FAI, soaring and Olympic Games

Mark James Boyd wrote:
Olympics are athletic.

Well, that's the idea, anyway. I recently saw a picture of the US men's
archery team. To call their physiques anything close to "athletic" would
be a charitable.

Tony V.

On example of the current olympians. Athlethic ain't it :-)
http://www.athens2004.com/Images/Oly.../1195527_b.jpg




"Mark James Boyd" wrote in message news:412259a4$1@darkstar...
Olympics are athletic. Soaring has avoided (for the most part) having
medals or awards for endurance (long hours = crash).

I dunno, the sailing olympians all look like they're in great shape.
Pretty physical, that sport. And bosled even. I dunno if
soaring really meets the hardbody "Olympic" concept.

But hey, I guess there's no harm trying...I suppose an Olympic
"cluster ballooning" event would be nice too...

In article , iPilot wrote:
It's been under discussion for several times, but I want to bring it up again.

There have been several pro's and con's towards soaring in Olympics, but nobody argues that it'd
rise the popularity of the sport. So it is important for soaring community. Therefore my question
is
following:

Wich way is soaring worse than sailing?

None of the cities that have organised Olympic games in the past would have any geographic
troubles
on organising soaring competitions (Moscow had troubles with organising sailing competition which
had to be held in Tallinn - 900 km away).
None of the latest summer games that I remember have had such miserable weather that the
competition
would have to be left unheld.

The main argument against soaring is the fact that equipment can make a difference here. Well.
Here
is the challenge for igc. They have to face that their first trial of monoclass failed and they
have
to try again. This time with relatively high-performing, yet still not expencive standard or 15m
class design.

As a matter of fact I don't believe that sailing deserves to have 9 different classes on Olympics
and soaring none. I personally think that FAI has failed bigtime to find the concensus amongst
all
air sports to get air sports represented on Olympic games. It shall be the biggest argument
towards
Olympic Commety - there's no air sports in Olympics nowadays. And the most suitable sport would
be
soaring because it's competitive, not so dependent on equipment and directly measurable. Making
soaring TV-friendly shall not be a problem as well today. And with racing tasks only allowed on
olympics it shall be understandable for general public as well.

How can we do it?

Regards,
Kaido




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------------+
Mark Boyd
Avenal, California, USA

iPilot wrote:
It's been under discussion for several times, but I want to bring it up again.

While soaring is a sport, and it is competitive, I have a real hard time
viewing the participants as athletes. If you can sit in a lounge chair
for hours on end, playing Nintendo with a joystick, you've got the
athletic stamina and dexterity to be a gold medal soaring pilot.

Why isn't chess an Olympic sport? Or playing Doom on a Nintendo GameCube?

While soaring is a sport, and it is competitive, I have a real hard time
viewing the participants as athletes. If you can sit in a lounge chair
for hours on end, playing Nintendo with a joystick, you've got the
athletic stamina and dexterity to be a gold medal soaring pilot.

I don't think you will get a single serious racing pilot in the world to agree
with this assessment.

Curt Lewis - 95 USA

Curtl33 wrote:
While soaring is a sport, and it is competitive, I have a real hard time
viewing the participants as athletes. If you can sit in a lounge chair
for hours on end, playing Nintendo with a joystick, you've got the
athletic stamina and dexterity to be a gold medal soaring pilot.


I don't think you will get a single serious racing pilot in the world to agree
with this assessment.

I think a lot of them would agree, but they'd all point out that
"stamina" and "dexterity" aren't on the list of things it takes to be a
good racing pilot.

And because of this, I don't think of soaring as an Olympic sport. It is
primarily a very mental/intellectual sport, not a primarily physical one
like most (all?) the olympic sports I'm familiar with. It isn't about
flying a sailplane well, for example (like an aerobatic pilot), it's
about guiding the glider to the right place at the right time, meaning
where the lift is.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Eric Greenwell wrote:

Curtl33 wrote:

While soaring is a sport, and it is competitive, I have a real hard
time viewing the participants as athletes. If you can sit in a lounge
chair for hours on end, playing Nintendo with a joystick, you've got
the athletic stamina and dexterity to be a gold medal soaring pilot.


I don't think you will get a single serious racing pilot in the world
to agree
with this assessment.


I think a lot of them would agree, but they'd all point out that
"stamina" and "dexterity" aren't on the list of things it takes to be a
good racing pilot.

And because of this, I don't think of soaring as an Olympic sport. It is
primarily a very mental/intellectual sport, not a primarily physical one
like most (all?) the olympic sports I'm familiar with. It isn't about
flying a sailplane well, for example (like an aerobatic pilot), it's
about guiding the glider to the right place at the right time, meaning
where the lift is.

I agree, but to paraphrase another poster, if it can be sold, and more
importantly can sell, it'll be good enough for the IOC.

Shawn

P.S. I've known a very good Laser racer who was decidedly un-athletic.
Curling, archery, and shooting are pretty light on athleticism as well

I do not think that soaring competes badly in this regard towards sailing, shooting and horse
raiding. The argument just doesn't stand. Weirdest sport, one ca find in olympic programme (though,
winter programme) in this regard is curling imho.


"Eric Greenwell" wrote in message
...
Curtl33 wrote:
While soaring is a sport, and it is competitive, I have a real hard time
viewing the participants as athletes. If you can sit in a lounge chair
for hours on end, playing Nintendo with a joystick, you've got the
athletic stamina and dexterity to be a gold medal soaring pilot.


I don't think you will get a single serious racing pilot in the world to agree
with this assessment.

I think a lot of them would agree, but they'd all point out that
"stamina" and "dexterity" aren't on the list of things it takes to be a
good racing pilot.

And because of this, I don't think of soaring as an Olympic sport. It is
primarily a very mental/intellectual sport, not a primarily physical one
like most (all?) the olympic sports I'm familiar with. It isn't about
flying a sailplane well, for example (like an aerobatic pilot), it's
about guiding the glider to the right place at the right time, meaning
where the lift is.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

iPilot wrote:
I do not think that soaring competes badly in this regard towards sailing, shooting and horse
raiding.

Here, all this time I thought that horse raiding was a criminal act.
Now, I find out it's a sport :-).

Tony V
:-)

On Tuesday, August 17, 2004 9:33:12 PM UTC-4, CLewis95 wrote:
While soaring is a sport, and it is competitive, I have a real hard time
viewing the participants as athletes. If you can sit in a lounge chair
for hours on end, playing Nintendo with a joystick, you've got the
athletic stamina and dexterity to be a gold medal soaring pilot.

I don't think you will get a single serious racing pilot in the world to agree
with this assessment.

Curt Lewis - 95 USA

agreed!

On Thu, 03 Jul 2014 13:18:36 -0700, ND wrote:

On Tuesday, August 17, 2004 9:33:12 PM UTC-4, CLewis95 wrote:
While soaring is a sport, and it is competitive, I have a real hard
time viewing the participants as athletes. If you can sit in a lounge
chair for hours on end, playing Nintendo with a joystick, you've got
the athletic stamina and dexterity to be a gold medal soaring pilot.

I don't think you will get a single serious racing pilot in the world
to agree with this assessment.

Curt Lewis - 95 USA

agreed!

Getting your head around what Sports Administrators consider to be a
sport can be hard. I was heavily involved in competitive Free Flight
model flying when we were getting airsports recognised by the UK Sports
Council (its been a good deal for gliding too, but I digress).

The SAs were unconvinced that Free Flight was a sport (during each of the
seven one hour round in a day you make a flight, which usually involves
lobbing it up in a wind, following it downwind, retrieving it from
anything up to two miles away and getting back in time to fly again in
the next round. There's a scoring limit of 3 minutes of these flights.
Then, if more than one flyer has a perfect score, they get to do more
flights that evening with the scoring times increasing for each flyoff
until there is a winner. The SA view was that there was little sporting
prowess involved in getting the model trimmed, lift picking or launching
into lift and that the effort involved in retrieving models after each
flight was irrelevant to the sporting performance.

However, they were more than happy to agree that standing and twiddling
the sticks on an RC transmitter or spinning on the spot while controlling
a control line model were obviously worthy sporting skills.

On that basis I'd say that piloting a glider is most definitely a sport.


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