't always mean what they used to.

Back in the days of apartheid most 'british' medal winners were South African.

In soccer the Irish world cup team is basically the England b-squad, you just needed an Irish grandparent to qualify. There was a joke that they had relaxed the qualification - you now just needed a grandparent that liked a guiness.