I mean,.. I like the Olympics but,.. Kurling?...
Can you really call sweeping ice a sport?...
There has gotten' to be too many nutty things qualified as sports...

Next up,.. Olympic teeter-toter...  Olympic flower arranging... Olympic clock winding... hopscotch,.. marbles,.. feather blowing... air guitar...

Okay,.. I just ain't into badminton, or beach volleyball, and that's all that's on....
I guess I'll have to get to work refinishing my dining table... ...
Buhh!.. ...

Mitt has to save himself first.

WD wrote on 08/02/12 at 16:31:58:


Next up,.. Olympic pea shooting,... and tag team waffle tossing......

Oooo trampoline competition has stuff like rotations and twists etc ... closer to gymnastics than what we saw @ the beginning of "the man show".
Cool.
Srinath.

Yea curling, serious even Mitt Romney cant deliver the olympics from that horror. Thankfully it is winter olympics, and its canadians who invented it IMHO. What else, they have 10 months of winter ... cant help it if you decide to see if these rocks slide across the ice better than those rocks etc.
Cool.
Srinath.

srinath wrote on 08/02/12 at 20:23:04:



When did ping pong balls change? How much did they change? Heck, it never even crossed my mind to wonder, How old is the game, anyway? When did they learn to make the light, bouncy little plastic ball Ive known all my life? HEY!?  I never knew I had that many questions about Ping Pong,, but Ive sure played a lot of it,,& I likie that game,

Table tennis balls changed around 92-93. They got larger by about 10% in dia. But the speed of movement etc depends on square of diameter. So they got slower by 121%, they also got easier to see cos they were bigger obviously. The larger ball also is softer, hence more forgiving when you mis hit as well as less lethal when your opponent hits it.

Almost the same as field hockey, badminton etc.
If you have stamina but not skill, you slow down the game - badminton. Shuttles got wider and more flared. This totally brought denmark into contention against eastern asia. Games went from 10 rallies to over 50. No one could kill, you had to wear and bore the opponent out. This was in the 70's if I recall.

If you have speed but not stick skills, you speed up the game. You can whack it and run after it. Field hockey in the 60's and 70's. Before which India had their only gold medals in olympics, all of it in field hockey. They went to non natural surfaces like astroturf etc.

Western europe has documented the whole world of sport. All of it in their favor.

Cool.
Srinath.

Well TT may have gotten slower, but atleast we can see it on TV now, and it is still dominated by the same region of the globe. In the old days with the older TV's you saw nothing. Like they had to do in Ice hockey, they wrapped the puck in blue digitally.
Badminton, a more flared shuttle will if hit well and proper just graze the net and drop shorter. I guess that is a smaller disadvantage for taller and more limber people. In general a slower shuttle helps the person with more stamina. A quicker one helps players who can kill.
Field Hockey was far nicer when stick work was the name of the game. The whack and run after it isn't as pretty to watch.

Anyway in the 60's and 70's I can recall whole rules being different depending on which rule book or which host country. In cricket for example, an over nowadays is 6 balls, delivered with a straight elbow with no more than 15 degrees of + elbow bend. So what about the negative elbow bend - as in they are double jointed. It would be legal in one country, but get called in another. Anyway 6 balls is the standard. However australia used to have 8, cos their arch rival england had 6. Not to be outdone, south africa had 4 - for no reason just to make you think.
I could say also all these changes in stuff standardised the sports. Sure it rearranged the winners and losers a few years but the talent again re surfaced. Except in the case of India. We still suck @ field hockey.
BTW since it is still within the rules Indians when we play cricket dont take the new ball when we are entitled to, we let the ball that has been in play a whole day with people slathering sweat etc on it, we continue to bowl with what looks like a dog's chew toy, cos our bowlers are all spinners. Worse yet our grounds are complete dust bowls and its never under 100 degrees with 100% humidity so the brit and aussies get to enjoy all those features. We not gonna tire them out, we're gonna sweat and dust them out.

Cool.
Srinath.