Discussion: Interesting Winter Olympics story

Okay - this is not directly related to orienteering, but I'm sure people will find this interesting given the ongoing 'should we or shouldn't we' debate.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1972824-gary-an...

I wouldn't believe anyone who used the word 'medaled'.

Stop meddling tRicky.

You're testing my mettle.

That's a lot of effort and money spent just to march in the Opening Ceremonies, an event many of the serious athletes want to forego.
They should not try to hide from that story. There's a movie in it, me thinks.

Aussies suffering from metal fatigue today?

Its a well established Americanism, as in "Oh medaling Clementine"

Vanessa Mae story.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/winter-olympics/2580290...

She qualified at 4 FIS races in Slovenia. Technically; strange rules that Junior local competition can counts as a FIS race. FIS point formula is also on stake here. It looks that final points can vary a lot.

At the end I ask myself why IOC and International sports federation think that Vanessa Mae and other wealthy people (e.g. von Hohenlohe) needs to prove their skills if their country don't have any other representatives. I'd much rather like to see wild cards for these countries instead of qualification FIS races and possibility of gaming the system at local races.

If I looked back how we've selected juniors for International competitions it is almost the same story. Some of them are trained to go, some of them liked orienteering just because they get a chance to go, some get spot because of connections. This type of selection criteria is logical when you have small inner competition or small base of athletes. Orienteering is a small sport in Slovenia so it is skiing (probably unknown sport) in Thailand, Mexico or Domenica.

It would be good to know how many Thai people watched or at least know the fact that Thailand has an athlete at Winter Olympic games. Do they achieve the goal? Thailand free worldwide promotion? I hope so, because Olympics shouldn't be just medals otherwise make Olympics for best 25 or 20 athletes on planet Earth.

I suppose it is much more "inspiring" for Thai people to see Vanessa skiing than looking unknown ski stars or other Olympic champions. Who won Olympic Curling gold? I don't care. Who watch Vanessa Mae skiing? I don't care. Our ski-flying national coach said: I had only one wish for photo shooting in Sochi, No, no, no.. it is not a ski star from any other sports, it is Vanessa Mae.

Who won Olympic Curling gold?

Canada. Now you care.

Canada was double gold in curling so now you can care even more!

I still don't care who won gold in curling. Why should I? You miss my point.

It is about representation and qualification rules. In skiing you have different qualification rules for Giant Slalom and Downhill. It is a good solution. Let's compare this with WOC new rules. I still think we should have different qualification rules for Sprint and Forest races so countries like ours which CARE about forest orienteering could have more than 1 athlete at WOC. Ski federation don't want that someone get killed in Downhill as IOF should care that athletes at WOC don't get lost in WOC final. If Thailand want to compete at WOC than they should try to qualify for Sprint race but if they want to have an athlete in WOC long final than they should bring competitive athlete. 600 WRE points is just too low. Qualification system is OK, but with better rules we could give free spots to countries and athletes who deserve to compete at forest races. If WOC sprint, sprint relay and relay could be more about representation, middle and long should be ONLY about competitiveness of your athletes.

Are you unhappy that you didn't get to compete in the curling final? Cheer up; there's another one in four years' time.

I still don't care. I hear for curling only every 4 years. I like sports but because I don't know much about many sports and don't practice, follow them I don't care about it. There are other sports which I love to watch and care. Let's face we don't have tradition in curling and nobody (probably only few) play this game here. It is just a trivial sport here. Anyway, how hard it is to make a team and qualify for Olympics in curling?

Do you care about all sports equally? Without emotions?

I cried when I saw the figure skating.

What you do when you don't cry? Cheering on Canada's curlers?

Actually in canada curling is probably the hardest sport of all to qualify for. It's highly likely that the hardest bonspiel to win is the Canadian Olympic trials not the Olympics themselves.

(Only Canadians will actually understand every word in that sentence)

I'm sure you'd like curling kofols...it's almost like orienteering...just imagine an orienteering flag in the middle of the rings - that's where you want to be.

One Saturday last month I ran a cross country race, my wife went orienteering and our son went curling...
...dabbling, not medalling.

Here is the Slovenian curling website: http://www.curling-zveza.si/

> Only Canadians will actually understand every word in that sentence

An American once told me that with regards to Maclean and MacLean. But I am Australian so they were wrong.

Woow! It seems that you Canadians and Vancouver Olympics inspired someone to start curling in Slovenia. Great to know.

I've been to a bonspiel. Philadelphia is a curcling Center of Excellence!

I'm just curcling kofols at the moment, waiting to hit him on the button.

> Only Canadians will actually understand every word in that sentence

This Australian understood every word.

Unfortunately.

I understood every word in the first sentence and I imagine a bonspiel is something akin to a 'meet' so that would take care of the rest too.

In Canada, when one refers to "The Shot", it could either be talking about this or this.

Just don't mention "The Slash"......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_curling

Enough there to keep you busy for a while...

"weird forest-tourist sport"
http://www.theawl.com/2014/02/orienteering-terribl...

What word he would find for Trail Orienteering. :)