Running 2018 Winter Games thread

I really wouldn't mind a Winter Olympics version of the decathlon. 1000 speed skate, 10k xcountry ski, giant slalom, ski jump, luge/skeleton, and snowboard slalom. It'd be fun.

 

Kind of a slow night, eh?

 

Chloe Kim wins gold in the halfpipe. Seems like a fun kid. And apparently pretty funny on Twitter. She was tweeting during the competition (apparently the USOC doesn't have the same rules as MLB, NFL, etc.).

Shaun White also had a great qualifying run. I don't understand the scoring but I guess 93 is pretty good.

 

Speaking of scoring, how is scoring done in the ski jumping?

Maybe I'm misremembering, but I always thought it was just whoever jumped the furthest was the winner. Now there's some sort of style points, or wind points?

 

The men's halfpipe qualifying turned into a dick measuring contest there in the second run, but it was damn entertaining.

Ski jumping has two parts to the score - the first is based on distance (how far behind or far in front of you are of the "fall line"), the second based on style, which as far as I can tell involves how controlled you look in the air and the landing - is it one foot at a time and do your skis skid out or stay nice and smooth. Everyone seems to get between 16 and 18.5 so hell if I know what makes a difference though.

 

Over how many days?

 

Please IOC. If the Statue of Liberty violates policy, just scrap the anthems. And flags.

 

The deal was the wind forced them to change the downhill course at the last minute to make it less dangerous. They shortened it considerably, to the giant slalom (or Super-G, I can't remember now) distance and changed the line to avoid or lessen some of the jumps. That took a big advantage away from the downhillers, giving them less distance to build a lead, and handed it to the slalom specialists like Hirscher, the gold medalist.

What Miller was talking about in terms of politics, I believe, is that they were originally going to shorten the slalom course, too, by something like 70 meters. But according to Miller (at least, as I recall), the Austrians (including slalom star Hirscher) raised a fuss and they only shortened the course by 20 meters, which left enough distance for Hirscher and the French bronze medalist to make up the ground on the downhillers.

Someone please correct me if I didn't hear or remember that right.

 

I don't get this shortening of the course at all. It's winter. Outside. Conditions are sometimes going to be less than perfect; deal with it. Part of downhill skiing is that you decide how fast you can safely negotiate the course. If that means the winner goes 10 mph slower than what he'd do in normal conditions, so be it.

 

It's funny you say that, I was thinking the same thing last night!
Seriously, who are the judges for halfpipe, and where do they sit? That halfpipe is a couple hundred yards long. Are they watching live? On video? And, I want to know, who are they?

 

They sit at the bottom. You can see to the top well enough, especially with a pair of binoculars, which I assume they use.

Snowboard scoring is definitely screwy.

The part that gets me is they're also judging the kids against themselves to some degree. Arielle Gold, bronze medalist, is a hometown girl for us. When she added a 900 a few years ago, she shot way up in the scoring because it was new and the judges — largely the same event to event, I think — hadn't seen her do it. When she'd been doing it for several years without really progressing, her scores got worse and worse, even if the trick maintained its difficulty relative to the rest of the competitors.

Today (yesterday in the US, I guess?) she was scored poorly on her second run, or at least poorly considering she landed all the tricks and one of those tricks was her 1080, the hardest trick anyone was throwing. She admitted it wasn't a completely clean 1080. She had to finish off the rotation on the ground, just the last 1/4 turn or so, but nevertheless. Even if that trick was still better than a trick someone else might throw, she thought she was discounted because judges knew she could personally do better.

She did do better on her final run and boom, bronze medal and a crazy busy day for Pilot.

Anyway, snowboard judging is a freaking crapshoot. All they claim to be trying to do, I think, is rate which runs were best and that the actual score doesn't mean very much.

 

Fair point absolutely, but people can literally die in downhill. Guys are going to push the envelope no matter what the conditions, so you might as well do what you can do to keep them from killing themselves.