This issue really evokes my emotions, because of how much I love sports. I think sports are a vitally important part of the human experience. I guess dance is, too, but we’re not talking about dance, in and of itself.
Dance isn’t a sport. Period. Ever. Nobody can change my mind about this. Dance is potentially expressive, beautiful, socially useful, entertaining, etc. But it IS NOT A FUCKING SPORT.
Only sports should be in the goddamned Olympics, and shoving non-sports into the mix is shameful and disgusting. It’s a wad of spit in the face of every great athlete who has ever taken the field. It’s a disgrace to the Ancient Greek tradition that the Olympics are attempting to continue.
I don’t give a fuck that there are already competitions for breakdancing. Or ballroom dancing. People can hold competitions for whatever they want. I actually think competitions shouldn’t be held for entirely subjective and artistic activities, but people can do whatever the fuck they want.
But not in the fucking Olympics. This shit makes me sick.
And before you start pointing out the other subjective, judged events that are already in the Olympics: THEY SHOULD ALL BE REMOVED, TOO. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. NONE OF THEM BELONG.
No more gymnastics (rhythmic or otherwise). No more figure skating and ice dancing. No more skateboarding. No more surfing. No more synchronized swimming. No more freestyle skiing. No more diving. No more BMX. No more ANYTHING that requires judging.
You might browbeat me into admitting that some of those subjectively judged activities are sports, but you will never convince me that they belong in the Olympics.
Olympic sports should be restricted to those which are determined by means of a clock, a measuring tape, the accumulation of OBJECTIVELY scored points, or a physical beating.
Even some of those should be on the chopping block. Some of the points-scoring events are too subjective. If a sport relies too much on fallible human judging, it should be excluded.
The vast majority of the events should be arbitrated only by the cold, merciless, absolute judgment of the clock or the measuring tape. Therein lies the truest purity of sport.
Honestly, the best thing to do would be to reset everything to the REAL tradition of the Olympics. Almost nothing, other than running, jumping, and fighting. With an absolute minimum of rules to get in the way, and all the athletes competing in the nude. Just sandals on their feet. No space-age materials to help anyone. Nothing for anyone to hide. Just human muscle and determination, on display at the greatest possible level.
But it’s all a forlorn dream. Instead, we have to have our stomachs turned, as a bunch of revolting little shitheads wobble and headspin.
The ancient Olympians are going to be spinning in their fucking graves.
EDIT: YES, I AM AWARE THAT THE FIRST COUPLE MODERN OLYMPICS FEATURED NON-SPORT ACTIVITIES, LIKE SCULPTURE AND PAINTING. THAT DOESN’T CHANGE MY VIEW. INCLUDING ART IN THE MODERN OLYMPICS WAS A RIDICULOUS MISTAKE. JUST BECAUSE IT WAS DONE BEFORE DOESN’T MEAN IT SHOULD BE DONE NOW.
I think all sports have more subjectivity than you are admitting. How often have you heard someone yell at an umpire or referee seen as unfair?
Obviously you’re never going to escape the subjectivity of events in which humans participate and the application of those rules, unless we want to just program machines to compete for us.
I think a better approach to what OP is saying is that there shouldn’t be a competition in the Olympics where the method of scoring itself requires subjective determination.
Basketball: you throw the ball through the hoop, you get points.
Football: you get the ball in this cage, you get a point
Freedom Football: you get the ball over this line, you get points.
Baseball: you circle the diamond, you get a point.
Curling: your rock, uh… lands in a circle I guess? And that gives you a point, or points?
Cricket: you… run between posts?
Etc.
Point is, while each of the above does require some amount of subjective judgement to determine if each team/competitor is following the rules, the winner of the game usually doesn’t depend on it.
Compare that to, say, figure skating or high diving or gymnastics, where the score depends completely on how well other people think a competitor did.
Gymnastics, high diving, etc. have a very strict scoring system as well. There’s a very objective way to score how things are done, it just looks subjective to people who weren’t involved in those sports.
Most sports look weird and subjective if you were unfamiliar with the rules, but after many decades, are extremely codified and much more objective than they appear.
Anyone that wants things to be simpler or more pure probably don’t understand the reasoning and history behind the rules.
That being said, like any rule set, a lot can be gained from starting from scratch. You just need to have a deep understanding of the way things are in the first place, otherwise you’d be making a lot of the same mistakes.
Strict, yes, but not objective.
No one is checking the height and diameter of the splash a high diver makes when she enters the water, or the exact angle a figure skater’s foot makes when he lands a triple lutz, or what the decibel level is for a cheerleading team. All of those are judged based on years of observation, but at the end of the day it’s still people’s opinions of the performance.
If you hit a hole-in-one on a par 4, everyone agrees your score is -4. If you do a floor mat routine, one judge might think it was absolutely perfect and give you a 10 and one judge might think it was sloppy and give you an 8. And you can’t argue one was right and the other wasn’t, because it still comes down to the opinion of the judges.
If figure skating was objective then the 2002 judging scandal couldn’t have happened.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympics_figure_skating_scandal
All of those require significant judgment. A dew examples:
Basketball: how many points is the shot worth/were they behind the 3 pt line? Was that a foul? Was it a flagrant violation that requires an ejection? The latter two apply to most in your list.
Baseball: more than others in your list, this requires subjective calls. Balls/strikes, safe/out, home run/off the wall, etc.
US Football: was that a first down/where should the ball be placed? Touchdowns in particular have specific rules about the ball crossing the plane that can take a long time and significant deliberation.
Edit: I’d also reject your claim that outcomes don’t depend on these calls. Many games come down to close calls.
I would like to make clear that what I am talking about is scoring points being objective, not all the minutiae of a competition. While there will always be a need for judging on a moment-by-moment basis (which, as I said, is because you can’t ever have a totally objective method of scoring games) all of those things have a clearly defined method of scoring that can be measured.
We can look and see where the shooter’s foot was when he shot. We can see if the ball left his hands before the shot clock ran out.
Yes, that’s why replay cameras exist and why coaches can challenge referee calls. It’s not uncommon for the refs to think they see a play happen one way, but the camera shows it actually didn’t.
Specifically re: your comments on baseball, you’re right. But the method of obtaining points in baseball is objective: a runner has to leave third base and touch home while the ball is in play.
And even then, the humans making the robots are going to try to skirt the intent of the rules… Heck, even PvP computer games, which are probably as objective as you can get, need to be patched constantly to stop people using unintended quirks to their advantage.
Maybe there’s no such thing as an objective sport?
About the videogames: if you mean bugs, I don’t think anyone considers them fair game. They are mistakes from the organizers (developers) and should invalidate the results. It’s like if there was a 2 meter deep hole in the middle of a football field, the rules don’t consider that scenario but it’s obvious that that match shouldn’t be valid.
There are objective sports. Those that are not constrained by the physical world, like chess are 100% objective. Theoretically you don’t even need a board, each of the players could simulate it in their head and just communicate their moves.
Even if not 100%, I’d say some sports are close to that, in the case where the rules could be verified by a computer and 3D models that exactly represent all the elements of the game (to reasonable precision).
I don’t know of any 100% objective game that doesn’t rely on luck though (I’m sure some exist). Even in simple games like archery, golf or bowling, there are factors that the players cannot control or measure, like wind. They can measure wind in the place where they are, but they can only assume what the wind is in the path of whatever they are throwing. In chess, black and white players are not equal, and who is which color is random.
I think there’s a difference between judging for the score and enforcing the rules as best you can.
As I said, most team sports do not fit my stringent definition, as well as most of the current versions of the formerly pure sports.
I believe we should strive for as few rules as possible, with as little subjective interpretation as possible. Like I keep saying, I think the ideal should be for the winner to always be determined by the clock, the measuring tape, or the last opponent left standing.
I truly believe subjective judgement degenerates the purity of athletic activity. The fact that subjective umpires bring so much disharmony and bile is evidence that I am on the right track. The more we can remove the referees from the proceedings, the better sports will be.
You should just make up a new word for what you’re calling ‘pure sports’. There’s no definition of ‘sports’ that even implies your concept of ‘purity’ is valid.
“Pure” isn’t even the right word. More like “unchill dude” sports, a category that only one person cares about, named appropriately.
Make that two people. I fully agree with OP, and I think my definition of sport would be nearly identical to theirs.
Middle aged libertarian bro watching activities.