UKH

Whilst enjoying (ahem) the Olympic coverage on TV, it occurs to me that some sports, although requiring tremedous levels of dedication and skill are ... well ... really dull to watch

Which sport wins gold in the Dull Olympics ?

I have my own list but ymmv

Dressage

All the ones involving horses, guns, boats and dogs tie for gold.

Dogs? I've not seen that one!

To op... equestrian and shooting would be my top dull picks

Oooh Shooting, wasn't on my list but it's got to be right up there

Shooting. It's basically a competition to see who can stay the most still.

Yet for no logical reason, I quite enjoy the archery!

I watched the womens softball yesterday, had no idea what was going on, and nothing really happened, but was fantastic to have on in the background while working.

Maybe shooting would be similar... putting something really boring on to make you think your work is more interesting,  like an anti procrastination device.

They should bring back competitive poetry to replace all these dullfests. That would properly liven things up.

Playing devil's advocate, I can see either boulder or lead climbing make a similar list on non-climbing channels. 

Bouldering: person sits on a mat for about a minute.  Stands up and tries to balance on a large, yet inexplicably slippy plastic blob.  Person gets 12" off the ground, falls off, sits on mat for another minute.  Repeat until time up.  Next competitor repeats this exciting process.  Finally a Slovenian woman (could be a Czech dude) gets 24" off ground and wins.

Lead: person spends several minutes slowly climbing up a wall.  After pausing to rest for what seems like forever, falls off at an (apparently) hard move.  Next competitor climbs wall in exactly same way.  Gets to same point.  Rests for what seems like forever, falls off at same move.  Repeat for another few dozen competitors until a Slovenian woman (could be a Czech dude) climb up route easily and wins.

At least dancing horses mix it up a bit.

You may have a good point !  Continuing the devils avocate theme, may I suggest 'Swimming' - one sport and 18 medals (36 if M/F accounted for) whereas 'Climbing' - three sports and one medal (2 if M/F accounted for) ...

The Marathon, and definitely Race Walking !

(And I'm an Athletics Official !!!)

I'm also going for shooting, specifically the air rifle/pistols. Stand VERY still. Pfft. Very small hole made in paper target. End. Zzzzz.

Air rifle and air pistol is boring to watch, but make it part of a biathlon and even rifle becomes interesting. You identify archery of being an 'interesting' form of shooting: I agree, and would add the trap shooting as good to watch, probably because of the loud noises and the exploding clay pigeons filled with coloured powder.

At least they have different strokes/distances. I think by the time you have taken into account there are 8 in some boats, about 40 rowers/scullers will get a gold medal, for doing the same (or at least pretty similar) thing. Although it can be exciting to watch 

Which is exactly why baseball was the US's game of choice till the NFL spoiled everything.

(I realise baseball and softball are different, but aside from the issue of why women seem to be judged unable to play baseball, I decided to view the softball as a slightly more condensed, intense version that's in many ways more satisfying. A bit like the rugby 7s compared to the standard game)

Always amazes me that there are something like 18 wrestling golds available.

Edging to Winter Olympics here, but I let out a sigh when the presenter says "that was a short summary of (insert exciting sport that involves hurling yourself down a mountain narrowly avoiding death), and now we go for extended live coverage from the curling arena..." - simply because we have occasionally won that.

I have just found a new one..the pommel horse. Men in tights going round in circles on a makeshift horse...

They're all rounders to me.

Dunno - I don't think climbing is about to overtake Wimbledon or the FA Cup Final for popularity but as minority Olympic sports go it's not too bad. It's obvious what the competitors are trying to do, it's reasonably obvious why it's hard and it's normally obvious whether they've done it or not without recourse to slow-motion replays and complicated judging procedures. Those factors alone probably put it in the middle of the bunch.

I have had the men's gymnastics on while simultaneously doing my physio exercises for my knackered shoulders. I feel so utterly inadequate. 

I know, what if we had these muscles and core strength... I'd be climbing E8 in a jiffy!

Carrying on that point, a lot of the fighting sports are surprisingly unwatchable. In principle I'm quite interested in watching stuff like judo or taekwondo or fencing but in practice I just spend most of the time baffled about what just happened and who got points and why.

The shoulder stability is absolutely incredible. I wonder how they compare with the top climbers.

I actually think the Taekwondo has been well explained and I've enjoyed watching it.

The main issue is how quick everything is, to the untrained eye you don't know what's going on until the scoreboard ticks over!

What's the difference between that and Kick-boxing? (I don't know anything about either, but they look more-or-less the same.)

Gymnastics done at that level is just awe-inspiring to see (and I include the Pommel Horse in that - sorry.) The strength and skill involved is mind-boggling.

Not too long ago, seeing a crucifix performed on the rings was rare enough; these days, the best competitors seem almost able to pull directly up into one.

Diving....

ah yes. 8 competitors, 5 dives each, so 40 dives total. Add up the total time something is happening (3s per dive) and you get maybe 2 minutes of action spread over a 2h event. 

Mrs Ridge is a fan of horse dancing. TBH it is very clever, regardless of the cost of the horse, the skill is using minute shifts in body weight, foot position and tension on the reigns to control the horse.

Still daft though.

I wonder if the high horse costs are (similarly to racehorses) because of future breeding potential -  as long as they're not geldings.

Race walking. The cheating is so blatant it's absurd. 

Synchronised swimming. Makes me feel slightly unwell. 

youtube.com/watch?v=-AERGx4ma8Q&

Thanks. Interesting to see that Taekwondo is a relatively recent (1970s or so) invention.

Could be made much more entertaining if they had to do it on a real horse

in this year I changed my mind on wrestling

What, you don't like diving?! F*ck me - you've kept that under your hat.

Most of the more competitive ones are heavily stylised now which does make them hard to watch. For fencing try epee since thats the one with the least rules and so no complications about right of way.

The theory behind which is reasonable (if I was swinging a real sword at your head chances are you would be wanting to it not to hit you rather than risk hitting me a millisecond earlier somewhere less important) but is confusing for the fencers let alone anyone trying to watch who doesnt know the principles.

As the doctor said to the motocycle courier.

They need a more inclusive martial art

youtube.com/watch?v=skUgegwkX9I&

Lacking in finger strength and forearm stamina but probably superior in every other respect.

In reply to the OP, shot putting is fairly dull.

There is such a thing as equestrian vaulting, but I don't think it is in the Olympics. I once had a pupil who was a bit of a star at it.

Really? I've always wondered why bouts didn't end in the loser's death.

I wonder how readily they could convert to climbing. I suspect, from their physiques that the women would do better than the men.

The men are probably a bit heavy to climb at the very highest level (though that didn't stop John Dunne!) but with a bit of work on fingerstrength I'm sure that with their strength, balance and flexibility they'd be not far off.

Was going to reply last night but fell asleep half way through this thread.....

Anyway, the Dull Olympic gold winner would be trap shooting with a 12 Bore.  

Golf! 

Watched the shooting just now. Background noise if nothing else. Not much use when the in-screen scoreboard disappeared. It mainly just reminded me of the summer during A-levels that I worked on a shooting range and the proportion of the clientele that were dickheads was much higher than that of the general population. More BMW X5's than you could shake a stick at as well.

Have to admit that I find shooting fairly boring to watch, and it's a sport I've been doing for over thirty years so I do actually know a bit about it! Far more interesting to do than to watch ....

I watched a pre Olympics interview with Max Whitlock, he was in his back garden and conducted the interview while going through a routine on the Pommel Horse that very very few people would be able to do. The level of skill and physicality in a championship routine must be immense!

Judo: two people in pyjamas grab hold of each other and push and shove until one of them falls over. Sometimes one of them tries to have a one person piley-on. It is like watching infants at a sleepover arguing over the remote control.  

I love the term "small bore". I know a few.

Anticipation?

UKC at its most negative?

I have come to the conclusion that the watchability of sports comes down to the number of skills displayed per unit time, where tactical decision making counts as a skill.

So shooting takes a while, and really only has one visible skill.

100m sprint has maybe two skills in starting and running. But it is over quickly so watchable.

10 000m has running plus sprinting at the end, plus tactics around the course, but takes longer.

Any sport (like climbing) where competitors go one after another is going to lose out on the overall time taken, though you can limit that by watching only the medal contenders + specific (e.g. GB) athletes.

Isn't it just like darts (not exciting to watch a series of guys throwing at a board) but if you get into the competition between two closely matched competitors...

You’ve clearly missed some of the football threads.....

We could send your uncle John Cooper.....

ha ha, you don't have to join in.

I watched the trap shooting today, after a couple of rounds it was pretty boring, I admire the skill, but as a spectator event, no thank you.

archery on the other hand.

the floor gymnastics doesn't do much for me I admit, but the uneven / high bars is always worth a watch

Faster, further, harder, higher and heavier* are all pretty easy to understand and relate to but I start to lose interest when it gets into stuff with an aesthetic element.

*Anything else we could add to that?

The grown men riding kiddies' bikes is on now.

Can anyone take this seriously?

I watched it once and it was basically if you missed one out of a hundred you lost. The playing card blinkers are comedy though. 

No competition in the Speed Poetry. But I doubt he'd be keen on heading east: Enter the Dragon/Exit Johnny Clarke.

Apparently not British Cycling, who withdrew funding from the Women's BMX programme. So Beth Shriever's Gold was crowdfunded.

Just heard the interview with family (I think) of the guy who got silver. Brilliant. But they do look silly on those tiny bikes though!

Partly, as the internal rules on funding were changed.

I wonder if (n+1) applies to BMX ?

Exhibit No 1 - Lynn Hill. 

I watch young female climbers at my wall and suspect that several of them have gymnastics backgrounds. Seems an ideal preparation, as it obviously develops tremendous core strength, balance and flexibility. All that's missing is finger strength, and that's easily developed.

On the plus side, all the teenage drug dealers riding tiny bikes round council estates means we have a huge pool of talent to dominate this event in future Olympics.

I like the idea of Olympic funding being redirected from our rowing duds to a load of teenage drug dealers.

Exhibits 2 & 3 - John Gill & Pat Ament.  Read about them on www.johngill.net, it's a great site. Details of climbing gymnasts are on this particular page:- http://www128.pair.com/r3d4k7/Climbing&Gymnastics2.1.html

Golf. Someone hits a tiny white ball which becomes invisible for a bit then reappears in the grass. A man walks slowly up to the ball and hits it again. Repeat ad nauseam.

Having watched the BMX finals, it's quite amusing to just imagine them as kids trying to get away from PC Plod as fast as possible 😁 - number of arrests would be zero unless they crashed.

I find myself thinking that the Taekwon-do resembles a Friday night out I once had to go to in Newcastle.

Stops it being on the dull list, though.

Do sports ever get removed/replaced from the games then?

Unbelievable that Sir Stevie Redgrave is coaching the Chinese. WTF is that about.

The great rowing coach Jurgen G reminds me of Alex Ferguson and the gap he left when he retired. 

It’s pretty exciting to watch. 

Tug of war went early doors. A track cycling event went recently IIRC.

Chris Hoy’s first Olympic Gold was in the Kilo, an event that was removed from the Olympic programme for the next (Beijing) games. He pretty much had to reinvent himself as a sprinter.

Yes, the standing high jump got binned pretty quickly, but for genuine WTF? brownie points its hard to beat (or even imagine) that Paris 1900 included live pidgeon shooting, which is exactly what it sounds like.

In reply to Ridge:

Drug dealers on BMX bikes is so 00s. They've all upgraded to electric scooters around here. 

On topic, after watching the gymnastics it strikes me climbing has some catching-up to do. As you would expect from an activity barely 30 years old as a competitive sport versus one of the oldest in existence. 

I've often read that weightlifting is on a shaky peg due to the amount of positive drug tests. I'd hate to see it go as it's one of my favourites, love to watch both the men and women. (Not an easy task trying to find it this year with the weird broadcasting set-up).

Here's a vid of removed sports

youtube.com/watch?v=Ua7PQ6H8UOQ&

You clearly didn't watch the canoe slalom then. 

On the flip side, I've surfed for nearly 40 years, but never been the least bit interested in watching a surfing competition.
To my surprise, I've been finding the olympic surf competition really interesting to watch.

I actually did, but I wrote that before I saw it. You make a good point. I'll refine that to "boats not in concrete sluices" or whatever the hell it is they go down.

To simplify my initial remark, "All the ones involving horses, guns, boats (+ not in concrete sluices) and dogs tie for gold", can I just have "All the ones that look like the Tory party at play"?

Hijacking the thread slightly, but I've often thought that sports that don't regard the Olympics as their pinnacle of achievement shouldn't be in the Olympics at all. 

On that basis, I wouldn't  include include tennis or golf, unless the governing bodies cancelled all grand slam tournaments and majors in Olympic years (which they would never do of course). 

That would count out men's football too, though women's football does seem to place more kudos on the Olympics.

Martin

100m women's final. The 2nd & 3rd hate the winner, as the  commentators suggested pre race. I've never seen such a reluctant congratulation!

Yes, Olympics artillery would be more exciting.

Don't know about that. Zverev seemed pretty damn pleased to have won gold. Well done him.

Not Ecky Thump?

I haven't watched a great deal of the Olympics this year, thoroughly enjoyed the BMX competitions though, and strangely as a complete non golfer I enjoyed watching the golf this morning 

I reckon when they have the national tables for medals they should scale the results so medals in some sports are worth more than others.

e.g. for each sport federation the number to add to the national medal table would be  (number_of_medals_achieved_in_sport  x number_of_global_participants_in_sport ) / number_of_medals_available_for_sport

The idea being that a medal in a sport which millions of people take part in (e.g. running) is harder to get than a medal in a sport which hardly anybody does (e.g. dressage) and the more medals a sport has assigned to it the easier it is for an athlete in that sport to get a medal.

If they did this it would take away the perverse incentive for countries like the UK who want to use the Olympics to make a flag waving point to put their sports funding into niche sports with a ton of medals.

That bloody Chris Hoy bloke, eh? Getting all them medals and then grovelling on his hands and knees at the feet of that over privileged royal woman. Union Jack waving scum the lot of them.

Exactly.  The whole 'best Olympian' thing based on how many medals someone gets is bullsh*t, what it really measures is which sports have enough pull with the IOC to get a zillion different categories.  Track cycling is particularly egregious.

I am sure we all unofficially recognise that already. We all know that some golds count for far more than others.

Edit: I'm not sure how your formula works for "sports" where the majority or even vast majority of participants don't do it competitively. 

I bet he voted Tory and No too. Should probably be hung as traitor.

The obvious flaw in grading medals by participation is that it would be all about football.

The seven way play-off for the bronze was pretty exciting for golf. Morikawa's plugged ball in that bunker, ouch.

It was also interesting to read about how McIlroy's views on the Olympic golf competition had changed.

Agree with this....hardly been able to find any weightlifting on TV...!!!

Indeed, unlike Djokovic whose outburst in the bronze match wasn’t exactly in the Olympic spirit.

The BBC doesn't have the rights, (it's all on Discovery Plus). The BBC are only allowed to show two sports concurrently, so there's the higher profile stuff on BBC, and one other sport on the 'red button'.

It's a bit poor really.

How has a thread about boring Olympic sports managed to get this long without anyone even mentioning Sailing?!  Surely the grandaddy of boring as f*ck sport to absolutely everyone outside of people who sail?

Does swimming still have Butterfly as a category? Surely no-one has ever done that outside of competition?

Which in turn would mean no gold medal....

Swimming seems even worse, tbh.

One of my "obvious rules to make the Olympics more sensible", along with the "no sports where an Olympic gold isn't the pinnacle of achievement" is that sports where it isn't remarkable for the same person to win three or more individual medals at one games should be slimmed down to the point where it is.

And even with those restrictions the BBC still make a pig's ear of it.

This afternoon, in the athletics which I believe is one of the more popular sports, they could have shown live part 1 of the triple gold attempt being made by Hassan - possibly allowing people to see (live) something really historic.

But no, we'd just won some medals in the equestrian events (which is fine), but then we had reporters wittering on about this and that (they weren't even interviewing the medal winners which would have been excusable), and then they went to a replay of the weightlifting where we won a silver 👍 and then eventually they managed to show a bit of the women's 5000m about 20 minutes after it had finished.

Surely once the equestrian result was known, they should have switched back to the athletics (maybe the first lap might have been missed), and then gone back to the equestrian arena or shown the weightlifting then.

Seems to me that they've got their priorities a bit wrong. A member of team GB stubbing their toe shouldn't take priority over non team GB action. Live action should always be highest priority followed by live interviews. Anything that's already happened should take lower priority. Commentators wittering on about this or that interesting fact (e.g. so an so has com back from serious injury) should be relegated to filling in any remaining gaps.

Ironically, this was on the webpage clearly labelled as LIVE.

This was extremely annoying. So annoying that I actually immediately bought a months access to discovery+ so I could watch the second half of the 5000m there.

For the 5000m the official games website was giving the times & places every 1000m.

In the sprint events it shows the reaction times before you see the start on the BBC website, even when their Live webpage is "live", it's still actually several seconds behind the real world.

I'm not sure.  Lots of people watch football but do more people play football than go running?  My guess is running and swimming are going to be the highest participation sports and with the number of climbing walls in towns these days climbing will be surprisingly high up the list.

Climbing walls are a rich country thing, as are swimming pools.  I take your point about running, though - it's one of the purer 'sports' in the Olympics (pure from a sporting aesthetic point of view,  that is).

Its actually fishing....

Seriously though, if you compared playing competitive football to competitive running, I guess footie would win by some margin. (Pub leagues, indoor 5 a side, children’s soccer leagues).  
Ed: just to say I would agree though that more people go for a run around their streets than play footie, I’m thinking of the organised/competition side. 

I think that if you are looking at participation numbers, then you need to be looking at India, Pakistan, China, Brazil, Nigeria and other high population countries.

In reply to:

A random contribution to the thread -that might get the medal count down.

No sports should be allowed that have weight categories, I want to see who can lift the heaviest weights - not what tiny person can lift a middling weight.

It makes about as much sense as having height classes for high jumpers or basketball players (actually that last one could make a lot of sense!)

Rifle shooting and speed climbing.

But then the heaviest boxers will win the boxing, and the taller swimmers with longer arms (and webbed feet) will win the swimming - oh, hold on a minute 😁. So you mean that as well as favouring those who have a skill/talent and train hard and are dedicated, only those who are most genetically suited should be allowed to win? Shocking idea.

I don't understand all the different sailing classes - surely they should be limited to 1 single person boat medal, 1 two person boat medal, 1 three person boat medal. I don't know how much advantage extra (male) strength is in this kind of sailing, if it's significant then have separate M&F and maybe a mixed crew boat medal.

What! Weight classes make sport interesting.

We want to see this youtube.com/watch?v=V52GRdeay4A&) 

and this ( youtube.com/watch?v=CANsGKdzPR8&)

At the Olympics. (They’re both Olympic weight lifters with no bad language.) Both are massively impressive.

On a side note, I think the more sports the better. The Olympics are supposed to inspire people and more variety out there the better. 

Someone mentioned fishing as being the biggest mass participation sport in the UK. Why not make match fishing an Olympic event? If it inspires some youngsters to get outside, surely that’s a good thing.

Having just managed to watch the speed qualification round on BBC (Red button last hour of the 08:00-12:00 chunk), I'd say it was ok.

But of course no sight of the bouldering or lead bits, and most laughably there's a web page about "All you need to know about sport climbing" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/57998157 but no link/indication how you might possibly watch it (apart from a general "on BBC" type thing).

You’re totally right. Cricket and table tennis and running would be right up there. 

There are big entry numbers in 10k, half marathon and marathons and many are 'official' events under the rules of the governing body.

Having never won any of the 4 bigger events, he would be.

Typical, they obviously waited until I posted my previous comment 😁

Have now watched the lead climbing on BBC website, no sign of the bouldering.

See post #3 above, with the notable subsequent qualification.

Ah yes right you are!

You do like a good put down, don't you? 

Come on, are you really saying that even the greats wouldn't be delighted to have an Olympics.Gold.Medal, regardless of what else they had won? 

The chance to get one occurs 16 times less often than a Slam. I struggle to believe that it isn't up there as one of the most prized gongs in tennis.

Regardless, imagine you had the chance to be in a picture like this, as Andy Murray once did:

 

The thing is that you CAN'T "do" football without having an opposing team, and hence a "competitive" match, whereas you can "do" running, swimming, cycling, fishing, sailing, etc., etc., on your own.

But to call most football matches "competitive" in the same way that running (etc.) competitions are is wrong - most football matches are "games", with none of the participants taking anything bar the remotest effort at training - whether physical or technical.

I would imagine that the vast majority of the populations in those countries spend so much of their time making a living that they haven't got time for any form of leisure, let alone the strength to take part in sport.

Even your aging pub league footballer has a huge base of "technical training" from their youth. 

If you compared the lifetime hours spent most of your supposedly dedicated runners probably spent more time playing football - even if it that stopped at age 18. 

It wasn’t a put down. The fact is, it is the biggest win of his career, because he hasn’t won any of the bigger events.

Important as the Olympics was for Murray, it wasn’t as important as either of his Wimbledon wins. Was it more important than his US Open win? Possibly.

The question is “is an Olympic win more important than a Grand Slam?” The answer is clearly no.

Does anyone remember that Tim Henman is an Olympic Silver medalist? (ok it was doubles), rather than his Grand Slam semi finals. 

I don't think it is actually.

Statistica is suggesting that participation numbers for England are 7m for running and about 1.3m for football, this is based on people participating at least twice a month.

Half a million people enter the ballot for the London Marathon, I know probably 150 competitive runners, less than 10% of those will enter the London ballot, either because it doesn't interest them (it's a diverse sport) or they chosen other marathons, have good for age or elite qualification.

Really?  Wow. I’ll bow to your superior knowledge. 

According to statista, 70 million people went running twice a month in England alone. It’s more popular than I thought !!!!

TBH, I did remember reading a while ago about the popularity of fishing but things may well have changed. 

Impressive numbers - particularly as the population of the entire UK is less than that !!

Kata karate aka Solo karate looks a bit like Peter Crouch doing the robot

There are lies, damned lies and statista.

Im guessing it’s a typo, but it’s an impressive one.