XXII Olympic Winter Games - Sochi 2014 - 02/07-02/23

[Wakarimashita]

-Norway regain the top of the medal table with extra medals in nordic combined and biathlon.
-The US are 2nd with medals in half-pipe skiing, alpine skiing and bobsleigh.
-Germany drop to 3rd with only one medal in the last 2 days in nordic combined relay.
-Russia climb to 4 with a gold in the ladies' skating tonight.
-Canada are at 5 with a gold medal in women's curling today.
-A new sweep for the Netherlands yesterday, the 5th in these olympics.
-Switzerland drop to 7 despite a gold in parallel slalom.
-Belarus drop to 8.
-France are back in the top 10 at 9 with a double in alpine skiing and a sweep in ski cross.
-Poland drop to 10.

edit : Canada's just won a gold in women's hockey too. It doesn't change their position in this medal table. The US won a slver, doesn't change their position either.

[Jd-]

Surprised to see the U.S. doing so well in what was expected to be an off-year. Good stuff to everyone.

[Wakarimashita]

-Norway stays at the top with an extra bronze in the women's relay in biathlon.
-Russia rises 2 spots with 2 golds in short track and a silver in biathlon.
-Canada rises back to 3 with 2 golds today : men's curling and women's skicross (where they also got a silver).
-The US drops 2 spots despite Shiffrin's gold in women's slalom and a silver in short track.
-Germany loses 2 spots as well with no extra medal.
6 to 10 stay the same.

Only the remaining events are left with gold medals possible :
-Men's hockey
-Men's 50km mass start free
-Bobsleigh four men
-Men's slalom
-Men's relay in biathlon
-Ladies's 30km mass start free
-Men's Parallel Slalom Finals
-Women's Parallel Slalom Finals
-Ladies' Team Pursuit Finals (speedskating)
-Men' Team Pursuit Finals

So, among the top 4 nations, I think Norway will remain at the top by Sunday but Russia still has a small chance to win this and reach their aim.

[Stopwatch]

Curious as to if any of you have an opinion on the Yuna Kim thing? Ignore me if you don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

[Wakarimashita]

I don't know enough about how figure skating is graded precisely to have a definite opinion however among the jury there was a judge who had been found guilty of corruption a few years ago (only banned 1 year from juding) and a judge married to the president of the Russian federation of figure skating, which is obviously problematic as there is a huge conflict of interests there.

[Jd-]

If there is subjective scoring and a panel of judges involved, it's a competition, not a sport. As a result, I consider events like figure skating and gymnastics at the Olympics to be similar to and about as valuable as beauty pageants.

It's way too easy for corruption to exist in these competitions, and I refuse to believe there are objective judges that can put aside their own politics and interests. They have to live with their scores and will be hounded if they ever go against their own country, so it's easier to just be lenient with them.

[Wakarimashita]

There are a lot of sports involving judging in the winter olympics, both new (half-pipe, slopestyle, moguls, free-style skiing...) and old (ski-jumping, figure skating) and in all these sports except figure skating there is almost never any controversy because most of the time the best one clearly wins. Not to mention some of these sports remove the highest and the lowest grade to minimise the standard deviation. The problem really seems to be with figure skating itself, not the juding per se.

First of all, there should not be more than one judge of a given nationality in the panel, the grades of the judge of the same nationality as the athlete on the ice should automatically be removed, and if none of the judges are of the same nationality as the athlete they could just remove one randomly. Grades should also be made public again, the modification in scoring has only made potential cheating even more obscure.

[Wakarimashita]

[Jd-]

There are a lot of sports involving judging in the winter olympics, both new (half-pipe, slopestyle, moguls, free-style skiing...) and old (ski-jumping, figure skating) and in all these sports except figure skating there is almost never any controversy because most of the time the best one clearly wins. Not to mention some of these sports remove the highest and the lowest grade to minimise the standard deviation. The problem really seems to be with figure skating itself, not the juding per se.

First of all, there should not be more than one judge of a given nationality in the panel, the grades of the judge of the same nationality as the athlete on the ice should automatically be removed, and if none of the judges are of the same nationality as the athlete they could just remove one randomly. Grades should also be made public again, the modification in scoring has only made potential cheating even more obscure.

I'm pretty confident that if we carried out an experiment determining the consistency of judges' aptitude, it'd reveal a lot about how subjective it all is. If we were to take the time to test the judges, I'm fairly certain that the scores would be all over the place. The reason that these are competitions and not sports is that the results should be things that are evident under specific circumstances that can be enforced by anyone familiar with the rules, requiring as little subjectivity as possible. This is why a referee is a lot more valuable than a scoring judge. Yes, referees get it wrong all the time in sports, but their job is not to hand out points (as it'd be with an NBA referee saying one dunk is worth 2 points while a spinning, one-hand, jumping-from-the-free-throw-line dunk is worth 6 points). In sports, referees are there to enforce a preordained set of rules that define the boundaries under which the action is to take place. In competitions, the judges are there to decide who performed best as decided by their own personal criteria that is entirely on their shoulders and doesn't even have to be substantiated by a preordained set of rules to be considered completely valid.

In short: The way things are with competitions is that they open it all up to way too much bias and corruption.

Personally, I prefer Olympic sports like archery and swimming at the summer games. These are sports, where the role of officials is to ensure an even playing field for the athletes to compete on rather than decide how well they did based on arbitrary and often puzzling factors. It's nice to just have the results speak for themselves, rather than being forced to let someone else decide for us what the results even are.

[Conan-kun]

Pretty sure there has been a controversial result in every sport ever played in the Olympics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuBm0PRt23I

[Wakarimashita]

Svendsen just handed the top of the medal table to Russia, maybe even permanently, with what he just did in the men's biathlon relay.

[Wakarimashita]

-Russia rises to the top of the medal table with 2 golds : one in the men's biathlon relay and one in the men's parallel slalom.
-As a result, Norway drops to 2 despite their sweet in the ladies' 30 mass start.
-No change for Canada or the US.
-The Netherlands climb back to 5 with 2 new golds in the speed skating pursuits. This is the most dominant a nation has ever been in a given sport in the winter olympics.
-Germany drops to 6 despite a bronze-silver double in the ladies' parallel slalom and a silver in biathlon.
-Switzerland and Belarus stay at 7 and 8.
-Austria re-enters the top 10 at 9 with a gold-silver double in the men's slalom, a gold in the ladies' parallel slalom and a bronze in biathlon.
-France drops one spot with no change in medals.

[Wakarimashita]

-Russia finishes at the top of the medal with a huge improvement over their 2010 performance. The final nail in the coffin for the other contenders came this morning with the Russian sweep in the men's 50 cross country mass start. However, they stay short of a few medals from Canada'srecord gold medal tally and the US's record total medal tally back in 2010. It is the first time Russia tops a medal table in Olympic Games since 1994 in Lillehammer and the first since the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they top the medal table all the while having the biggest total.
-As a result, Norway fails to top the medal table. However they've still had slightly better Olympics than in Vancouver.
-Canada is at 3 dropping 2 places from Vancouver but with a very consistent total medal tally. Their relative lack of golds has hurt them.
-The US is at 4 finishing outside of the top 3 for the first time since the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano. However, these were the best games for the US on European soil when it comes to the total medal tally (the previous best being in Torino).
-The Netherlands explose their previous best of 11 medals with an all-time high domination of the speed skating events leaving only a few medals to the other nations involved.
-After a great start, especially in the luge events, Germany finishes in a disappointing 6th place. Their lack of victoires in biathlon and alpine skiing (except for Maria Höfl-Riesch) being the main issue.
-Switzerland is very consistent, down 1 spot and 2 medals from Vancouver, but with the same number of gold medals. Had it not been for the Netherlands' extraordinary performances, they would have stayed at 6.
-Belarus is at 8 with amazing games thanks to their biathlon star Domracheva bringing in 3 golds alone.
-Austria is at 9, the same position as in Vancouver, with however much better games on the alpine skiing front than in Vancouver.
-France enters at 10, up 2 spots from Vancouver, with a record tally in terms of medals. They can thank the biathlon athletes (4 medals, including 2 golds) and the snowboard and ski cross athletes (4 medals, including 2 golds).

[Wakarimashita]

That closing ceremony was beautiful. Better than the opening, it felt more relaxed while still delivering in terms of artistry and performance. Plus, Russian culture is quite fascinating and it's really hard to beat classical Russian music (only Austria and Germany can rival them imo, I'm still waiting for the day Austria organises the Winter games again so we can get a huge Radetzky March ).