Yeah, I'll pass on the do-overs as well.

Are you defending "sports" which require judges to say who won? I enjoy watching skaters and gymnasts but feel that anybody who chooses such a sport has to live with the consequences.

My word, even metric football gives you the clarity to enjoy a real good, 90 minute 0-0 tie!

I am a little surprised to see Johngalt won over by the Olympic spirit. It leads to collectivism as nearly as I can tell…

If you need a judge to tell you who won, it is not a real sport, and don't even get me started on events that require a musical program.

Not counting, I hope, "Are you ready for some FOOTBALL!!!??"

I expected dissent over the Venezuelan election, or the analogy I drew to Florida's 2000 presidential election, but not the nature of sport!

Come on guys, every official in every sport is called upon to make judgment calls in the course of the contest, and in every case the call has to be final. (Well, unless there's instant replay, but after that, it's FINAL!) How is it any different to judge "this contestant's legs are straighter and closer to each other during all three double-twisting triple somersaults than the other's," than the last pitch was a ball and this pitch was a strike?

And what have you got against music? If music were banned from sports there would never have been any such thing as a "Laker Girl." (No loss, mind you, merely an example.)

Finally, and most importantly, I can't think of anything about the Olympics that "leads to collectivism" other than the mere fact they allow competitors from communist regimes to compete. All sports, including team events, are the very embodiment of INDIVIDUAL ambition, ability and achievement. (When done under the flag of a tyrant they can also represent propaganda and self-preservation.)

President Carter said that the Venezuelan elections were fine, so what's to argue?

I, for one, see a HUGE difference in your comparison. Yes, a referee makes judgment calls during a hockey game and an umpire calls balls and strikes. But this is law enforcement to ensure rules and fair play. We play pickup hockey and backyard softball with very little ambiguity who wins.

Having the judge decide the winner is straight out of Lewis Carroll.

And, yes, I was picking a fight with Olympics == collectivist; it worked really well on our soccer discussion. The Olympics are fun but seemed plagued by some of the same ills as the U.N. I just have my skeptic’s hat on when I watch and I expected much worse from you.

I might tend to agree with your parallels between the UN and the Olympic COMMITTEE, but I see less tendency for shenanigans with the IOC because rigging elections is far less profitable than, say, oil for palaces.

But the Olympic spirit derives not from the IOC, but from the sport, and from the individual athletes.

Sport: Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.

I have competed in sports all my life (including the above disputed gymnastics). Per every definition I have ever heard, it is indeed a sport. Admittedly there are sports with subjective components to the judging but objectivity, although very important in sports, is not a necessary absolute to define what is or is not a sport.

Furthermore, even in such sports as gymnastics and skating the majority of criteria are indeed objective. Carly Patterson produces an uneven bar routine that is superior in every way to anything I ever did and no rational person would dispute that and that distinction doesn't require a judge. Judges only become necessary when the differences are very small. That is why we can tell who won the backyard softball game without an umpire. Those of us who compete would have very little trouble telling who won the, "backyard gymnastics meet." That means that some objective criteria are at work.

If I state that green is a superior color to blue there will be much debate. The fact that there is so little controversy amoung very disparate countries over Olympic medals (one or two disputes every 4 years) indicates that indeed the criteria are VERY objective even when judged by human beings and not a stop watch.

An artistic component in no way obviates the basic athleticism required to define something as a sport. I bet everyone of those gymnasts is in better shape than your average MLB player. I further recommend to anyone who thinks it isn't a sport, come and give it a try.

I would define gymnastics and ice skating as athletic demonstrations. Athleticism and skill are certainly required, but I wouldn't even bother calling it a competition. Let them put on their performance and leave it at that rather than trying to decide which was better. If you are going to compete and thus someone is going to win, you need an objective measure such as time, points, or distance. Judges may be used to ensure adherence to the rules and even assess penalties for infractions, but not to decide the outcome directly. Besides, I prefer the conservative stance here that results are what matter, "Ed swam like a wounded water buffalo but still touched the wall first". Otherwise you might as well let the audience decide by how loud they clap for each performer, as I believe they just about did the other night with the Russian gymnast.

I'll resist the temptation to dismiss your criticisms as the ignorant ramblings of typical 'Joe Six-Packs,' disinterested in any sport without bloodshed and cheerleaders.

Silence, you appear to be taking a very simple, judgmental and intolerant view here. You cite as prerequisite for competition "an objective measure." In the interest of clarification, must that measure be time, points or distance for EXAMPLE, or EXCLUSIVELY? As Dagny explained, there ARE objective measures for the quality of a gymnastic routine. Some of these are obvious, like elevation, speed, number of flips, etc. Others require a trained eye and an agreed standard of excellence, like form, difficulty, composition, etc. That lay people are unaware of these objective measures doesn't mean they don't exist and that they can't be applied fairly. So can't an athletic event be a sport if it's objective measurements must be made by man versus machine?

Competition:

1) The act of competing, as for profit or a prize; rivalry.
2) A test of skill or ability; a contest: a skating competition.
3) Rivalry between two or more businesses striving for the same customer or market.
4) A competitor: The competition has cornered the market.
5) Ecology. The simultaneous demand by two or more organisms for limited environmental resources, such as nutrients, living space, or light.

Once again I disagree with Silence. These atheletes practice for years or even decades to get better. If there is clearly such a thing as better as I described above, it is possible to have a competition. See definitions above. Note definition 5 which is the original heart of the competitive drive in human beings. Given that drive, it is rewarding for human beings to compete and win. If you asked them to perform without competition - the motivation would drop off severely and the quality of our gymnastics would drop drastically. The competition aspect drives these atheletes to the pinnacle of what human beings are capable of and that is what millions of us wish to watch on TV. We don't watch Ice Capades. We watch the Olympics.

Furthermore, as I made the case above, the measures ARE mostly objective or there would be even more dispute than currently exists. Measures such as how many turns, what position, how high, and steps on landing are entirely objective with point values assigned. They are just more complicated than can be judged with a stopwatch. I bet you could video it and get a computer to do it pretty well if you fed in the rules. There are some things that people are still better suited to. I don't believe lack of complication is anywhere in the definition of sport. Addtionally, the reason not to let the crowd decide is that they don't have the necessary education on the rules.

JK is correct above in noting, however, that if one chooses a sport with some subjectivity involved, one must be willing to accept the consequences. It is still a sport with athletes deserving of Gold medals and admiration.

Besides, gymnastics is still more of a sport than ping pong!

I don't think either Silence or I doubt the athleticism or minimize the preparation of an Olympic gymnastic routine.

You had me about convinced, Dagny, that there was an objective system but that I did not know enough to appreciate it. That could well be although I find it difficult to believe that two routines can be judged as effectively as a swimming race with hundredths-of-a-second separating competitors.

But Dagny, you lost me with the ping pong comment at the end. I always fancied myself a ping pong player as a young man. I was in a band with a world class competitor. The one time we played, he spotted me 17 points and beat me 21-17. These folks are pretty good too.

Or curling. Ok, I have had my fun, making a flippant comment and running with it as far as I could. (and JK thought HE was picking a fight) But seriously I do agree with JK that those that choose gymnastics as their sport have to take what they get. Certainly by the time they have made it all the way to the Olympics, through what must be hundreds of gymnastic meets they have all surely been victims or questionable scoring. Hat tip to Paul Hamm who seems to be taking the whole thing extremely graciously and exhibiting a lot of class.

OK, one last jab, if only to commemorate JK's new site. I notice a lot of makeup - eye shadow and the like on the female gymnasts, something I do not see on other female athletes, and something that takes away a bit of the seriousness of the "sport". I also notice that even the announcers call the routines on a piece of apparatus a "performance". The other sports don't have this terminology, no one "performs" a long jump or a pole vault.

I do not dispute that human-scored events are more prone to error than those that are machine-scored. And yes, those of us who choose to participate in such sports have all disputed a judge's call at one point or another and recognize that we must live with this possibility. This less effective judging does not mean that they are not sports.

Neither do I dispute the performance aspect of these sports (make-up and all). Once again, there is NOTHING in the definition of sport that precludes these elements. On the other hand these sports DO include all the elements necessary for sport. Per my comment above: They are undoubtedly 1) Physical activity, 2) Governed by a set of rules, and 3) Engaged in competitively.

Further you have not addressed the issue that if you remove the competitive reward for these sports the quality will drop dramatically. We don't do it only because it's beautiful. We
do it to win! They are the most popular events at any olympics, would you like to see them die out?

JK my ping pong remark was intended to be facetious but I note that personal experience with the particular sport has given you a great (no-doubt deserved) respect for the athletes. Therefore I invite all to come and try or observe my (judged) sport and see what you think. I can also show you a rule book listing ideals and deductions and designed to make it as objective as humanly possible. :-)

Hmmm, if you remove the competitive reward the quality will drop? I think there are quite a few professional (mostly ex-olympic) figure skaters and their audiences around the country that might quarrel with that premise. Note also in regards to competitive reward that triple jumps were used for several years by the pros before they were allowed in amatuer competition. The first routines to use non-classical music were scored down as well, again nothing to do with athletic ability. I think the rules of form take precedence over athletics in many cases. Maybe it is just my lack of form in my athletic endeavors that causes me to fall on the side of those who can and are allowed by their sport to excel in their own way, unencumbered by a myriad of rules. Rod Carew with his strange stance and swing wining batting titles, Steve Largent excelling as a wide receiver without world class sprinter speed, Graham Obree breaking the hour record in cycling with a homemade bike and unique riding positon, Dick Fosbury winning the '68 gold in the high jump with an unknown style. The objective rule book, does it allow for a true athlete to go their own way, or does the need for a premise of objectivity in a subjective form of judging all but eliminate any but the traditional approach?

So your premise is that if Olympic 'athletic performers' devote their young adulthood to unscored, unranked, unjudged performance art they'll STILL find cash paying audiences for that art in their mature years? Yeah, I can see that: "I want to pay twenty bucks to go see Ice Capades so I can watch that nondistinguished performer that was given a 'Participant' medal in her last three Olympic 'performances.'"

Any idea if the guy/girl in the Snoopy suit is an olympic medalist?