More armchair athlete observations
Our office now has TVs, which we've largely used to watch big sports events - Wimbledon, notably, and now the Olympics.
To my horror I found not one or two but THREE channels of hockey by the end of yesterday, covering just two live games. Argh.
Today it's either curling (urgh) or cross country skiiing. I really like Xcountry, the little I've done, and this is way cooler than watching people fall down a mountain strapped to pieces of wood-substitute. (It was striking just how many elite athletes did not finish their runs, either in downhill events or in the silly snowboarding race.)
For some reason, even in these enlightened days, the women still race shorter distances than the men in cross country skiiing.
If women can run marathons, duathalons and triathalons, surely they can hobble their way through 15km, instead of 10km, for the middle distance? and can stagger through 50km for the long distance, instead of 30km?
These are serious endurance athletes who probably log this much distance in a routine training week.
The curlers curl the same length of ice.
The hockey players have the same size of rink, and (these days) now wear the same national colours. The figure skaters have the same events, though I still don't think their 'sport' belongs in the Olympics.
The biatheletes shoot the same size of target using the same guns (though again, the womens' skiing distances are a quarter shorter! WTF?).
Short track? (just checked, short distances are the same, longest distance is 5k for men and 3k for women, unbelieveable).
The traditional speed skaters do the same short distances, but there's no 5k and 10k event for women... apparently they just fall over after 3k (well, lots do, but only briefly).
(Aside: the Netherlands skaters are a great example of 'doing one thing well' - they're just clobbering this event, and had all three medals in one of the skating events yesterday.)
Why are the women still trailing behind in the skiing and skating endurance events? Dumb dumb dumb.
Also: I've found out why Britons keep calling skeleton the 'tea tray event' - it's because noone has sleds, toboggans or crazy carpets at home. So they don't have the cultural background of sliding downhills on pieces of kit built for that purpose.
But the nation of tea drinkers DO have tea trays - even if they don't use them, even if they now have largely abandoned their teapots and cozies and specialist teatimes. They still have teatrays. So that's what they use to slide down hills, on the rare occasions there's snow on them.
To my horror I found not one or two but THREE channels of hockey by the end of yesterday, covering just two live games. Argh.
Today it's either curling (urgh) or cross country skiiing. I really like Xcountry, the little I've done, and this is way cooler than watching people fall down a mountain strapped to pieces of wood-substitute. (It was striking just how many elite athletes did not finish their runs, either in downhill events or in the silly snowboarding race.)
For some reason, even in these enlightened days, the women still race shorter distances than the men in cross country skiiing.
If women can run marathons, duathalons and triathalons, surely they can hobble their way through 15km, instead of 10km, for the middle distance? and can stagger through 50km for the long distance, instead of 30km?
These are serious endurance athletes who probably log this much distance in a routine training week.
The curlers curl the same length of ice.
The hockey players have the same size of rink, and (these days) now wear the same national colours. The figure skaters have the same events, though I still don't think their 'sport' belongs in the Olympics.
The biatheletes shoot the same size of target using the same guns (though again, the womens' skiing distances are a quarter shorter! WTF?).
Short track? (just checked, short distances are the same, longest distance is 5k for men and 3k for women, unbelieveable).
The traditional speed skaters do the same short distances, but there's no 5k and 10k event for women... apparently they just fall over after 3k (well, lots do, but only briefly).
(Aside: the Netherlands skaters are a great example of 'doing one thing well' - they're just clobbering this event, and had all three medals in one of the skating events yesterday.)
Why are the women still trailing behind in the skiing and skating endurance events? Dumb dumb dumb.
Also: I've found out why Britons keep calling skeleton the 'tea tray event' - it's because noone has sleds, toboggans or crazy carpets at home. So they don't have the cultural background of sliding downhills on pieces of kit built for that purpose.
But the nation of tea drinkers DO have tea trays - even if they don't use them, even if they now have largely abandoned their teapots and cozies and specialist teatimes. They still have teatrays. So that's what they use to slide down hills, on the rare occasions there's snow on them.