Top curling teams say they won't use high-tech brooms
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
One is the role of technology in sports which is really interesting. In other sports there is a lot of debate over what technology is allowed and what isn't. I would be really interested to see some things like how far someone could hit a golf ball if there were no restrictions on the club or ball or how fast a person could swim if there were no restrictions on the swimsuits.
The second thing, however, is that the text of the story and the video have different focuses. The text focuses on telling the story of how this is a grassroots movement by some athletes. The video, however, seems to have a more pronounced undercurrent that this might really be about one company, BalancePlus, trying to put pressure against an upstart competitor, icePad, who is eating into their market share. I think it is really interesting that the text doesn't emphasize this as much as the video does.
Define swim. If you don't, people will end up wearing a boat (the suits banned a few years ago started looking like them by providing floatation and being somewhat rigid) and having gloves on their legs and arms that resemble fins or paddles.
There is some to be said about "drifting" (e.g floating on ones' back) being a form of "swimming" but I think that's the only grey line and as for a competition I don't think "drifting" would ever win in a race. If one wishes to "drift" as their method of "swimming" they will lose the race.
See, for example, the "fastest car" competitions. Fairly free, but at some time they had to introduce a "powered through the axles" variant because real cars got beaten by earth-touching jet planes.
Even extremes such as "who gets to Mars first" has implicit rules. If I had to drop a few hundred nukes on earth to win that, I doubt people would remember me as the first to get to Mars.
It's a fuzzy line for sure if we're trying to define where it starts being more of a boat than a person moving through the water.
I disagree with this point. As an avid swimmer of 20+ years, fins/flippers make a _substantial_ difference in speed. Its actually very enjoyable to swim for a bit without flippers/fins, and then slap some on and feel like you're flying through the water.
These rules are pushed. More than a couple champion breaststrokers have admitted to two or more dolphin kicks when leaving a wall underwater (sw 7.1) and the stroke itself is evolving towards dolphin-style kicking. Freestylers really push the 15m limit for underwater travel after dives/turn (SW 5.3).
http://www.fina.org/content/swimming-rules
Any evolved sport needs rules else it become a meaningless free-for-all, which normally results in unhealthy situations. If these new brooms are damaging ice and diminishing the skills needed to compete then they too should be ruled away.
Regular competition needs rules for sure, seeing the extremes is really interesting to me too though.
Sometimes restrictions actually serve to amplify the technology used. For example, in cycling there are lower weight limits on the bike. If not for that, all the research would go into making bikes as light as possible since it directly translates into lower power for a given speed.
By putting a restriction on how light a bike can be, research gains in materials to reduced weight allowed companies to put other augmentations on the bike. Like electronic shifters and the growing popularity of disc brakes on road bikes.
Restrictions are just a formal declaration of what's "fair". I'd say they're necessary for any sport to be successful. For example, if there were literally zero restrictions on swim suits you'd see motorized swim suits or air jets, etc. And it wouldn't be what we think of as a "swimming" competition anymore.
Aero is much more important than weight. Pro bikes often come in slightly above the UCI weight limit, because an extra few hundred grams is a worthwhile tradeoff for a reduction in drag. In other forms of cyclesport, the weight limit is irrelevant. The weight limit was introduced primarily for safety reasons, and the UCI are considering abolishing it after the introduction of frame homologation testing.
>the growing popularity of disc brakes on road bikes
This has nothing to do with racing. Disc brakes are currently banned in road racing, with limited exceptions for ProTour teams performing testing. Road discs were driven by marketing, not competition.
>Sometimes restrictions actually serve to amplify the technology used.
The UCI's technical regulations have been a consistent barrier to progress, from the recumbent ban of 1934 to the aspect ratio rules of 2009. The UCI explicitly declared their opposition to technological progress in the Lugano charter. There is now considerable pressure for the UCI to abolish the charter, both from within and without the organisation.
http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano...
1. http://velonews.competitor.com/2015/04/bikes-and-tech/uci-to...
Why do you believe this?
I applaud this, but I guess ultimately, either directly or indirectly, the sponsors still decide who is on a team. Or in other words, teams with more money will still be better teams.
Had to look it up (http://www.amazon.com/Hurry-Hard-Russ-Howard-Story/dp/047083...) but in here Russ mentions how he got pulled in by the guys to help advise on shots.
It was an unusual arrangement to say the least. They went through their lawyer, made a list of the top guys in Canada who could help, and Russ was at the top. The lawyer called, and he accepted.
I'd say they just did. They're sticking with what they have now, and not using the newer, better technology.
In most sports, there is an intersection of skill and technology. In order to keep things interesting, you typically want to increase the amount of skill required, and lower the amount of technology. However, there are times when that may sway one direction or the other- safety is an obvious exception to the above.
There is no reason to insert fallacies; this is normal and has been going on as long as sports have existed. The only interesting thing here is that the top teams are taking a stand before the ruling body makes a declaration. That will still need to happen, but this will likely sway the decision made.
They can't just add a rule that says you can't use Brand X equipment - it has to declare limits on what the equipment is.
The key here is that the professionals claim it fundamentally changes the game. Not only does it allegedly drastically change the dynamics of how the rock travels, it also allegedly takes most of the skill requirement out of shooting and puts it into sweeping. Not to mention it also supposedly causes significant harm to the playability of the ice surface, which is paramount in curling.
Somebody posted a video on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScelTWytLFQ&feature=youtu.be) of a draw shot that the sweeper was able to manipulate the rock into traveling a straight line, while a rock a few feet over curled five feet. This sort of manipulation completely changes how the game is played, both physically as well as strategy.
Now, I'm still not sure I believe all the claims, and the video leaves a lot of unanswered questions, and some claim it's just a smear campaign by BalancePlus against competitor Hardline. I don't know what to believe, and am reserving judgement until the evidence is more clear. BUT, if these brooms can in fact do everything people claim they can, I would be in favor of disallowing them.
I think if they are going to look at putting some sort of rule in place then they need to look at it from something that can be strictly scientifically measured, like the rebound velocity of a golf club face, rather then something against a specific fabric type.
If you watch closely you can see the sweeping appears to cause the rock to change handles multiple times, which would explain the straight draw shot. I mean, I've played on some very straight ice before, but never that straight, unless there was a problem with the ice itself. Even the straightest ice moves a couple rock widths on a draw. There are some shenanigans going on, not necessarily with the brooms.