love this story
just can’t quite figure out what the crowd’s problem was
did they want re-races till the american won?
Re: and the winner is…?!?
That’s rather old news for American bashing. 
Surely you can do better than that.
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
ok, since i allready look like an idiot, i dont mind trying to figure my way out of this…
first of all
i dont do american bashing
it’s waaay below me and they are so much better at it that i’ll ever be
enough rope and all that
secondly, i got sent that link today, read the story, thought it was kinda weird that i haven’t heard a word about any winter olympics being on, checked the date on the website, today, ok then, euro 2004 soccer is probably just keeping the winter olympic thing off south african TV, we’re not big into anything that’s on snow, we’re not used to that kinda stuff, we’re not crazy about sports we win in either, for roughly the same reason
and thought i’d share the story with people more accustomed to snow and ice, like yourselves
and this is the thanx i get?!?
:o
and thirdly, i still can’t figure out what the crowd was booing about
but since it is (apparantly?) old news, i wont worry about it too much
How would 2004 soccer be keeping the 2002 winter olympics off TV? But I think they were booing the Australian just coz he won and Americans couldn’t hack it that we totally owned them in the swimming in 2000 and will do it again in 2004!
I do remember that short track race…it was very exciting!!! I don’t remember the crowd making a big stink though???
i think journalists tend to dramatize events…i dont recall the fans being upset either.
-grant
I’m sure there was some booing. Ohno was of course a major favorite to win, and then a big pileup spoiled what was “supposed” to happen. Often those crashes affect only one or two skaters, but this took out four of them, letting a guy who was in 5th place win.
In many sports, you will have an audience that is perhaps there more for the excietment, esp. in the Olympics, than they are experts in the sport. It seems to me that in short track, crashes are very common and avoiding them is clearly a workable strategy.
I have done the same in offroad unicycle races. In 1994 at Unicon VII, the path we were racing on was too narrow for me to pass the guy in front of me. I was pretty sure he was less used to off-roading than me, so I held back a bit and waited to see if he would fall (I had no choice). It’s not nice to hope for your opponents to fall in a unicycle race, but that’s all part of the game. He did and I zoomed on by, finishing first by a large margin. I don’t remember if Carlos Medina held onto second place or not.
There was a similar situation when I was racing behind Andy Cotter in Chariton, Iowa (1996 or 91?). This was on grass around their athletic field. I was riding right behind him. Then I realized the problem with that, and switched to riding a few feet to the side. He dismounted eventually. On grass this is especially important as it’s hard to see what kind of bumps could be under there.
So the larger audience probably saw a big “upset” finish, and thought something like it was too many guys to go down, and should there be a penalty against one or more of the skaters? Apparently there was, but the standings were unchanged.
I remember that race for the part where Ohno had the presence of mind to stretch his foot over the line. This indicates that crashes are relatively common in short track. You have to consider them as part of the racing environment.
For Bradbury to win the gold, he admittedly had to be ultra lucky. His “strategy” could not be one to guarantee even one win, let alone a string of them. But sometimes it works.
I remember similar instances in the Walk the Wheel races at old unicycle meets. We used to race only 10 meters (yards, then). This was because in those days, 10m was a lot. I remember one heat where everbody fell off except Redford rider Hans Mills, who calmly plodded past the fallen racers, from the back of the pack, to win!
The audience was wrong to boo, unless they thought the officials would ignore some illegal skating or other rules violation.