The Ratings*: Sports of the Winter Olympics

So the 2006 Winter Olympics are finally over. Canada won a record 24 medals, plus just missed on 11 more with 4th place finishes. Cindy Klassen won an impressive 5 medals. The men’s hockey team never clicked and made an early exit; the women’s team dominated everyone and was never challenged for the gold medal. Plus there were a whole lot of other events. I’m always sucked in by the Winter Olympics, but some sports command more of my interest than others. Now, for no reason at all, the sports of the Winter Olympics, rated:

Alpine Skiing. Depending on the event, this is something I might watch outside the Olys if I’m flipping through the channels on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Slalom seems way too technical, they never get up to enough speed to be highly entertaining. As it moves up to the giant slalom, the super G, and downhill it gets more entertaining, for sheer speed, that ‘on-the edge’ factor, and the train-wreck attraction when someone wipes out badly. Grades: Slalom: C, GS: C+, Super G: B, Downhill: A

Biathlon. Let’s see… cross country skiing, plus shooting. X-country is rated below on its own merits… thus the question is whether the addition of shooting makes it better or worse. I think the combination of events go together well enough, but I’m not big on shooting due to its use of an artificial propellant. Half mark deduction. If they used bows and arrows instead, that’d be a different story. Grade: C+

Bobsleigh. Who calls it bobsleigh? Europeans, evidently. Anyway, the bobsled is moderately interesting to watch, but the vehicle used seems to take over the event… you can’t see the athletes as they are all riding along in what appears to be a giant dildo. This moves it a notch down from the likes of luge and skeleton. Grade: C+

Cross Country Skiing. Seems like it should be boring. Comparatively slow moving compared to other Olympic sports. But having attempted it I can appreciate the difficulty in doing it especially at the pace they maintain, and I can say it actually produced some quite exciting finishes especially in the short distances. Bonus points for the athletic purity of it… kinda like distance running, but more entertaining. Grade: B

Curling. Often gets dumped on because of the lack of pure athleticism… I bet the curlers really stand out in the athlete’s village. Where else can a 50-year-old have a shot at playing, let alone winning gold? But there is at least some athleticism there, and the technical aspects make up for the lack of speed and strength. Still, I find watching the firsts and seconds throwing guards is a lot less interesting than the thirds and skips throwing draws and raises. Something I can have on and watch intermittently while doing something else. Grade: B+

Figure Skating. Is this even a sport? Yes, the competitors are athletic and there is skill and competition involved… but the judging still seems way too subjective and there is a lot of fluff (music, routines, costumes, make-up) that goes way beyond the technical elements, and indeed seems essential to the competition. Grade: F. Oh, and Ice Dancing? Take everything I said but scale back the athleticism. Grade: F-

Freestyle Skiing. Also a sport scored predominantly on judged points, but seems to have the fluff removed. Moguls also includes a speed element as well as form and jumps, and while aerials is judged on jumps (and landings) only, it looks pretty rigidly defined. I guess that’s OK. Points for style and the train wreck factor (though that Aussie aerials jumper blowing out her knee again only 7 months after reconstructive surgery – painful to watch). Grade: C+

Hockey. The official name at the olympics is “ice hockey”. That’s just silly. Anyway, the international game is a lot more entertaining than the NHL, for both men’s and women’s events, plus it’s just that much more exciting when it’s country versus country rather than one random group of Canadians, Americans and Europeans against another group of the same, ostensibly playing for different cities. Gotta love Olympic hockey, even when the men’s team bombs out. Grade: A+

Luge. Same sorta track event as the bobsled, but the participants are right out in the open. When they fall off, they get hurt. Even so, the feet-first attitude seems a little bit wussy when compared to the skeleton. Plus, in this sport, even if you win, you’re still a luger. Grade: B

Nordic Combined. Combined sports always seem a bit odd to me, but some of them can work if they flow together seamlessly. For example, biathlon, even though I don’t like the shooting aspect, it combines easily enough with skiing. Similarly, triathlon in the summer has three events run consecutively on a straight time basis – good fit. But other events, like decathlon, modern pentathlon (dumbest event ever, by the way), and nordic combined, just don’t fit. First of all, one event is based on points while the other is on time, and secondly, ski jumping plus cross-country skiing? Who though of this? Grade: D

Short Track Speed Skating. This is a cool event to watch. Four skaters at a time, on a ridiculously small track, zipping around at crazy speeds and jockeying for position the whole time. Crashes happen, but I cannot believe they don’t happen more, especially watching them take corners at what sems like an impossible angle to the ice. Relays are even crazier, particularly when all four teams are performing the push-off transfers at the same time in close proximity. Grades: Individual events: B+, Relay: A

Skeleton. The most balls-out of the ice track sports. Headfirst down the track on a tiny sled at ridiculous speeds. The next best thing to having an Olympic event for the Krazy Karpet. Grade: B+

Ski Jumping. Ridiculous. You have to wonder who came up with this. This seems like the most reckless and dangerous event conceived, yet I have never seem a mishap. Cool event to watch. But I gotta take points off for having too much attention to form. Flying 120+ metres through the air is pretty impressive, I don’t really care if they kept their skis straight or performed a telemark landing. Grade: B

Snowboard. Three different events here, made up of two races and one ‘style’ competition. The halfpipe competition is fun to watch, but way too stylistic. They can leave that one at the X Games. Parallel slalom is pretty good to watch and having it in pairs makes it that much more spectator friendly – it’s easier to see who’s winning, rather than watching the bottom corner for a split time to find out someone is 0.08 seconds off the lead or whatnot as they have in skiing. Snowboard Cross (an awkward name – just call it boarder cross like they say elsewhere) is one of the most entertaining events I saw this year – a great addition. Four people at a time going through a course filled with turns, bumps, dips, and jumps, lotsa chances for contact, lead changes, and wipeouts. Great addition to these Games. Grades: Halfpipe: C, Parallel slalom: B, Snowboard cross A+

Speed Skating. I always though of long-track speed skating as kinda boring, especially when compared to short track, but this year I realy got into it. Probably in no small part due to hometown girls Cindy Klassen and Clara Hughes putting in impressive performances. Seeing Klassen dominate the 1500 m and Hughes go for broke to claim the 5000 m were downright inspiring and had me on the edge of my seat. Also fun to watch was the newly added team pursuit – three racers per team, timed on the basis of when the last one crosses the line. Cool to watch as they skate in formation, then all break out into a straight line to cross the finish simultaneously. I’m starting to see what the Dutch like about this sport. Grade: A

* concept stolen shamelessly from Brunching Shuttlecocks, one of the great websites of days long past.

Lessons from a concert

Saw the New Pornographers w/ Novillero tonight. A few notes:

- ‘the Venue’ – formerly the Garrick Theatre – is a pretty good spot to watch a show. When did it open?
- Novillero deserves more exposure than they get. I think I’ve heard their songs maybe 3 times on the Red River College station, but that’s it. They put on a kick ass live show and blow me away every time I see them.
- More bands need a guy to dance wildly with a tambourine, kick in the occasional backing vocal, and basically just act as the visual focal point for 90% of the songs. It really adds to the experience… you kinda have to see it to know what I mean.
- No matter where you stand, or how early you get there, at some point some guy who is so tall he could see the stage from anywhere on the floor will stand right in front of you.
- The New Pornographers live up to the hype. They are power pop gods.
- That said, they could be a bit more animated on stage. Except for Kurt Dahle (drums) He was a star in the background all show.
- John Collins needs to lose either the beard or the glasses. He looks WAY too much like the Canadian Tire Guy (I’ll try to track down some pictures that show this. It is eerie).
- Carl Newman is too big for his guitar, but pulls it off.
- Kathryn Calder is a good vocalist (and keyboardist too I think, though with two of them on stage it was hard at times to tell who was doing what). But there is only one Neko Case, would’ve been great to have her for the show.
- Handclaps are underrated. Novillero used some in a few of their songs, but the real stars were a group of three people in the crowd who had obviously practised a coordinated routine, used to great effect during the NP’s ‘Stacked Crooked’. I’ve never seen anything like it.
- If you are going to do gimmicky drumstick tosses, be prepared for failure. Dahle was 2-for-4 during the second song (‘Use It’), but had enough extras on hand that he hardly missed a beat. One of the more entertaining parts of the show was when he tried (and succeeded) to recover his lost drumsticks whilst drumming one-handed during a subsequent song.
- ‘The Bleeding Heart Show’ and ‘Testament to Youth in Verse’ have two of the greatest outtros ever.
- Going to concerts is pretty much always worth it. I have to do it more.

Quasi-Tournament Weekend

Man, it feels like it has been forever since I have played an ultimate tournament. Last one I played was Hallowinona (end of October in Winona, MN… the name is kind of self-explanatory), where I won my first ever tourney, and since then the weather just hasn’t been conducive to outdoor play, though there have been a few indoor tournaments in the region that I haven’t participated in... though they sound fun ;)

But no worries. I have been keeping in shape and will be ready. This past weekend was a good test of the kind of conditioning required for a tournament, and I think I met the challenge. Here’s how it went down:

1. Play hard on Saturday. No ulty on Saturday, but I did participate in an event with similar physical demands – The Great Grain Relay. This is an event put on by the grain industry (but open to anyone) at the Max Bell Centre, the U of M’s track facility. What it is, essentially is teams of five with each runner completing 4 laps (800 m) at a time before handing of to the next person; when the fifth person completes their set they hand off to the first again, and the process repeats for 2 full hours. The team that completes the most laps wins.

Our team (the Homestar Runners) was made up of friends and teammates from Trogdor, our league ultimate team. We hadn’t done any specific training, but hoped our conditioning would be enough to put in at least a respectable performance. As it turned out, it was… we surprised ourselves and ended up taking first in our division with 154 laps (30.8 km, or about 6 km each). Go team!

2. Party hard Saturday night. Most ultimate tournaments – the good ones, anyway – have a party on Saturday night. Especially if you’re a rec team, or if it’s a ‘fun’ tournament (as opposed to a highly competitive one), ‘winning the party’ carries bragging rights almost as big as winning the tourney on the field on Sunday. So going out and partying hard, then being able to take the field on Sunday and still do well, is a big component of a successful tournament weekend.

The party this weekend was supplied by another Trogdor teammate’s wedding social which took place out in Portage la Prairie (thus giving the weekend a road-trip component, another tournament staple). The social itself had a few shortcomings – beer selection was limited to Budweiser and Labatt Light; music selection was limited to country and western, with real dance music making a late appearance; and worst of all, the late lunch of kubasa, rye bread and cheese cubes was missing a key component: mustard. But that's nothing to do with our teammate, who was shut out of the planning process for the social. And regardless we all had lots of fun, lots of drinks, and even scored a rare win in the silent auction. We may not have won the party – that’s kind of hard to do when up against an army of drunken country-music loving girls on their home turf – but we lasted until the end and held our own on the dance floor, at least when they started playing real music.

3. Take the field on Sunday. After hurrying back from Portage on Sunday morning, we finally had some ultimate to play early in the afternoon. OK, it was only intramurals. And the other team didn’t have enough to field a line, so we just ended up playing pickup. But it was still a good workout. After a slow start, my team in the dark shirts started to go on a run and I scored my share of points, even scoring a callahan with a layout grab (it later turned out that the girl who threw it was playing her first game ever. Ah, well – I still had to work for it). After our slot was over, one of the next teams up failed to show so we scrimmaged against another team, who were unfortunately all quite new and not much of a challenge. After a while we decided we had to make it a challenge and give tem a chance at scoring, so we imposed some restrictions on ourselves – the hack rule (all our players must touch the disc before we score), playing upside-down points (took a while, but we scored), finally a left-handed point that left us more inept than our opponents and they scored. We scored one last point and called it an afternoon.

So… the quality of play wasn’t up to tournament finals on Sunday, but I think overall I’m in good shape for a tourney next time I get the chance. Hopefully things will work out for a trip down to Fool’s Fest in Lawrence, Kansas this April. I’ll keep you posted.

Why the game is played

OK, I was wrong. Just days ago I stated it was “inevitable” that the US and Canada would meet in the gold medal final for women’s hockey at the Olympics. And then this happens: Sweden 3, US 2 in a shootout in the semifinal (Canada won their semi 6-0 over Finland). In my defence, however, pretty much everyone else got it wrong too – it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the US and Canada were the teams to beat, and everyone else had a lot of catching up to do. Obviously, there was less distance between the teams that we all thought, and it was close enough that on a given day, the underdogs with some spirited play and great individual performances from a few players (particularly goalie Kim Martin) could knock off one of the two favourites. Still a huge upset, but it’s the first indication in a while that the US and Canada are not truly invincible. Interestingly, Angela Ruggiero, who I ripped earlier, was one of the few who realised that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion:

“Going into these Games, a lot of people were saying, `Oh, it's USA-Canada.' And maybe it will turn out to be that. But you earn your spot to make it to that final game. Especially (against) those two teams, Sweden and Finland, you have to beat them. If you just show up, you're not going to win."

Too true. So, I won’t blame the US’s loss on hubris, but the point is made: take nothing for granted, it’s not enough to know you’re the better team, you gotta be the better team.

On a similar note, another event in the Olys today made a similar point, but this one I will attribute to hubris: Lindsey Jacobellis pulled off a Leon Lett moment when, on the penultimate jump in the snowboard cross final with a seemingly insurmountable lead, she tried a bit of showboating by going for the stylish board-grab, missed the landing, wiped out, and was passed before the finish line by the Swiss finalist, Tanja Frieden. (The two Canadian finalists were unfortunately unable to take advantage, each having wiped out rather badly in passing attempts earlier in the race.) She initially tried for the excuse that the board grab was needed for stability before revising her story to saying she was just trying to ‘have some fun’ with the ill-fated move. Well, I have nothing against fun. But there will probably be a lot of people (and her sponsors, I imagine) who will be less than impressed with that excuse for blowing the win.

So kids, the take home message is: a) the game isn’t won until it’s played, and b) the race isn’t over until you cross the line.

Now, get off your asses and go do something. You aren’t going to win anything by reading a blog.

Random ideas on improving the world, part 1

[originally posted February 3, but mysteriously eaten by the interweb]

Just a few thoughts I've had recently, might as well put them down before they are lost to the world:

1. Why do people not obey the 12-items-or-less (or 9- or 15-items) limit in express lanes? One is that people cannot count, or they have no idea what constitutes an item... if there are more than one of something, and they are not in a container or bag or naturally connected somehow, you have more than one item. If you have more than 12 of these (or 9, 15, whatever it is), you are over. No express lane for you!

The other reason is that people know they are over, but cheat to save time. This annoys me. Not that spending an extra minute in line bothers me that much in itself (usually anyway), but the principle. People can be pretty selfish and don't mind incoveniencing others... there are more serious example of this, but i was thinking of this one because a solution exists! Here's the deal:

It is not hard to count to 12 manually. It is even less hard if you have a computer doing it. And almost all grocery stores big enough for an express lane have fancy computerised checkouts now, and I am certain it would be minimally complicated to add a feature that couints the ites and relates it to the limit on an express lane. So it should be easy to flag people who exceed the limit. Now, what do you do with this? Let the people check out using this line (making them go back and start again would just inconvenience another line). But charge for each item over. Maybe a dollar (maybe higher, depending on how much you want to discourage going over, maybe an ascending penalty for each item. I haven't figured out the specifics). Anyway that discourages breaking the limit, but some people wil anyway, some will just figure it's worth it. Is that still fair? I propose further that the people in line (maybe the next three customers) are compensated, say three people each get a quarter off per item over that person had, paid for out of the dollar per item penalty. The grocery store keeps a token amount, at least enough to pay for fixing their computer systems to accommodate this.

Would it work?

2. Had some thoughts on the city's snow clearing this week, since we had some substantial snowfall. First off, if the city is going to have an overnight parking ban on residential streets, it makes sense to plow them overnight, when all the cars are gone... not the next afternoon when cars are allowed to park onthe street and the plow needs to leave big gaps where the cars are. Yeesh. But that doesn't really have anything to do with my idea.

Here's the thing: When there's a substantial snowfall, and the streets have tons of slush or big snowy ruts in them, it really slows things down. You're lucky if you can get up to the speed limit on a major route. You get none of the benefits of speeding but really none of the safety benefits of not speeding, there are still plenty of accidents... usually many more. Better to have people going faster on dry pavement.

Now, if people can go faster due to better road conditions, not only do they benefit from getting places faster, but the City benefits too now, since their photo radar catch more people (12 km/h over the posted limit is the threshold I believe, and cameras don't take into account weather conditions). If the roads are crappy, the cameras take in very little. So... I figure if the City spends a bit more on clearing major routes faster, that means more days when they can be collecting lucrative photo radar revenues, so (depending on the cost-benefit ratio, I haven't figured that out) it may actually make them money to do so. Or at least cost less in net terms than the sheer outlay would suggest. This does not even take into account the externalities in time savings from driving, nor the savings from fewer accidents and insurance claims (aside: perhaps MPI could chip in for snow clearing too... they also have a vested interest). And it makes the voters happy.

As I said I haven't costed this one out or anything. But could I be onto something here?

Take that, Italy

So, as some of you may be aware, the Winter Olympics are on right now in Turin*, so naturally I’ve been watching an awful lot of random sports on the tube. I always like the Winter Olympics better than the summer variety. I mean, track and field is pretty dull… wow, that guy just ran in a straight line… amazing… oh look, there are some people running in circles… oh, there is someone jumping… and someone throwing a heavy object. WOW. And swimming is pretty much track, but in water. Plus a whole lot of other pointless stuff like equestrian, modern pentathlon, etc. Ridiculous. Winter Olympics on the other hand has cool stuff like ski jumping, luge/skeleton/bobsled, and short track speed skating. Equally ridiculous I guess, but way more cool to watch. And there are some sports that I actually watch when it’s not the Olympics, like curling, and of course hockey.

Hockey! That was going to be the point of this. The men’s competition just got underway today with Canada spanking the host Italians 7-2. But well before that, the women started playing, with everyone expecting Canada and the US to dominate everyone else on the way to the gold medal final. Well, that’s happened… but I don’t think many, myself included, thought the Canadians would dominate quite so much. 16-0 over Italy… Yikes. But Italy’s only in as the host. They can’t be expected to hang with the Canucks. Next: Russia – more of a hockey nation, but a weaker women’s program, but still… 12-0. OK, they haven’t faced anyone good yet. Next is Sweden. One of the two best teams outside of the North American powerhouses. 8-1. Whoa. After the first three games Canada had outscored their opponents 36-1. Shots were 156-30. And Canada’s top line of Wickenheiser, Piper, and Apps already has 33 points combined. Unreal.

Anyway, this complete dominance of their opponents bodes well for the Canadian team for the rest of the tournament, but now some people are complaining they’re winning by too much. ‘Running up the score’, some say, ‘padding their stats’, or thinking that the other countries are just going to run home crying and never play hockey again. Some say this is typical Canadian guilt over success, but now even the Americans are getting in on it. US defenceman* Angela Ruggiero chimed in with some harsh words for the Canadian team, with some of the above criticisms and saying they should play nice against the hosts. Those should provide some fighting words for the inevitable Canada-US final.

Anyway, my thoughts: this isn’t Timbits hockey, it’s the Olympics. People are playing to win. This should be the best of the best, and teams need to be in winning form. That means playing hard and taking your opponents seriously, it doesn’t mean letting up when you’ve got a comfortable lead… that kind of attitude can bite you in the ass later. Certainly Italy’s not going to come back from 10-0, but if Canada gets used to playing half a game and then coasting, they may not be ready to play a whole game when thy face a real opponent. And about embarassing opponents… when I’m playing a game and getting blown out, I certainly don’t feel disrespected if my opponent keeps up their play till the end, rather than coasting or turning the last half into a joke. A team that is playing you hard is taking you seriously, even if they’re giving you a pounding.

So keep on givin’ ‘er, Team Canada. We could use more of this killer instinct in the rest of the Games, and beyond.

* Yeah. Turin. Sure I could call it by the local name (Torino), but then I’d have to do that for everyone. That’s just too much work.

** Defencewoman? Defenceperson? Still haven’t figured that one out.