Month: March 2014

olympic sports, winter sports

The Games go on, Paralympics edition

Posted on by Beau Dure

We should probably dispense with the idea that Vladimir Putin timed the mess in Ukraine to occur after everyone left Sochi. Another wave is coming in right now for the Paralympics.

And while we in the USA don’t pay quite as much attention to the Paralympics as other countries do — though, in contrast to the Olympics, NBC’s networks will air the opening ceremony live and offer much more live action in the early morning hours — this is a large event that will be taking place under a large shadow.

As difficult as it may be to separate the geopolitics from the inspiring stories of athletes overcoming great challenges, we’ll have no shortage of the latter.

– The BBC offers up some global stars to watch.

– FasterSkier.com checks in on U.S. hopefuls in biathlon and cross-country skiing (yes, the USA has quite a few).

– NBC’s OlympicTalk has the full U.S. roster.

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soccer

International soccer games are overrated

Posted on by Beau Dure

From the laboratory that is European soccer comes another idea to spice up the game, this time adding another international tournament on top of World Cup qualifying and European qualifying.

The idea: Get rid of (most) friendlies and play even more endless round-robin tournaments, this time with promotion and relegation schemes like the Davis Cup.

At Pro Soccer Talk, Nicholas Mendoza raises a few issues — fewer opportunities for the USA to play European countries, fewer chances for new blood to be tested in friendlies, etc. All worthy objections.

I’ll add another: We don’t need more international soccer games. We need fewer.

International soccer games are supposed to be All-Star games. Making them the focus of one’s soccer career is inherently unfair to the players. Born in Northern Ireland or Liberia? Sorry, Mr. Best or Mr. Weah — you’re stuck with it. Good player who simply doesn’t fit the style or personality of your current national team coach? Have fun watching from your couch.

Club soccer is the real deal. Managers put together rosters regardless of nationality (work permit and visa rules permitting) and mold those teams accordingly.

The promotion/relegation scheme isn’t bad. Why not use that for World Cup qualification or maybe European qualifiers?

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olympic sports

Monday Myriad: It’s back

Posted on by Beau Dure

The daily recaps during the Olympics were so successful that we (I) have decided to revive the Monday Myriad, featuring the best, worst, funniest and most interesting news from the world of Olympic sports and elsewhere.

Most interesting upset: Afghanistan’s cricketers beat Bangladesh.

Best U.S. cyclist, perhaps with the exception of Katie Compton: We don’t pay a lot of attention to track cycling in this country, and yet Sarah Hammer keeps winning World Championship medals. In fact, we pay so little attention to track cycling in this country that it’s difficult to find anything about Hammer winning the omnium title without the headline “Trott misses out on omnium gold.” Britain absolutely loves track cycling, so if you want a full roundup, check out the Monday link roundup at Frontier Sports. (Which you should do anyway.)

Best comeback from the Olympics: Kikkan Randall keeps on winning …

Best Iditarod dog name:

Best “No, I’m not saying I should’ve gone ahead of Lolo, I’m just saying …” response: Katie Eberling, who lost out in the difficult choice of U.S. women’s bobsled push athletes, has decided to cast her lot as a driver.

Best U.S. biathlon result:

Best moguls skier: Still Hannah Kearney.

https://twitter.com/ESPNOlympics/status/440053808584880128

Quotes that probably seemed more humble when they weren’t in print: You’ll want to know the name Elizabeth Price, the gymnast who was an alternate for the 2012 Olympics and 2013 World Championships but is coming into her own now. She won the American Cup in my old stomping grounds of Greensboro, N.C., and said the following: “To add this title to a list of many, it’s pretty cool.”

Then this: “Hopefully I can soon say that I’ve won even bigger meets than this one.”

Most pointless doping case: Latvia may have to vacate its eighth-place finish in the Olympics if a second player is found guilty of doping. The first offered up the “club doctor gave me supplements — maybe they were contaminated” excuse, which is often true but not an excuse in the eyes of the IOC and WADA. In any case, the doping doesn’t explain how Kristers Gudlevskis made 55 saves against Canada.

Most irritating winter storm: Come on — not during the U.S. Curling Championships!

Worst house / best impression of the episode of The Drew Carey Show in which half the house is missing: Shaun White’s digs in Sochi.

Worst sports: German bobsledder Manuel Machata didn’t make the Olympic team. He loaned some his own equipment to Russia’s Alexander Zubkov. Germany, after seeing its own team flop while Zubkov won both gold medals, suspended Machata for a year.

Other recaps of the weekend: Frontier Sports and TeamUSA

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medal projections, olympic sports, winter sports

2014 medal projections: Some excruciating details

Posted on by Beau Dure

How did the Olympic results compare with all the things we could use to predict them? Glad you asked:

[gview file=”https://duresport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2014-projection-analysis-as-m-dh.pdf”%5D

And this:

[gview file=”http://www.sportsmyriad.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2014-projection-analysis-AS-M-SG.pdf”%5D

Basically, I’m comparing three different types of results:

1. Majors: How skiers fared in the last Olympics and the last two World Championships. The number in “Majors” is a median — it ignores any null results, and the 2013 World Championships are counted twice so that they’ll be weighted more heavily.

2. Cup: Median of the last four World Cup seasons, with the last two counted twice so they’ll be weighted more heavily.

3. 13-14: The 2013 and 14 World Cups and the 2013 World Championships. A simple median this time, with no extra weighting.

Then for each skier, I calculated the difference between those numbers and his Olympic finish. Then I took the top 10 from the Olympics and calculated the absolute value of each difference. (In other words — I just want to know how far away from reality it was, so finishing four places higher than projected would be the same as finishing four places lower.)

So at bottom right, I took the median of each of the groups of differences. And that gave me a way of comparing which group of numbers was better for projecting medal results.

For the downhill, the 2013-14 numbers were better than the World Cup results, but the Cup results were much better than the majors. For the super-G, the majors were better, but I think that’s skewed by what I will refer to by a name I hope will catch on in statistics — the Weibrecht factor. That’s Andrew Weibrecht, who took bronze in 2010 and did little else in the intervening years before taking silver in 2014.

This is really too much to do for every event, but I think this exercise has pointed me toward a points system I’ll use for predictions going forward. I may do a few more winter events to refine the points system — it’ll have to be adapted for sports that don’t do World Cups and World Championships on the typical winter sports schedule, anyway.

But the next step, starting in a month or so — 2016. And we’re going to have easy-to-read charts of each athletes’ past performances, all leading to a predictive index.

Should be fun. Keep reading.

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olympic sports

Break up the OIympics?

Posted on by Beau Dure

First reaction to the idea of adding surfing to the Olympics, maybe with an artificial wave pool: “Hey, let’s see if we can make the Olympics more expensive to host! Maybe we can build more single-use venues!”

Wrestling had to fight to stay in the Olympics, and all they need from a physical point of view to host that is a gym in which they can put down some mats. Baseball and softball are out, and they only required some dirt and some bleachers. The post-Games use for those venues could be everything from more baseball to pastures for cows.

So in the current climate, with the Summer Games at maximum capacity by any measure, surfing simply can’t be added.

Key phrase: “in the current climate.” So we would need to add a wrinkle somehow, and that brings us to a radical idea I’ve kicked around in my head a bit.

Suppose you added another Olympics beyond the Winter and Summer Olympics. Or a couple of offshoot Olympics.

You could have a Modern Summer Games, adding skateboarding, roller sports and sport climbing while shifting a few sports lost in the current Summer program — trampoline and other non-traditional gymnastics, synchronized swimming, rugby sevens, etc.

And you could have an Ocean Games. Sailing is always stuck by itself, nowhere near the rest of the Olympic venues. Why not surround it with wakeboarding (which bid for 2020 inclusion), surfing and a few other ocean or beach events? Maybe have open-water swimming at those Games so swimmers would have a better chance of swimming in the traditional pool in the traditional Summer Games and then shift gears for open-water races.

The current Summer Games are far too big. The options are to cut them or spread them out. Those of us dreading the 28-month gap between Olympics would prefer the latter. So would surfers, surely.

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