The 2018 Winter Olympic Games

What parts are you going to watch?

I used to love watching the Opening Ceremonies, but this year not so much. Between the propaganda from NBC and Comcast, and their paid advertisers, and the tensions b/w North and South Korea, and our weird "diplomacy"....it's spoiled what used to be enjoyable winter entertainment. :(

Truth be told, I'm doubting that sports can deliver its promised "unifying" goal on the international level, which is what the Olympics is supposed to be about, right? Doping, sexual abuse, corrupt judges, national/international politics, paid sponsors, etc. ruined the concept of elite athleticism. Makes me sad, and not really entertained, because watching makes me complicit in everything that's wrong about it. Damn!

NBC can go fuck themselves sideways. Their idea of coverage made me miss five skates in the team event so they could do interviews or cover someone else, two skates in the pairs event so they could cut the broadcast into an early one and a late one after hockey, and it turns out yesterday they left off the last 1.5 heats of the men's short program and didn't provide any later broadcast at all for me to dvr. Apparently I have to pay NBC extra directly to get decent coverage of the most important part of major Olympic sports, ESPECIAlly ones where US athletes are favored to place. What fucking jackholes are running this company?

Wait, people actually watch nbc instead of vpning into Canada or the BBC?

Here it's the first time the rights aren't all with the public tv, they always had live streams of everything. Now they Havre limited rights but still most events where Dutch compete with pretty good coverage. For all live streams i had to pay Eurosport a whopping 99 cents, their coverage seems pretty good so far.

Anyway, good results for team NL so far, and in a few hours I'm watching hockey USA against OAR, should be good.

It's very simple for me; I don't like to watch sports quite enough to pay for it.

Fuzzy, since NBC is owned by Comcast (and they stand to make ~ $500 million in broadcast rights alone), they want you to pay for upgraded cable services in order to see the events you want. It's a racket. :sour:

I think there ought to be a public C-SPAN type coverage, without the crappy back stories and interviews, but there's no such thing as 'free TV' when it comes to sports. Apparently not even for the Olympics.

What I don't quite understand is the willingness to pay that much for this event. Of course it's nice to see The Netherlands somewhere high up the medal's table, but it also show something being 'off' about the winter games; the sports in it are simply not all that widely spread. And in the case of some sports it's pretty much a duopoly of Germany and Norway with other countries barely even knowing what the hell it is they get their medals for.

I mean, about 20 different gold medals for Biathlon?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hazir

What I don't quite understand is the willingness to pay that much for this event. Of course it's nice to see The Netherlands somewhere high up the medal's table, but it also show something being 'off' about the winter games; the sports in it are simply not all that widely spread. And in the case of some sports it's pretty much a duopoly of Germany and Norway with other countries barely even knowing what the hell it is they get their medals for.

I mean, about 20 different gold medals for Biathlon?

---

Hazir, while I agree with the criticism in general (hell, I hate the Olympics), I think you just have to accept that the Olympics are entirely arbitrary and that success in the medal counts rarely reflects something unique about the country so much as how much the country is willing to invest in a series of events. For a while there was a nice narrative of the US being really good at women's team sports because of Title IX, but even that story is mostly played out by now.

In this context, you have to just go with the flow of the absurdity and recognize it for what it is: ignoring the specifics of which country wins what and how many medals there are for swimming, or biathlon, or badminton, or whatever, but just admiring the individual athleticism on display. It's legitimately impressive, especially for sports where you can't possibly make any money doing the sport and which have impressive challenges.

Take biathlon - it's ridiculous how quickly they're able to slow their heartbeats from full-on cross-country exertion to the calm and measured state needed for accurate target shooting. Or skeleton - someone I know qualified for one of the 30 slots in this Olympics, and he's done it on a shoestring budget with no hope of ever making money on it as a career - and he's willing to bust his ass for years for that opportunity, even though he had no chance of medalling and it's wildly dangerous. I still don't watch the Olympics, but I do admire the individual dedication, athleticism, and skill involved.

I pass on Olympics and prefer the World Cup. If I'm going to watch a global sporting event produced by corrupt globalists, I want it to be one sport that is relatively accessible to most people in most places and most seasons. Also I can only really pay attention to one sport.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wiggin

....the Olympics are entirely arbitrary and that success in the medal counts rarely reflects something unique about the country so much as how much the country is willing to invest in a series of events....

In this context, you have to just go with the flow of the absurdity and recognize it for what it is: ignoring the specifics of which country wins what and how many medals there are for swimming, or biathlon, or badminton, or whatever, but just admiring the individual athleticism on display. It's legitimately impressive, especially for sports where you can't possibly make any money doing the sport and which have impressive challenges.

---

Like when an athlete from a Caribbean nation makes the cut for luge or downhill? :rolleyes:

Quote:

---

...I still don't watch the Olympics, but I do admire the individual dedication, athleticism, and skill involved.

---

Yes, it's easy to admire elite athletes who can control their bodies, and Biathlon is a great example. But that's no longer what the Olympic Ideal means. Now it's just about finding corporate sponsors that will pay for the training/coaching costs when nations won't. Rather like SpaceX taking NASA's initial investment and taking it to the next level.

One of my winter Olympic 'idols' is now doing commercials for skin cream....:(