Does the parallel giant slolem seem rigged or what? I don't think I've seen a single person on the blue side win.
115 comments · 85% upvoted · other discussions
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gregadamson
completely agree. went on reddit thinking someone has to be seeing this. theydidthemath would not like this.
vusiconmynil
Thought exactly the same thing, wasn't disappointed. I've seen no blue course winners yet. Why they don't do a best of two with one run on each is a huge mistake.
KimJarvan
Commentators say player who had better record tends to pick red side, but it's weird. Red always wins.
Inspector-Gadget
Maybe because they are the better racers
WingerSupreme
Not to this level of consistency, and even in the qualifiers red times were faster
Inspector-Gadget
that's not true at all... http://i.imgur.com/aa1enld.png
WingerSupreme
Also fyi the Final 4 last Olympics were seeds 2, 3, 8 and 13 (men) and 1, 2, 6 and 13 (womem).
This year we had 1, 2, 3, 4 (men) and 1, 2, 3, 5 (women) with a grand total of 4 upsets out of 32 races
WingerSupreme
All 5 of those guys did their first run on the blue course, so either a) their second runs were slower due to fatigue or b) the blue course deteriorated rapidly.
I started watching during the elimination runs (which is part of qualifying) and the boarder on the red course consistently "won" the matchup
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fsdafssfsa
The Women's third place decider was won by the blue side.
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Because the red side fell.
Are people on reddit actual people or are you all robots?
frozenpandaman
Beep boop.
Inspector-Gadget
No, the faster racers are just choosing the red side. If you look at the qualifying times, all of the top 5 men did better on the BLUE side.
RandomThrowaway410
...but why are all of the fastest racers picking the red side? If the red side wasn't universally considered to be better, the competitor would be picking sides 50/50
Inspector-Gadget
well the women did better on the red, and after the men saw 7/8 women win on the red, I assume they picked it because of that.
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frozenpandaman
It's not, considering multiple people won on the blue side as well, especially closer to the qualifying rounds.
Unless you've gone down both of them? :)
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frozenpandaman
Correct, the track changes as riders go down it, as temperatures change, etc., obviously. But it's not necessarily something intrinsic about the track – it's not like one just is faster than the other, as you seemed to state – it's more about the riders, how they do their turns, etc.
vusiconmynil
A two run system with one on each side solves this obvious issue. I would be pretty upset as a rider who's dedicated their lives to this, to get a draw that so far, essentially guatantees a loss.
WingerSupreme
That's how they've done it every year before this one
falsehood
It's not a draw. If you are faster in qualification, you pick. It's like skiing, but with extra head-on-head races at the end.
AVann6
Mountain biking dual slalom does this and it's a perfect solution. You always end up with a faster side, so just taking cumulative is a great fix.
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He/she could have won the Qualification, then he/she would have the right to choose his course.
marktastic [OP]
This is what I was thinking. Best overall time kind of thing.
NeverPull0ut
That’s uh... exactly how the two qualification runs go.
BME_starcraft
Wow I just went through, literally only 1 blue win so far, that wasnt a DNF, in the entire mens and women's competition.
And the one blue win was in the ro16. thats so dumb actually.
Edit: The korean just added a win for blue in the semis, so 2 total. the win was by .01. Final count 2 blue wins that were not red DNFs out of 32 runs. if you remove the DNFs ( there were 2) that makes 2/30 blue wins. thats insane
Edit 2: AND the .01 blue win seems super questionable, so it probably actually should've been like 1/30, with the only blue win coming in the RO16
rdibben7487
Ya, and I'm not even sure if south Korea actually got the win on that last one.
Ledoux88
unless you got photo finish camera image, you cant be sure because of the camera angle
Dysalot
Yeah I replayed it in slow motion I don't think the Korean won. I don't know what part has to cross, but the other snowboarder had everything you can imagine cross first.
zeledonia
The only explanation I could come up with is that Lee caught the finish-line timer better than Kosir. It looked like there were two timing detectors, one around mid-shin and one around knee height. Lee’s hand may have triggered the lower one, while Kosir missed the lower one and caught the upper one with his forearm. Really weird result, and makes me wonder how they actually determine the winner.
theVanstorm
Exactly what i came here looking for... I was utterly confused by that one.
Screenshot for reference: https://imgur.com/a/DUDvo
CPiGuy2728
I think that camera is not on the line because you can see the line isn't straight in the image.
theVanstorm
It looks pretty close to the right side of the line to me. Regardless, it is clear that the farthest rider's board is basically on the entire width of the line and the closest rider's board has not reached it at all.
The only slight wiggle room I can see for justification is if this is judged from the nearest riders outstretched finger tip which does appear to be stretching out past his board better than the farthest rider. Still doesn't look very close to the naked eye but i guess it "could" be a camera angle illusion for comparing their hand positions. I still don't buy it, though.
ss_lmtd
Board doesn't matter. They're not measured by if the board crosses the line quicker. If Lee's hands reach the sensors faster than Kosir's, then it's Lee's win. Unless you're saying they were able to somehow rig the sensors so they would only favor their own rider at a particular race.
If that's the case...I really have nothing else to say.
poporook
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. I had to rewind and watch it in slowmo but it's pretty clear Zan Kosir was across the line first
locksmith25
It looked like the south korean athlete clearly lost but the south korean camera might have seen it differently
Gswansso
So many people in this thread don’t understand how these races are formatted and how every thing else they’re complaining about is still present in the other sports in some manner.
In parallels, gate choice is determined by the best qualifying time. It’s not a “draw”. Everyone runs the same course in qualification to make it fair. If you want gate choice and the ability to take the preferred line, qualify faster. Second point: for the first two rounds it’s top qualifiers vs lowest qualifiers for the most part. Assuming a round of 32, 1 vs 32, 2 vs 31 and so on, even in the second rounds you’re seeing 1 vs 16, which you would expect to be a clear cut result anyway.
Ski cross: solo time trial for qualifying runs, first seed races seeds 32,33,64 and gets first gate choice (Gets the preferred line). The top 4-5 qualifiers will almost certainly have gate choice the entire elimination round until they meet each other.
Alpine skiing has an issue too. Yes, the athletes run on the same course but that course condition degraded severely over time. Combine that with factors like wind and precipitation.
That’s the nature of the sport, every competitor knows it. Same with getting taken out by a wreck in ski cross, it’s part of the sport, everyone knows it, everyone accepts it. If you want an easier path through the competition, make sure to put down a good qualification time.
Rickest_Rick
If the tracks are so lopsided, then why bother running the official race? The qualifier pretty much determines the outcome.
I suppose, yeah, that might be the nature of the sport, but maybe the nature of the sport sucks and could be improved? In pretty much every other event, everyone runs the same course - even though weather and ice conditions change, at least it's not seen as an instant loss because one course has more difficult turns.
OmegaBlush
There is a difference between getting the preferred gate in a ski cross race down the same track, and getting a completely different course. In the summer games the stronger runners get the middle lanes, but everyone is going down the same track. It'd be like taking some of them and making them run in a different stadium.
This was also an issue in the 500m speed skating. It used to be two races for each competitor, once on the inside track and once on the outside. This was because one is preferred over the other. However, like this event, the IOC/ISU decided to cut the time in half by only holding one trial. The skaters were not happy.
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UhPhrasing
every single race for both men and women?
spamboth
No, what i assume u/nevernude4lyfe meant is that as the first rider on the course choose a line he will make a "track" along the line he chooses. If the next few riders follow the same "track" it will get deeper and deeper and it gets harder and harder for later riders to deviate from that line. That means that, even if the blue and red course start out completely equal, one of them might end up slower over time because the first riders on of the courses choose a suboptimal line.
[deleted]
Wow that was one of the best explanations I've read on this sub so far. Makes sense.
UhPhrasing
nice explanation
anti_crastinator
One person legit won on blue, by .01sec. complete and utter disaster for the sport of it. Somebody should never be allowed to work in their federation again.
Silver_Dynamo
Just saw the Ledecka run right now and damn. You may be on to something.
NooBKaNoN
Yeah what the fuck is going on, people have got to start asking questions eventually right?
369241
Why don't they race then switch and race again and total time, lowest time wins.
TheGreatHelmetHead
All kinds of people have been saying the course is dogshit so it wouldn't shock me if one side was in fact better.
newname6724
CBC has an interview with one of the Canadian athletes, Jasey Jay Anderson, who talks about how poorly the course was maintained. He could just be bitter he did terribly, but I think he probably has a point.
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Niceguy-
Yep. Came here to see if anyone else noticed this too. In all honesty the event itself seems like it would lend itself to this problem quite often. Why do they need to run concurrently versus going one at a time on the same track? Seems like a stupid forced way to make the event seem more exciting. Each run became less interesting after I realized the red obviously had the advantage. Also Kosir was robbed. Bad event all around
sgdbw90
Came on here to say this same thing. The only person who "won" on blue was Lee over Kosir, and the replay REALLY looks like Kosir crossed first.
theVanstorm
It was clear that he did... I still am scratching my head over that.
whoisit1118
It's an illusion from the camera angle.
theVanstorm
Bull crap. You can clearly see the far board tip across the line... There is no illusion to an angle when two things are touching each other
[deleted]
But it's not whoever's board crosses the line first, it's whoever's body sets off the laser sensor first, and from what i can tell from the pic the sensor machine thing is ahead of the painted red line
frozenpandaman
I have a feeling the double-slit experiment might blow your mind.
AlienwareSLO
We're not talking about relativistic speeds here.
Anyway, we all know that the red line isn't the measuring point, but it's very possible that Košir did in fact cross it first. The only thing that could negate that is if this camera's sensor is extremely slow.
I'd just like to see a true photo finish.
sgdbw90
I believe it's technically the foot (not the board) that counts, but even then I'm 99% sure that Kosir's foot crossed first.
theVanstorm
I thought i heard the announcers say that it's anything crossing the line, body or equipment. So, Lee had a better stretch... You can see his hand out in front of his board. But it still doesn't look like he'd be ahead either way
starmiemd
Definitely, I can’t believe they aren’t switching sides.
ryderok
This is exactly what I said! And My partner told me I was crazy!
gregadamson
ledecka has two red draws as well. if she keeps drawing the red side, that will seem pretty rigged to me as well. i really want her to win, but i wish this seemed in any way fair.
The red side is slightly faster, and the faster person in qualification picks the track they go on, so they will all pick red.
vusiconmynil 19 points · Feb 2018
Even so, it's not right for them to he able to choose to give themselves an advantage from the start.
falsehood 25 points · Feb 2018 · :olympics: Olympics
The qualification is what makes it fair. It's very hard to make two courses the same.
BananaMirrors 10 points · Feb 2018
So why not use one course like every other sport?
VTCHannibal 6 points · Feb 2018 · :unitedstates: United States
Because then it wouldn't be head to head, it would be ski cross or a lot of solo runs.
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falsehood 3 points · Feb 2018 · :olympics: Olympics
Maybe because that's less exciting to watch?
BananaMirrors 1 points · Feb 2018
Yeah, look how nobody cares about any of those other loser sports that use one track.
falsehood 2 points · Feb 2018 · :olympics: Olympics
That's not an argument. They could easily just use the qualification times and cut the head to head but they don't.
HenriChinaski 4 points · Feb 2018
Yep, it's fair. Except when your door doesn't beep at the start of qualification... Resulting in a shitty time. That's what happened to the french rider... And he had the blue track for his 2 final rounds. Add to that the "no photo finish" on one of the semi and you have a really questionnable "result".
I don't like these parallele courses, and the fact that in a near future they'll ditch the alpine combiné to add more of these saddens me. :/
falsehood 0 points · Feb 2018 · :olympics: Olympics
That's fair. I think the skiing parallel course was better than this one since it was on a flat hill.
But problems in execution don't keep the qualification from being fair. It basically seems like you wish they had just used the qualification times to get the medals.
twoerd 13 points · Feb 2018 · :canada: Canada
they're not choosing to get an advantage randomly, they earned it. It's like being seeded against the weakest competitor, or getting home advantage on the basis of prior record in many team sports. it's a new idea; and it's not unfair.
costryme 10 points · Feb 2018 · :france: France
It's unfair. And it's not like you get the advantage once, you get it multiple times possibly.
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costryme -1 points · Feb 2018 · :france: France
Because there's almost no way blue can win unless red fucks up ? It's not because you're seeded in tennis that you get an advantage that is so big that you're almost guaranteed to win. It wouldn't even be hard to add a second run with the athletes doing the other course.
KyleG 1 points · Feb 2018 · :unitedstates: United States
But actually higher-ranked players get to pick which courts to play on and when, often. This was a controversy among some tennis fans who don't like Roger Federer during the Australian Open this year because Fed was given his choice every round, meaning he got to play at night when it wasn't like fucking 70 C court temps (yes, for real!) and on courts where they could put the roof up, turning it into an indoor court, removing the wind factor, giving the advantage to players with a certain style of tennis (Federer being one of them).
His opponent in the final complained about this. Fans of other players complained about this in earlier rounds.
vusiconmynil 3 points · Feb 2018
They earned it by drawing the red track in qualifications, draw the blue track when you qualify, and you have to stay there the whole event. Great.
twoerd 3 points · Feb 2018 · :canada: Canada
Wrong. They all did two qualification runs, one on each track.
murphysclaw1 4 points · Feb 2018
you are now realising that a lot of Olympic sports are a farce.