Boffin + Wonk
Andy Kaplan-Myrth

Andy is an internet policy advisor with the Government of Canada, with a background in technology law and an interest in how collaborative and social technologies are reshaping industries, governments, societies and the world. See more from me at http://kaplan-myrth.ca.

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February 15th, 9:52am 0 comments

Time to drop the pretenses and cheer for the judges?

Dale Begg-Smith

Ex-Canadian competing for Australia should have won gold: official

An Australian sport official accused judges of awarding inflated scores to Canadian Alex Bilodeau Sunday, allowing him to edge out Dale Begg-Smith for gold in men's moguls.

....

Coach Steve Desovich refused to criticize the judges, but said he thought Begg-Smith deserved gold.

This is the problem I have with "own the podium" rhetoric and, ultimately, with the way the Olympics is structured as a competition. At that level, there are *lots* of people who *deserve* gold. When the difference between two performances is an insignificant .17 points, they should be equally celebrated.

Otherwise, it's not a matter of who performed better. It's only a matter of who scored better. Sorry if this is cynical, but the Olympics are more about the scoring than the performances.

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