Subject: RE: A 2010 Winter Olympics watching thread??Global - 2010-02-25 7:19 AM uclamatt2007 - 2010-02-24 10:55 PM Canada was dominant in women's bobsled tonight. It is a little hard to enjoy watching them win though when they had twice as many training runs on the course as anyone else. On a course as difficult as this, that is huge. I know that there is always some home field advantage, but that is a bit much for me. These comments are frustrating to me. The track has been open since December 2007 and has been in the world cup for almost 2 years now. It's not like this track was made 2 months ago and no one has had a chance to go down it. It's no different then anywhere else in the world, most of your practice will be at home and if home is going to be the Olympic course would you not take every opportunity to train there? For the most part the people who win on the world cup are winning here. Yes we do have an edge being at home but so will the Russians in 2014 as will the next host nation. From ESPN: In order to create a great home-field advantage on what is considered the fastest track in the world, the Canadians limited the number of practice runs for foreign competitors to roughly 40, while Canadian sliders took between 150 and 160 practice runs on the track. I know that it is the standard practice, but that doesn't make it right. Especially on a course this difficult. Would it be ok for someone to get 4 times the number of practice runs on a downhill course? The Canada 1 sled set a track record on 3 straight runs. They were definitely the best team that night, but I have to wonder what the result to be if one country didn't get 4x the number of practice runs on arguably the most difficult track in the world |