OT: Olympics snowboard

Submitted by MGoFoam on
Anyone watching the snowboarding tonight? Red course always wins. Except for wipeouts and one race that was won by a couple hundredths of a second, red course won every time. Never mentioned by the commentators. Conspiracy theory? Or unfair course?

Asquaredroot

February 24th, 2018 at 1:37 AM ^

you just can't make 2 identical courses side by side on natural terrain and even if you could.. they wouldn't wear identically over the course of dozens of races down them.

Yes, red course was faster at the top and maybe thru the middle.  Seemed like blue course might have been faster at the bottom.

But.... if you want to talk conspiracy theory, look at the mens semi-final between S. Korea Lee Sang-Ho and the Slovenian... they (only one time) showed the photo finish and the Slovenian's board clearly went over the line first, but Sang-Ho won by .01 seconds and went on to the final.

The Slovenian could be seen/heard saying 'I was first!!!!' as he watched a replay right before going to commercial.

The only question I have that could undermine the screw-up theory here (whether conspiracy or not) is if it's the boot/binding crossing the line first that matters, or the front edge of the board.  Since they only showed the finish line view once, I can't say for sure whose boot crossed first.  But Slovenian board definitely crossed first.

 

Asquaredroot

February 24th, 2018 at 1:54 AM ^

It also seemed that the red course was clearly faster than the blue course for the team ski event... but at least in this case, each team had 4 racers competing in 4 races and they split the red and blue courses evenly across teams.

That said, I watched racer after racer losing on the blue course in the snowboard event and even if they were defending olympic medalists, they almost always seemed to congratulate the winner without hesitation at the end of the race.  Didn't see any obvious complaints about the course.

Maybe officials gave Sang-Ho the win despite appearances in the photo finish because he was on the slower blue course and only lost by .01 seconds, so they flipped the times  :) No idea, really.

Probably some of these skiers and boarders would have the same opinion about basketball and football refs unduly influencing the outcome after watching a game.  I know I sure as hell do!  Certainly don't feel like justice was served in that game in Columbus in 2016, but thanks for the upvote!

treetown

February 24th, 2018 at 9:36 AM ^

Back when shamateurism was still a thing in the olympics, the pro-ski tour events in the US would race side by side but with two runs, so that each racer ran the same side of the hill.

Skiing must be really feeling some pressure somewhere because you notice they've added and adopted a lot of newer events and the whole x-game style events.

The team alpine event where the huge skiers basically smashed their way though the gates was new.

treetown

February 24th, 2018 at 9:36 AM ^

Back when shamateurism was still a thing in the olympics, the pro-ski tour events in the US would race side by side but with two runs, so that each racer ran the same side of the hill.

Skiing must be really feeling some pressure somewhere because you notice they've added and adopted a lot of newer events and the whole x-game style events.

The team alpine event where the huge skiers basically smashed their way though the gates was new.