Winter Olympic Sports (Ice)

Way back in 2002, we ran a series of Good/Bad/Ugly ratings of winter olympic sports. We didn't complete the series, however. There was a rating for snow sports, and one for sliding (aka track) sports, but the rating for ice sports never did get written. At least, not until now. It's taken four years, and the Olympics were over weeks ago, but finally this series will be complete.

A few notes: Yes, I know, the sliding sports take place on an ice-lined track, and therefore could be considered ice sports. But that just makes for too many ice sports. And yes, curling features little else besides sliding, but can you really put curling in the same category as luge? And finally, I'm not rating these sports on difficulty or popularity, I'm going with how entertaining they are to watch. If you should happen to compete in any of these sports, and I happen to slam it, well, get over it.

Speed Skating: A sport with a long tradition of, um, well, I don't know much about speed skating traditions. I know they wear Lycra™ and ridiculously long-bladed skates, and it's the only winter sport that the Netherlands has dominated pretty much forever, but I really don't know about traditions. So let's skip traditions, and go with fun facts. Did you know that speed skating is the fastest a human can go without help from machines or gravity? A speed skater can reach speeds of 60 km/h. You'd think this would make it more exciting to watch. You would be wrong. Speed skating might feature plenty of speed, but it's generally just two people racing around a big ice oval. Only they're actually racing against the clock, which undercuts the whole event. This year they have introduced something called team pursuit, which features two teams of three racing against each other. They start on opposite sides of the oval and the goal is finish your laps before the other team can finish theirs. It's a little more interesting, but still kinda dull and Bad.

Short Track: Traditional speed skating requires a 400 metre oval track, which is not exactly a standard feature in many cities, and which really can't be used for anything else. Short track uses a standard hockey arena, which means it is far more accessible to people living outside major winter sporting centres. It is also a lot more dangerous — which is obvious right away when you see that short track skaters always wear helmets, and that there is padding along the sides. As well, there aren't the carefully controlled lanes of traditional speed skating and up to six skaters compete at once. This means that there are crashes, collisions, and general mayhem at times. So it's a lot more entertaining, which is a Good thing.

Figure Skating: Figure skating has the uncommon distinction of having been an Olympic event before there were Winter Olympics (starting in London in 1908). And while figure skating has been a premier event for decades, ever since the mid '90s it has become increasingly marred with scandal. Between the Tonya Harding Incident™ and judging scandals it looked like figure skating was in trouble.
To make things better, the International Skating Union recently introduced an entirely new scoring system. The old system was odd enough (where else was 6.0 a perfect score?) but this new system seems basically incomprehensible. Even if the public eventually catches on to the new system, you don't take a sport that's been around for a century and completely change the scoring system. Imagine if they did that with baseball? The fans would scream bloody blue murder, and they'd be right to do so. Even if the existing rules are flawed, you just don't throw away a century or more of tradition overnight.
So did the rule changes make things better or worse? Only time will tell. For now, figure skating remains much the same — people in weird costumes jumping around on ice. That much isn't going to change. Well, maybe a little — the costumes continue to get more and more Ugly.

Curling: There's a joke that I assume is nigh as old as curling itself, and it's about throwing rocks at a house. Actually, it's more of a punchline without a joke. For those unfamiliar, curling is much like bocce ball, crokinole, or shuffleboard — the objective is to get your projectile as close to a target as possible. What makes curling different is that the projectile is 40 pounds of polished granite, and you slide it along a sheet of ice.
For those who haven't guessed, curling comes originally from Scotland. It features the precision of golf and the ridiculously heavy play equipment of caber tossing. It's also the only Olympic sport where portly men in their 50s have a decent shot at winning a gold medal. I'll let you decide whether or not this is a Bad thing.

Hockey: For years Olympic hockey was a refreshing change from the NHL. The international game was faster and generally not as rough. The larger ice surface of international play opened up the game and made people say "Wow, I wish NHL hockey was this exciting."
How times have changed. With a year off from the lockout and a number of new rules designed to speed up play and increase scoring opportunities, NHL hockey is better than ever. The influx of European players, while derided by some, has deepened the talent pool so that almost all teams in the league are actually competitive. Meanwhile, Olympic hockey this year was generally rather dull, and I'm not just saying that because the Canadian men's team did poorly. Watching the Canadian women's team destroy all opposition was good for the national pride, but it wasn't great hockey. It was more like watching an adult play Red Rover with school children. And on the men's side we got to watch a team full of NHL stars with a collective annual payroll somewhere in the ballpark of 100 million dollars be stopped by the neutral zone trap.
Don't get me wrong. I like hockey. I watched Olympic Hockey when I got the chance, but I fear it won't be any Good until the IIHF takes a cue from the actual people who run hockey.