Olympics

[Ninot]

Women's hockey semis, Sweden and USA in a shootout

[Asher]

GOO SWEDEN!!!

[Asher]

SWEDEN WINS!

[Asher]

Gold and Silver for Canada in Men's Skeleton.

Nearly a sweep, other Canadian was in 4th by 0.2 seconds.

[KrazyHorse]

OMFG. SWEDEN BEATS USA IN WOMEN'S HOCKEY. REPORTS OF RAPIDLY DROPPING TEMPERATURES IN HADES. DETAILS TO FOLLOW.

[Peter Triggs]

Sportsmanship of Olympic Proportions
By: J. Loewen
Anyone following the Turin Olympics knows the story of the Norwegian cross-country ski official who, after seeing that Canadian Sarah Renner had broken a pole, ran over to her and gave her a new one so she could finish the race.

That genuine act of kindness resulted in Canada winning a silver medal and, perhaps even more importantly, cost a medal for Norway.

It’s rare to see that kind of altruism in sports today; doing something good because it is the right thing to do, even if it means it may cost your own team. Can you imagine one team helping the other in the Super Bowl? At the Daytona 500? In the finals of the Australian Open?

Simply put, you don’t see sportsmanship like that anywhere in sports other than at the Olympics. No one would have thought any less of that Norwegian official if he hadn't helped out Renner, yet he felt compelled to do something nice even if it meant it might ultimately hurt his own team.

It is these kinds of virtuous acts, acts that show the entire world that there is much more to sport than the "win at all costs" mantra that seems to have gripped our society, that are the reason why the Olympics are something special, something magical.

So that's why they've been playing so much Grieg on CBC Radio 2 lately.

[Asher]

Why is Italy giving out CDs instead of medals?

[Sava]

NBC is getting killed in the ratings because of the Olympics

The four-day cumulative ratings totals for the Olympics are 34.8 percent behind Salt Lake City four years ago and 16.1 percent behind Nagano in 1998. Worse, none of the broadcasts was among the top five rated programs for the week. ... And, obviously bored with Dick Cheney jokes, Jay Leno is taking daily shots at his own network. His latest: "Today was the fourth day of competition at the Winter Olympics, making it NBC's longest-running show so far this season.''

link: http://www.suntimes.com/output/rapop...spt-rap16.html

NBC's blizzard of ratings-related press releases are pointing triumphantly to the Turin Olympics being the most watched "non-domestic'' Games since the tabloid dreams of Lillehammer in 1994, when the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan saga held a world transfixed. Translation: Barely half as many people watched the opening ceremony as they did for the Salt Lake Games four years ago. Further translation: The four episodes of "American Idol'' that Fox is running opposite the Games could be big winners. Every episode of that show this year drew more viewers than the opening ceremony.

link: http://www.suntimes.com/output/rapop...spt-rap14.html

And it's not just America that doesn't care about the Olympics. Apparantly, Canadians would rather watch reruns of Cold Case.

Good news for NBC: The network scored a big ratings victory with Olympics coverage Sunday. Bad news for NBC: It was killed by "Grey's Anatomy'' in the 9 p.m. time slot and lost the key 18-49 demographic to "Desperate Housewives.'' Daily Variety says this was the first time ABC has beaten NBC's Olympics coverage, except for the closing ceremony, since 1988. ... And the Washington Post reports that NBC is not running national ads in the first half-hour of prime time so it won't be rated by Nielsen. This has the effect of inflating the ratings. ... The TV numbers could be better in Canada, too, where CBC's broadcast was beaten, in turn, by a "Cold Case'' repeat, "Desperate Housewives'' and "Grey's Anatomy.''

link: http://www.suntimes.com/output/rapop...spt-rap15.html

[Winston]

And the Washington Post reports that NBC is not running national ads in the first half-hour of prime time

I can see why this would be the talk of the day ...in Nutsville!

[Sava]

you should have quoted the entire part of that...

it puts it in full context

And the Washington Post reports that NBC is not running national ads in the first half-hour of prime time so it won't be rated by Nielsen. This has the effect of inflating the ratings.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Serb

Then you have to agree that the quality of the medals is as important as the total number of medals (Gold > Silver > Bronze)

So,

Germany: 4G + 1S + 2B = 16 pts
Norge: 1G + 5S + 5B = 18 pts
USA: 5G + 2S = 19 pts
Russia: 4G + 3S + 2B = 20 pts.
--------------
Gold=3pts, Silver=2pts, Bronze=1pts.

The rest have less than 10 pts. So we have more points than everyone else.

RUSSIA!!!

RUSSIA!!!

RUSSIA!!!

Or using the same medal count you are using with :
Gold= 5 pts, Silver= 4 pts, Bronze= 3pts
Germany = 30
Norge = 40
USA = 33
Russia = 38
With Norge > Russia > USA > Germany

I'm just playing devil's advocate by showing that you can "show" a lot of different things if you choose the rating...

Unless you can explain why your arbitrary systems objectively is more reasonable than mine or all the other ones I can think of.

And at present medal count, Germany > Russia for any reasonnable system considering only medals as
Germany : 5,4,2
Russia : 5,2,4
Still at present medal count USA > Russia using YOUR system....


Again I want to emphasize that I don't care much about Olympics, even less about medal count.
I still fully expect a rebuttal explaining why all the medals earned by other countries were in sissy competitions as opposed to the Great Russia.

Edited for grammar.

[Pekka]

ACtually that's Russia minus one silver. One woman athlete got the medal taken away for testing positive for doping.

[Datajack Franit]

Sava why don't you get a life and let us alone?

[Footie Mad]

Man, if Sweden take more medals than Finland and Norway it will be a great humilitation for them. Winter sports are their strong argument when comparing the two nations sports results.

[Winston]

It could just be that they don't care as much about donuts as you.