Comment by onlypassingthru
Comment by onlypassingthru 2 days ago
Seeing the other competitors right next to you is often a factor in how hard one pushes themselves in a race, no matter the species.
Comment by onlypassingthru 2 days ago
Seeing the other competitors right next to you is often a factor in how hard one pushes themselves in a race, no matter the species.
Is it fair if we get the objectively fastest swimmers to go slower so competition is closer?
Note that the advantaged swimmers in middle lanes are really objectively faster: they earn their spot through year long competitions and in-event qualifications. Sure, they will be an odd case or two.
See https://www.quora.com/How-are-the-lane-assignments-chosen-in...
Spectators don’t seem to mind it in rally race car driving, downhill skiing, bobsledding, and other timed events where multiple competitors cannot share the track.
Spectators also don’t seem to mind for diving, gymnastics, figure skating, equestrian and other events which are points defined and competitors are also performing sequentially.
Your first list of sports are all single participant because of safety. Every one of those has a significant risk of injury or death that is unavoidable for the sport and nobody wants to die because the competitor next to you makes a mistake. Spectators would absolutely pay to watch it, however (see MMA, boxing, etc).
The second list are not judged by racing against the clock and therefore pointless to compete simultaneously.
All of those sports are far more niche than sports where the competitors compete directly against each other.
I can give you an example from my own sport: triathlon. It has two broad categories: short and long course. Short course is generally draft legal, and was developed specifically to get into the Olympics. Plenty of people can name the Brownlee brothers, Alex Yee (place Olympic athlete of your own home nation here). Most of my own damn triathlon club have no idea who Lucy Charles-Barclay is (the UK’s best long course triathlete and Ironman and 70.3 world champion)!
You'd make that trade off? Do you swim competively or how many events do you watch per year?
I mean I'd make the tradeoff that there be no forward passes in the NFL but I'm not a follower of that sport so I'd likely not put that opinion out there because frankly I don't care.
Fewer records, fairer competition. I'd make that tradeoff