Hahahah yaaaaay ice dancing.

> This will not be a screed on why ice dancing belongs in Las Vegas rather than Turin. When you're watching Russia's Jana Khokhlova compete in a skimpy, tattered, Day-Glo orange outfit with one leg wrapped suggestively around partner Sergei Novitski's waist, you figure you're at least halfway to a decent argument that this isn't U.S.-Canada men's hockey.
[Tribune, may req. reg.]

boy, very bitchy play-by-play, no?

It totally isn't a sport at all, stilicho, but it's better than watching hockey.

i'm going back and forth bet it and futurama--it's the lucky clover episode.

it's this couple on right now that i was talking about before--very good--2 blondes from somewhere. ahh--Bulgaria.

it's better than watching hockey

On Bizarro-world, perhaps.

I keed. Sorta. I've never seen the appeal of ice dancing, to put it mildly, but to each their own, eh?

hockey's weird, and NBC shows way way way too much of it each olympics (bec of 1980?)

We're really sucking as a country this time.

Ain't no such thing as "too much hockey".

Switch over to CBC, if you can. Their coverage is infinitely better, and the Canadians are doing quite well this time out. Just be prepared for... even more hockey! Bwahahaha! As a matter of fact, I got to watch the Canadian women's hockey team win the gold this afternoon. Yay!

can't -- i don't get it (we used to get some of it on NWI, but then (Al Gore's) Current came along and bumped it off the air here.

That's a shame. They did something similar here in the mid 90s, dumping CBC in favor of the nearly pointless Northwest Cable News, an aggregation of local news from Seattle, Portland, etc. It's pretty weak.

I'm not sure when they picked CBC back up again, as I went without cable for about 7 or 8 years. (We only have it now because there is absolutely no broadcast reception where we live.)

When she was glaring at her poor partner, I had immediate and horrifying flashbacks to all my ex-wives who gave me that very same look for not lowering the toilet seat.

Too much hockey?

That's unpossible!

If it has judges it is not a sport.
Figure skating, ice dancing, gymnastics, are all athletic but they are not sports.
Golf and bowling are not athletic but they are sports.
Auto racing is a sport. As to it being athletic I leave to you to decide. Most Nascar drivers lose more than 20 lbs. per race.
The USA always has the weakest Olympics TV coverage.

That's an interesting summary, arse_hat. I agree completely that anything relying totally on scores from judges is not a sport, but there are some, such as ski jumping and moguls that are definitely sports, although they rely to some extent on scores for "style". Nothing is that black-and-white, unfortunately.

To play a sport, one must score points or pass a finish line. Anything else is a contest. Though it may be athletic, competitive ice skating is just like auditioning for the philharmonic, or competing in a pageant.

Since the decision is formed in the mind of a judge, the finish line is subjective. The goal is liquid.

Makes it an athletic contest, but not a sport.

Even ski jumping or moguls -- if you can't see the bar, it's a contest. It may have elements of sport (a race to the finish), but if it relies on invisible judgment by experts for part the score, it's a ski-jumping contest or a moguls competition, not a match or game or sport.

But what about weight lifting, or javelin toss? I guess what I mean is "measured against a visible standard."

At the heart of it, though, I don't care. There's little to argue, unless I'm hell bent on ruining someone else's fun watching, which I'm not.

So forget it.

She made the Times! After Staredown, a Détente for an Italian Pair