The Winter Olympics: Beijing propaganda edition started last night. Well, the sports did. Not the Opening Ceremony. I know I "shouldn't" be watching, and I do intend to avoid the cultural stuff, but I'm genuinely passionate about Winter Sports (for... Reasons), so I intend to watch my country's athletes in action, where possible, and when I'm not doing other things (it's in a good time zone for me, so help me, lol).
Anyway, I watched the "mixed doubles" Curling last night, because it was the first sport event on. Australia was playing the USA. Round robin. I don't really give a fuck about curling (was much more interesting live, in person, anyway...), but I noticed something rather interesting, about the team dynamics...
In the American team, they were a couple, and both the guy and girl did an equal share of the work. The throw (or whatever the technical term is) of the rock, and the sweeping, or "curling"... They took it in terms. Naturally, this meant that the man did not get so worn out...
Why this was interesting? The contrast to the Australian team. I watched the whole thing. The Australian woman only threw maybe... 5 times, the whole game, and only swept once. She let the man do literally all the hard work, and spent the entire time yelling instructions. She then complained *when each "rock" didn't go exactly as planned...
She got have helped. She chose not to. And then yelled and screamed the entire time, while grinning from ear to ear. As a result, the bloke was exhausted, naturally enough, because he had to do all the work. There was no "rule", at play, here. No reason for it. She just chooses not to actually do the physical work. So naturally, they fucking lost. Right at the last minute (last rock), too...
And yet, when they were interviewed before and afterwards, she did all the talking, and the bragging. About "how they should have won", and "how it could have gone better". The bloke was almost too exhausted to talk.
It was made very apparent, before and afterwards, that they were not a couple, and that the bloke may well have been a fag. Amusingly enough, especially with how "whipped" he was...
His dad was providing the commentary, on the TV. I don't think he was terribly impressed with what went down...
Anyway, I just thought that was utterly symbolic of the relationship between most (adult) men and women, in Australia right now: The woman yells and screams, and then complains when it "isn't perfect", and the man does all the actual work, in this case literally. I grew up in that sort of environment. Let me tell you, it isn't healthy. And yet, my parents are somehow still together, so lord knows, maybe some men are just... Meant for that role. :-/
Anyway, they (the Aussie curling pair) are playing again today, twice, so it will be interesting to see if he continues to put up with the humiliation, or whether they implode, spectacularly, on mic and camera, lol... Because I know I wouldn't put up with that, for an entire week, if it was me, and if doing the work of two humans was enough to leave me nearly fainting by the end of each "end", lol...
Oh shit, I didn't even notice the mixed doubles part.
I've never seen two man curling before.
I guess you are at a significant disadvantage no matter what you do.
Traditionally in 4-man curling, the skip calls all strategy and tells the thrower where to aim and yells instructions at the sweepers depending on how well the shot is on target.
If you decide that your skip won't sweep like Australia is and just waits at the far end, you effectively forego any control or ability to make adjustments once the rock leaves the thrower's hand.
OTOH, if you employ your skip to sweep, you have no target for your thrower to aim at and no one at the far end seeing how it's going.
The thrower would be able to track the stone and yell some instructions at the sweeper, but they are also at the wrong end to see what's going on.
If I had to guess, I'd guess the Australian skip has some physical ailment that makes them suck at sweeping.
Following the stone down the ice is really challenging if you aren't good at it. The stones are thrown really fast, the ice is really slippery, sweepers have to stay AHEAD of the stone at all times, you have to crab walk down the ice perpendicular to the moving rock with a slippery slider on the bottom of your lead foot and a pebbled gripper on your back foot.
If you nick the rock at all with your broom, the shot is disqualified.
This is the info/take I came here for. Fanks. 👌🏻
You may be right. When she had to move from the shooting end (I don’t know the terminology, so bear with me) back down to the “house”, to check/dispute something, she walked along the outside, instead of sliding down the ice… Again, only person I saw doing that, the whole time, so… Maybe you’re right, and she’s injured/just doesn’t do that bit…
Certainly unusual. She’s by far the senior player, so lines up that she would be the skip. It’s just exceedingly weird to see the contrast in workload, and the massively different dynamic between their team, and everyone else…
I don’t think we’ll win, with this strategy. But hey, guess we’ll see when they play Czechia in an hour… 🤷🏻♂️
The Australian girl absolutely thrashed the competition in moguls, though, so even if we don’t medal in 🥌 (likely - this is our only team), she should have a moguls medal sewn up, I would say…
Side note: there’s a 🥌 emoji, and it’s the right colour, even. Love it, lol…