Discussion: More good press / crazy photos

Here's an article on the CBC website titled "Olympics may lead kids into sport, but parents can help keep them on track, expert says". It talks about how many kids are inspired by the Olympics but that follow thru needs support of parents. And that parents should think beyond the mass-participation sports ...

'Taylor said lesser-known sports are often overlooked in favour of mass-participation team sports, like soccer or hockey, which some kids might not be to too keen on.

"There are tons of individual sports you may have never even considered, something like rock-climbing or orienteering," she said,'

But the photo is so ridiculous that I wrote to CBC offering them any of the many I've taken instead ;-) Orienteering = competitive looking for insects?

I like the way they've managed to get the best orienteer, but failed to get him orienteering!

In all fairness, most of competitive orienteering is being really angsty in your self-flagellating post-race analysis.

That is bizarre! Actually, it is a good photo (lighting, composition, subject) just bizarrely inappropriate/misleading/confusing.

The credit suggests that is a file photo by Roni Rekomaa/Associated Press . Who at CBC would have picked that one over the many that were probably available.
But the article undersells how orienteering is a good fit for the youngsters of today. They play video games. Orienteering is just like a video game where the terrain is the screen and the orienteers are the icons. Or is that Pokemon Go!?

Caption:
"No, I saw that mushroom first, I'm gonna eat it raw!"
What a bizarre choice!

Dr Tom Kopp used to compare orienteering to a board game ... Where you are the token moving around the game board! But Gordhun's video game comparison takes it into the present age!

I thought that was a dropped-contact-lens photo.

Neither orienteering nor rock climbing is likely to get you to the Olympics!

Actually, rock climbing was just added to the Olympics, to debut in 2020.

WTF that's a sport? Well I stand by my orienteering comment!!!

No, the WTF is the World Taekwondo Federation, and its already in the olympics!

Good for climbing. Very inclusive sport that adapted it's trad ways for inclusion in the Olympics.

Inclusive excludes the local Surly Slovakian who owned a gym in Ottawa.

Don't remind me about Taekwondo. I watched some of it during the Olympics and it bored me to tears and not just because all three matches I watched involved Australians who lost.

Officialy is called Sport climbing. Very popular here, each school have an artificial wall and also special gyms only for climbing. It is one of the sports every kid need to try and learn the basics. I would say IOC made a good choice. Athleticism, strenght, coordination, technical skills, decision making process all that anyone can see and understand when watching an athlete in action.

Nothing quite as funny as an MTB orienteer criticising the validity of other sports...
;)

It's not that, it's just that it's not really practiced here (to my knowledge) - kind of like handball. I didn't realise it was done competitively and that it has world championships! Normally it's just one of those activities you have to do in the middle of an obstacle race or AR where you're too tired to hang on and end up taking the penalty for it.

Climbing is pretty popular in Australia! I think it's all over in the east though.

You're one of the few places to have their own grading system, although you needed a British guy to invent it for you... ;)

Climbing artificial walls. MTBs that have never seen a mountain. Hitting a ball with a bit of wood. Finding a nominated point with a GPS. Finding a nominated point without a GPS. All completely silly, but entertaining.

Running some 30 times around an oval just to end up at the same place, jumping over a bar in an event where even the winner ends up failing, swimming back and forth in a pool for a large part of the length doing a stroke/ swim style different than the one designated or the contest, requiring female contestants out in the sun to wear costumes different and offering less protection from the sun than the males', pretty well every event in the Olympics is silly but entertaining.
Orienteering is silly but is it entertaining?

No, not in the traditional sense, but a post-produced program with sync-started dots and video footage from the forest (or drone footage above a sprint venue) could make decent entertainment.

On the other hand, maybe we shouldn't be talking about this at all and should instead be asking non-orienteers what they think. Maybe the photo of Thierry on the ground after his race is actually intriguing and makes people want to know more?

My MTB has seen a mountain. I rode up Mt Gungin (398m) just the other day.

Yeah I guess mountains are relative. I suppose you would have 1m contours on your topo maps tRicky.

No.

"Running some 30 times around an oval just to end up at the same place"

Either your tracks are shorter, or your races are longer in Canada ;)

You don't run the 12km in the UK? It's like the 3/4 10 miler - very popular distance.

Only in cross country

Once again my 'no idea what I'm talking about' post turned out to be true.

tRicky...
Here is IFSC World Championships Paris 2016 - Difficulté - Finale - Femmes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NrvSmZF2jY

I don't have 1hr 24min to spare right now.

@kofols: The Paris climbing coverage via Youtube was very nice indeed, and particularly in the Men's class we got a perfect final:

Adam Ondra climbed last (after winning the qualification) and was the only one to top out the route, even stopping to chalk up on the same holds where the silver medalist fell off a few minutes previously.

Ondra is the TG of climbing, he has climbed and created more difficult routes than anyone else in the world. The only comparison would be Chris Sharma who was the best climber in the world for 10+ years.

The fact that several of Ondra's hardest routes are in the same general area where I learned to climb 35-40 years ago doesn't hurt. :-)

I.e. I climbed in Fosen, the new routes are in Flatanger which is a few miles futher north.

"Flatanger" is Norwegian for "Flat fields/farmland" but the climbing is inside a huge (150+ m) cave, so extremely steep:

https://vimeo.com/68083454

It's quite watchable tRicky. I could envisage artificial, moveable terrain in a stadium providing a navigational contest.

"Ondra is the TG of climbing"

*sport climbing*