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538: People just hate Equestrian events in the Olympics

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M

massoluk

Banned
hickey-olympics-ranked-1.png
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http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/best-worst-olympic-sports-survey-ranked/?ex_cid=538twitter
As we’ve done before, I set up head-to-head matchups and put out a call through FiveThirtyEight social media channels — so, you know, just Americans taking a brief respite from making Harambe jokes during a lunch hour, not exactly the paragon of triple blind scientific research but better than say letting an octopus pick ’em, probably — for people to pick the superior Summer Olympic event.1 More than 55,000 matchups later, including at least 900 for each event, we have our win percentages:

Of the big three groupings — track and field events, swimming and gymnastics — swimming comes out on top when the win percentages of its events are consolidated into an average, but track and field has the most beloved events of all. A few interesting things are going on here: People usually valued team relays more highly than individual events in both swimming and track. Track would have a higher overall win percentage than swimming (64 percent vs. 62 percent), if you dropped out the two very low scoring events of 20 kilometer race walk and 50 kilometer race walk, but we are not going to do that because the IOC must be held to account for its crimes.

..
On the other hand, the people have no patience for equestrian sports, sailing, golf or any other one-percenter hobbies the IOC is presumably taking under consideration for inclusion, like fox hunting or fleecing the middle class or getting thrown out of Choate.
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Please, get rid of dressage. There are better sports out there, IOC.
 
A

azyless

Member
Kinda surprised by football being so high. I'm a huge fan of the sport and I honestly couldn't care less about the men's competition (and sadly I doubt the popularity is based on the women's event). Same for my family and friends.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
I'll be honest, I really don't find watching swimming or most track and field events all that exciting or interesting to watch especially with how repetitive they are. Swim across the same pool but go a little farther or perhaps do a slightly different stroke. I'd rather they focus on events like wrestling... oh wait they took that out of the Olympics to give us golf.
 
A

azyless

Member
HStallion said:
I'll be honest, I hate really don't find watching swimming or most track and field events all that exciting or interesting to watch especially with how repetitive they are. I'd rather they focus on events like wrestling... oh wait they took that out of the Olympics to give us golf.
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Whaaaat. I didn't realize. That's disappointing, I enjoyed wrestling.
All of that for half the golfers to not even bother showing up, yikes.
 
D

Diprosalic

Banned
Horse stuff is by far the stupidest thing at the olympics. I literally watch everything but horse stuff. Should be removed from the Games.
 
DJ_Lae

DJ_Lae

Member
Horse events being in the Olympics is a bit ridiculous. Car racing would be more interesting if they were going to go that route.
 
K

Kifimbo

Member
My guess for why is soccer/football is so high ? Most survey respondents are Americans here, and the US women team is winning and has been for several years.
 
I

ISWThunder

Member
Love the rugby interest. Validation for all of the years trying to get the game back in the first place. It should be a great competition and draw in some new fans to the sport.
 
C

Champomade

Member
ElectricBlanketFire said:
Why are people stupid for not liking equestrian events?
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The results imply most people prefer instant gratification (eg 100m) over anything else
Also prefering very visual/physical sports over more cerebral/intellectual sports

Non mainstream sports seem to score less well (kinda seems like a pleonasm written like that) while I think one of the great things about Olympkcs is that it gives exposure to longstanding and interesting sports which just lack money, marketing, etc. to be mainstream

Also I think it s sad that MMA has become so popular while legit, deeply rooted in tradition, with more positive values (ie no apology of violence and vulgarity) fighting sports such as wrestling and judo (which are also quite fun to watch imho) score badly


Also: i dont see any interest in having tier 4 football while it has already had so much exposure throughout the year and I think regular volleyball is super boring to watch
 
Y

yanipheonu

Member
I love the long distance track events because it highlight some of humans' greatest physical traits.

We may not be as strong as a gorilla, or fast as a cheetah, but man, we can keeping walking and running long after other animals have collapsed from exhaustion. Humans are the world's greatest long distance runners.
 
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