What is your favorite Winter Olympic sport?

[Buffy]

It's just about 2 weeks away....what will you spend the most time watching

 

IT'S MULTIPLE CHOICE, BUT YOU'RE ON THE HONOR SYSTEM: PICK ONLY 3! (The Shadow--and Buffy--knows...)

 

Post your anecdotes here....

 

Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink, :lightning

Buffy

[Dd'sEvilTwin]

What.....no shootin guns on "sleds"?!?

 

No supermoto either?!?!?

 

Blehgk!! :confused:

 

If it ain't got a motor it ain't worth watchin':D

[Turtle]

i voted before i read the op. :doh: so, i picked 2; downhill skiing & speed skating. the shooting is kewl & all, :Guns:, but boring to watch. same with the sledding inasmuch as there is little room for variance on the course(s). if i had picked 3, i would prolly add curling, mostly cause throwing big rocks appeals to my...erhmmm...stones. :doh: :eek: let's see what else. hockey; boring. snowboarding; semi-boring. ski jumping; ok to watch if nothing else is on. ice skating/dancing; blech!! :confused:;) cross-country; not so much. :shrug:

 

i think i covered all the bases. wait! that's baseball. :naughty: :doh: :D now that all said, i have been watching all these sports for about 3 weeks as all the world championships are being broadcast on one of the new digital broadcast stations i acquired in the recent changeover from analog. prolly been putting in at least 2 to 3 hours a day. :( looking forward to olympics fo shizzle!

[Galapagos]

I voted for curling, but it was an ironic vote for curling. :confused:

 

Skate Expectations - Curling Team Tryouts - Colbert vs. Shuster | January 4, 2010 - Erick Erickson | ColbertNation.com

[Buffy]

if i had picked 3, i would prolly add curling, mostly cause throwing big rocks appeals to my...erhmmm...stones. :Guns: :shrug:

Your vote for Curling has been added! :eek:

 

We *love* Curling around here! But then we also enjoy watching the America's Cup so we must be completely loony around here.... :confused:

 

...but really,

I voted for curling, but it was an ironic vote for curling. ;)

...there's no reason for that to be ironic. If Stephen likes Curling then it's officially "cool." :(

 

I don't want someone shoving his views down my throat, unless they're covered in a crunchy candy shell, :naughty:

Buffy

[lawcat]

1a. Ski Jumping (with Hockey close second)

 

(Although I don't like the new V style of flying. Back in the day it was considered ugly. Now, everyone is flying V.)

[DougF]

As I slowly approach with a handful of chocolate coated in a crunchy candy shell,

 

i voted from the main page before i read the rules, and as such I voted for the sledding (So fast and if they don't hit the grove :phones: ) But if I Could add two more I would add downhill and Curling. ;)

[Buffy]

But if I Could add two more I would add downhill and Curling. :shrug:

Your votes have been added...

 

Watched the Canadian Curling playoffs last night on NBC Universal Sports: those guys are GOOD!

 

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (B) eat, © run away from, and (d) rocks, :phones:

Buffy

[Tormod]

the shooting is kewl & all, :Guns:, but boring to watch.

 

;):D:eek:

 

Boring??? Man it's usually a thriller from start to end. But then Norway tends to win in the end. ;)

 

Cross country, biathlon and ski jumping all rock, speed skating is okay. Snowboard is insane (or rather, snowboarders are).

[REASON]

I picked the top three on the list. I have a tremendous appreciation for figure skating (even though I've always felt the scoring is very political and often unjustified); the only time I ever pay much attention to hockey is during the Olympics and was forever captivated after our win in '80; and downhill skiing is just really cool and I love doing it myself when I get the chance (recreationally of course).

 

I hated having to only pick three, though, because I love pretty much all of it.

 

I really enjoyed the Lillehammer games in '94, Tormod. They did such a great job of getting everything together on such short notice and I liked the small town feel of it.

 

Anyway...can't wait for it to get started again this year. ;) :D

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Turtle

the shooting is kewl & all, , but boring to watch.

;):Guns:;)

 

Boring??? Man it's usually a thriller from start to end. But then Norway tends to win in the end. ;)

 

being as how you & your kin invented skis, i bow to your analysis. i now resolve to watch every thrilling moment of televised biathalon that comes my way & root for the nordmenn. :eek: man, you guys got some killer cross-country fellas i must say. i been rooting for them as it is. :D

 

The earliest primitive carvings circa 5000 B.C. depict a skier with one pole, located in Rødøy in the Nordland region of Norway.

source

[Mercedes Benzene]

I voted Curling and Speed Skating, but truth be told, I love every single Olympic event. I look forward to the Olympics more than just about any other televised event (summer and winter), and it's really the only "sport" that I ever watch on tv.

 

PS: Curling is beyond fantastic. I don't know why so many people think it's boring.

[Moontanman]

Figure skating is the best, no doubt, hands down. It has everything, power, beauty, sensuality, skill, sexuality, it's just plain fascinating, I could watch figure skating till the cows come how! I'd love to see it done on the moon under low gravity it would be awesome, just think of the leaps, the spins, only way it could be better!

[REASON]

I'd love to see it done on the moon under low gravity it would be awesome, just think of the leaps, the spins, only way it could be better!

 

Yeah, but the bulky spacesuits would be a bit of a detractor. :shrug:

[Turtle]

Yeah, but the bulky spacesuits would be a bit of a detractor. :rant:

 

no suits. that adds breath holding to all that moony likes, and they can still dazzle with those skin colored nudy suits & cod pieces. :hihi:

 

i've been thinking over a new type of biathalon, since i have qualified as sharpshooter on the guns they use but i suck at skiing and tormod is a ski afficienado. so, i/we/they build a set of skis with 2 sets of bindings so the guy in front, tormod, does the skiing, and the guy on back, moi, does the shooting. :eek: :shrug: then it would be a bye-bye-athalon. :doh: :rant:

 

by-the-by, nods for the guns on sleds idea dd; maybe lances and run 'em at each other in jousts down an ice chute?

 

no mention yet here of freestyle skiing that i noticed; it gives me a backache just watching it. :lol:

 

well, back to the boob tube for it snow time to be away. :doh: :snow: ...:)

[Turtle]

go lindsay vonn! :)

 

Snow Sports | Vonn's win streak in downhill ends at six | Seattle Times Newspaper

 

her er det bye-bye-athalon Slik jeg ser det. :shrug:

 

[CraigD]

I tend to best like watching what I best like doing, hence my skiing votes.

I'd love to see it [figure skating] done on the moon under low gravity it would be awesome, just think of the leaps, the spins, only way it could be better!

It’s hard to imagine jumping sport that wouldn’t be more flamboyant in reduced gravity. :)

Yeah, but the bulky spacesuits would be a bit of a detractor.

no suits. that adds breath holding to all that moony likes, and they can still dazzle with those skin colored nudy suits & cod pieces. ;)

Assuming, as many do, that when a human presence on the moon is routine enough to consider having serious sports there, we’ll be living mostly in excavated lava tubes or artificial under or above ground enclosures filled with breathable air, I’d expect the garments to not look too different than today’s.

 

What intrigues me most about athletics in 1/6th Earth gravity is that, at that gravity, we’ve got the power-to-weight ratio to fly like birds. Imagine a sort of 3-d slalom race with wings instead of skiis!

 

Realistically, though, it’s likely many or all of us won’t live to see more than brief human Moon expeditions, so if we want to see low-G sports, we’d best work on a practically achievable approach. I’m thinking a really huge cargo airplane, a sort of cross between a Supper Guppie and a vomit comet high-performance elliptic flight path follower. Design the flight path to provide low rather than zero weight, add a small ice rink, and you should be able to get in about a 30 sec moon skating program under Moon gravity. :)

i've been thinking over a new type of biathalon, since i have qualified as sharpshooter on the guns they use but i suck at skiing and tormod is a ski afficienado. so, i/we/they build a set of skis with 2 sets of bindings so the guy in front, tormod, does the skiing, and the guy on back, moi, does the shooting. :hihi: :hihi: then it would be a bye-bye-athalon. :hihi:

From a lot of experience with riding small children on the fronts of my skis, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want a loaded gun anywhere near this configuration :eek: – though experts do regularly make suicidal-looking things routine.

 

I really like watching biathlon, largely because I’ve never been able to come close to doing it well. As a youth, I could x-country ski pretty fast and far, and have, like many sons and daughters of southern West Virginia, been a decent shot since I was elementary school age. Combine the two, however, and the arm exertion leaves me so shaky I’d be lucky to even hit the backstop, let alone the iron bullseye biathletes are 100% on. Their stillness after exertion awes me.

 

Like Turtle, though, if I could design the games, I’d make some radical change/additions to martial skiing sports. Like the modern pentathlon, the biathlon has been stylized from it’s martial roots almost beyond recognition. The biathlon’s roots are cold, rugged war – moving fast over difficult terrain, then killing people with guns. To get back to those grim roots, I’d make it a team sport played over a few thousand acres spanning the timber lines of both sides a mountain, with a military training-grade laser tag system so that the teams were actually, though non-lethally, shooting and “killing” each other.

 

Another realism element that could be added would be dragging heavy equipment/cargo over mountainous terrain - in short, a world-class adult version of one of my favorite boyhood activities, the BSA’s Klondike derby. (for those who’ve never seen or been in one of these, it’s essentially like dogsled racing, but with humans instead of dogs, and heavier sleds with crappier runners) ;)