Anyone know status of B'room dancing as an Olympic sport?

[Warren J. Dew]

Apparently what happened is that the judges gave the South Korean gymnast a starting score of 9.9 for his routine's difficulty, versus what was decided later should have been a 10.0.

Actually, it wasn't decided later - supposedly it's objective, and the same routine was assigned a difficulty of 10 in the previous two rounds of the competition - so why reduce it in the final?

I suspect if the chairman of the judging panel had been a French judge favoring a Russian competitor, rather than a U.S. judge favoring a U.S. competitor, we'd be hearing much more about it in the press.

 

[pygmalion]

Ahh. The plot thickens ...

 

[Chris Stratton]

And herein lies the focus of my disagreement over subjective sports being in the Olympics...and hence my rather unpopular opinion that Ballroom/Dancesport has no place in the Olympics either.

I wouldn't call that an unpopular position - of people who I've heard really look at the issue in depth, the majority seem to conclude either that dancing doesn't belong in the olympics, or that the olympics would be bad for dancing. Those who've really looked at the issues and still support it tend to be USABDA or IDSF officers. Of course that's just the view from my corner of the world.

 

[tasche]

When I saw that news item, I thought about this thread. Apparently what happened is that the judges gave the South Korean gymnast a starting score of 9.9 for his routine's difficulty, versus what was decided later should have been a 10.0. Since the men's gymnastics competition was the closest in history, that 0.10 of a point completely changed the results. The American got gold, when he would have gotten silver. And the two South Koreans came in silver and bronze, rather than gold and bronze. How embarrassing. Three judges were suspended. But, so far, the officials are refusing to change the result.

Well just bc the start vlaue could have been .1 higher doesn't necessarily mean that that his score for that event would automatically been .1 higher

 

[pygmalion]

No, it wouldn't have. I can't remember the actual scores and proposed corrected scores that were quoted in the article, but the difference wasn't 0.1.

 

[Angelo]

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Somewhere you started assuming that I was talking only about the Olympic equivelent to a final round, when in fact I'm talking about the whole competition as it would be held there. You may tend to see the best on TV, but there are a lot of 2nd rate (or more accurately, true hobbyist/amateur) entrants from non-powerhouse countries in existing events, and there would be in ballroom too. Even more so if the numbers of top people who can go are limited either due to being clustered in a handfull of countries, or by being mixed nationality partnerships.

I agree with this and I see no problem with it. As far as i can tell it seems to be the case with any sport that is is competed internationally on a large enough scale

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So there really would be a mix of abilities, and unlike in some other sports you probably wouldn't easily see this in the material the couples were dancing - expect to see fairly similar routines as in existing dancesport competitions, differing primarily in quality of execution. But if compulsory figures were a part of it, and espeically if they were reshown on TV with commentary, people would start to see the real meaningfull differences between the blackpool semifinalist quality dancers, and everybody else. It's possible that having these difference highlighted for all to see would start to change the priorities of the lesser dancers to putting less emphasis on immitating the routines and absolute movement of the top competitors and towards putting more emphasis on matching their quality.

This has been tried with latin dancesport and was abandoned for some reason that I still don't know. It probably wasn't given a fair shot. I'm still not concvinced that the lesser dancers you speak of are only attempting to imitate the top couples and not focusing on improving the quality of their own dancing. That's pretty insulting to them when there is no convincing information to back it up

 

[Angelo]

When I saw that news item, I thought about this thread. Apparently what happened is that the judges gave the South Korean gymnast a starting score of 9.9 for his routine's difficulty, versus what was decided later should have been a 10.0. Since the men's gymnastics competition was the closest in history, that 0.10 of a point completely changed the results. The American got gold, when he would have gotten silver. And the two South Koreans came in silver and bronze, rather than gold and bronze. How embarrassing. Three judges were suspended. But, so far, the officials are refusing to change the result.

Well just bc the start vlaue could have been .1 higher doesn't necessarily mean that that his score for that event would automatically been .1 higher

Actually it would have. The deductions would be the same its just that they started deducting from a vlue of 9.9 instead of 10.0

 

[pygmalion]

The final scores ended up with the 0.1 split, so the final result would not have ended up with the South Korean 0.1 ahead. Does that make sense? He ended up 0.049 behind (with bronze) when he would have ended up 0.051 ahead (with gold), if the correct start value had been assigned. :?

 

[Angelo]

The final scores ended up with the 0.1 split, so the final result would not have ended up with the South Korean 0.1 ahead. Does that make sense? He ended up 0.049 behind (with bronze) when he would have ended up 0.051 ahead (with gold), if the correct start value had been assigned. :?

Oh, OK . Now I get it . I misunderstood what your previous message was trying to say. Sorry about that.

 

[DanceAm]

the judges gave the South Korean gymnast a starting score of 9.9 for his routine's difficulty, versus what was decided later should have been a 10.0. Since the men's gymnastics competition was the closest in history, that 0.10 of a point completely changed the results... ...Three judges were suspended. But, so far, the officials are refusing to change the result.

And herein lies the focus of my disagreement over subjective sports being in the Olympics...and hence my rather unpopular opinion that Ballroom/Dancesport has no place in the Olympics either.

I don't agree that the judging/coaching predicament is the heart of the issue, but the fact that the process of subjective scoring itself is inherinetly flawed.

Then why bother competing at all, Olympics or not? Flawed is flawed. I am actually for taking out sports that no longer or never did have meaning.

The track and field "triple jump". This is a sport for white guys that can't do long jump.

Syncronized swimming, diving, etc.

Gymnastics dancing or whatever they do with the long ribbon.

Trampoline. Why not at Jarts or frisbee or putt putt golf?

Any marksmanship with air rifle, shotgun, bow and arrow etc. If they are going to use a machine like that, then maybe we need NASCAR in the Olympics as well.

Many of the swimming events, c'mon, do we really need to see the Backstroke in the Olympics. We don't have backwards running.

Race walking. What's next, marathon standing?

 

[pygmalion]

You know what gets me? Beach volleyball. Huh? :? :lol:

 

[Angelo]

You know what gets me? Beach volleyball. Huh? :? :lol:

What's even funnier is that there is a whole squad of girls that dance in bikinis to entertain the crowd during the breaks in play.

 

[DanceAm]

Beach Volleyball, hmmm?

I used to play two man when I was younger in back yards or parks, it was a tough sport, no judges needed, but it seemed to have developed out of a lack of interest. It is hard to get more than 4 people together who really want to play V-ball. It would seem like playground basketball, two on two should be a sport as well, but the difference here is you have to do it as a pick up game, you won't know who your teammate is until you get there. You won't even know what country you will be playing for.

But I think the point is, we might be adding too many sports already. One of the criteria for a new sport is that it won't require another venue. Something like sync-swimming was actually just a money maker, sell tickets to the Pool venue when the swimming and diving is not going on to those who wanted to see something else but it was sold out.

Also, the tennis and basketball seems to have lost its luster. If there is no money on the line, the pros don't take it seriously enough. Let's give these sports back to the amateurs. I hate that our best show up and do so bad. The 1980 Hockey Miracle was so historic because of the David and Goliath similarity. Herb Brooks said something like, "Dream Team" is the wrong name, because it takes away our chance to dream.

Dance is already messed up, we don't know who the amateurs are, or for that matter, who the Americans are. Before Laura reads this, we know the new terms are Olympic eligible/inelig.

 

[Elizabeth]

Race walking. What's next, marathon standing?

In defense of my sister's sport let me just say that I'd like to see you walk 20k in 1 hour 45 minutes.

Race walking is certainly a better fit for the Olympics than Ballroom Dancing is. Lets just leave it at that.

 

[DanceAm]

Race walking. What's next, marathon standing?

In defense of my sister's sport let me just say that I'd like to see you walk 20k in 1 hour 45 minutes.

Race walking is certainly a better fit for the Olympics than Ballroom Dancing is. Lets just leave it at that.

I don't want to argue. Just because it is difficult and competitive doesn't make it a sport fit for the Olympics though. It doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile activity or sport, I just happen to have an opinion on it. And yours is different, good, I am glad someone likes it. If my brother did it, I probably wouldn't defend him though, which shows you're a person of good character and I would tease my brother to no end.

And would you really like to see me race walk 20k? Be honest and don't bother printing up a lot of tickets. I think I could find more people that would like to see me dance than race walk.

Does race walking have a special aerodynamic uniform made so the competitor can walk with less wind resistance? Do the competitors have a special shoe they wear? Are some race walking shoes considered illegal? Do some competitors just wear flip-flops or go barefoot. Doesn't Nike have a commercial featuring the new Race Walking line of footware (like the "Ground Jorden's")? Will they soon have syncronized race walking so we can see pairs do the more difficult task of walking at the same pace, oh wait, I did that in the military, it was called Marching. Come to think of it, we also did Marathon standing in the military as well. I think the military has many potential Olympic sports:

1. Latrine cleaning.
2. Waiting.
3. Looking forward to eating bad food.
4. Despising Smoky Bear type hats.
5. Lacing boots.
6. Cleaning a rifle.
7. Sitting on a hard floor.
8. Getting yelled at for long periods of time.
9. Making your bed.
10. Folding your underwear in exactly 6 in. widths.

Tell your sister to be proud of her race walking as you are to be her sister. Don't waste your time getting upset with me.