Ridiculousness at the Olympics

[paland]

[ QUOTE ]
No, on the contrary, this the essence of a sporting event, that you have to prove, there and then, that you are the best.

[/ QUOTE ]
Except iin College Football, where the champ IS just voted on.

[Usul]

Cyrus, you begin your post by saying quite clearly that RULES ARE RULES. You then proceed to argue that the fact that the judge did not follow the RULES is irrelevent. The rule that all DQs should be written in english is there for the same reason the rule which the swimmer was DQed for is there. You have greatly contridicted yourself.

[mikech]

That was exactly the point that came to my mind while reading Cyrus's post. If "rules are rules," why should procedural rules be any less important than competition rules? I'd love to hear a justification...

[BonJoviJones]

At the poker table it's been said, and I agree, that the pot should be awarded based on the merits of the hands involved, not on nitty rules.

Kudos to the 2nd place guy for standing up for the winner.

[dogmeat]

Nice to see at least the athletes are respectable.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

[Cyrus]

"You begin your post by saying quite clearly that RULES ARE RULES. You then proceed to argue that the fact that the judge did not follow the RULES is irrelevant. You have greatly contridicted yourself."

No, I did not.

I was very specific. In fact, this is how I ended my post: Rule infraction during the game should take precedence over rule infraction about reporting on the game.

In plain English, here's an example: If a player commits a foul during an American football play, and the referee instead of throwing the yellow flag, throws down by mistake (or intentionally!) his wig, the call stands.

When (if!) the American swimmer broke the rules, he stood to be disqualified as soon as a proper objection was filed. This was done. Now the question becomes, if two infractions occured, which takes precedence, the rules of the game or the rules about reporting on the game?

I say the first. You say the second.

Are you truly proud that your man would win on such a technicality, and an erroneously-based one at that?

[swimfan]

which leads to the original ridicularity of that Peirsol did nothing wrong on his turn.

[Usul]

First of all, he's not my man. I cheer against American atheletes. Second of all, he commited no foul, and is the just winner of the event, as is the consensus of the olympic officials. Therefore ALL rules were enforced, as they should be. Not pick a rule to enforce at the expense of others, as you suggest.

[MMMMMM]

"I cheer against American atheletes."

Maybe this ties into what rubbed me the wrong way in the other thread of yours, Bernie, where you mentioned something to the effect that all over the world, people know Americans act like jackasses.

I didn't cheer against even the U.S.S.R. athletes in the day, and I wouldn't cheer against Cuban, Iranian, or North Korean athletes today--and whatever you might think of America, the U.S.S.R and North Korea were/are many times worse.

If you want to cheer against a certain athlete--or even a certain few athletes--because they acted like jerks, I see nothing wrong with that. But to cheer against all athletes of a certain country strikes me as prejudicial, insensitive and bigoted--not to mention showing a lack of respect for those individual athletes and the tremendous sacrifices and hard work they have made to even manage to qualify for the Olympics in the first place.

[Cyrus]

"First of all, he's not my man. I cheer against American atheletes. Second of all, he commited no foul, and is the just winner of the event, as is the consensus of the olympic officials. Therefore ALL rules were enforced, as they should be. Not pick a rule to enforce at the expense of others, as you suggest."

Oh, boy.

I did not suggest that "he is your man". I don't care if you cheer for or against American athletes. And there is no "consensus" in such cases: if an official, one lone official reports that the athlete committed a foul, the athlete is in trouble. (The best he can hope for is an appeal to a special committee.)

And the point is NOT if the athlete committed or not a violation of the rules. I took as a given fact (name it a hypothesis on my part) that he had committed a violation in making his turn, in order to argue that, if he had indeed committed a foul, this should weigh more (much more!) than the infraction of the rules in reporting about it.

I even gave the example of an NFL play to demonstrate what I meant (foul on the play, the ref throws down his wig instead of the yellow flag - the play is still called a foul).

The reason for all this is that people get blinded by affiliation and ignore the rules. And then they pretend they don't! (eg "Our man was the better athlete anyway!" Bullcrap.) People here cheered the total wrongness of the ultimate decision because it awarded "their" man and they ignored that, in the process, the Olympic officials gave precedence to reporting over competing.

...I don't have a problem with the specific athlete. He may well have broken no rules actually. This was not my point.