Olympics: Winter has winners and lugers, but no losers

Figure skaters are starting to behave like athletes who play real sports.

Ice dancing, figure skating, or whatever you like to call it, is not a competitive sport. The participants can not actually beat each other, stop each other, out distance one another, or outrace one another. The dancers are certainly athletic, but they are not competing.

It is quality entertainment and I understand why some fans enjoy watching the dance. It is impressive and artful, but it is not sport. Competitors, who, before they enter the field of play, must see that their makeup is perfect and beautiful lest they lose points, are not playing a sport.

The Olympic figure skating controversy, however, is a painful reminder of the direction in which real sports are going.

After devoting their lives to a "sport" that relies on subjective opinion to determine it's champion, the Canadian figure skaters complained they were robbed when they finished second. Then we found out they actually were robbed, victims of an "emotionally fragile" French judge who had been manipulated.

The solution: give everyone a gold medal.

The Olympics have graceful lugers, and some of those lugers are graceful losers. In Olympic ice ballet though, there are no losers; there is not even second place.

Refusal to accept reality is rampant in the sportsworld. Announcing a recent college basketball game, Clark Kellogg said, "Duke is without question No. 1, but I'd rank Kansas and Maryland 1a and 1b."

What makes 1a and 1b better than 2nd and 3rd?

Isn't he saying Kansas is second and Maryland third? The Georgia Bulldogs currently sit at No. 20 in the AP, but Clark and I think of them as 1r.

Kordell Stewart complained, "the best team doesn't win sometimes," after blowing the chance to prove on the field that his team was best. Most of the Oakland Raiders agree with Kordell. They cried they should have won the AFC championship, after they blew a lead. They should have won, but the NFL's rules are not fair.

In college football, which has a system barely better than ice dancing, championships are decided about as simply as presidential elections. After the conference championship games, all of the teams are plugged into a gigantic calculus problem to determine who plays for the national championship. Ultimately, every team controls its own destiny because teams who win all of their games are invited. Inevitably though, when the computer reveals its results, several teams who have lost a game along the way cry that they deserve the opportunity to play for the title.

This week, Kobe Bryant whined that the refs cost him a game by ruling that his final shot had not beaten the buzzer. While he blamed the refs, Kobe never mentioned that his team, the World Champions, had blown a fifteen point halftime lead at home.

Losing is part of the sportsworld, and it is never fun. We should not learn to like it, but one of the lessons we are supposed to learn from sports is to handle losing. Of course the best team wins. Proof of superiority is the thrill of winning, that is why we keep score. If we don't keep score, but judge subjectively instead, it is not a competition.