Post of the Week, Media Education

Chris 249 gives this beautiful answer to the Olympic question, “Can anyone tell me how [the medal race] makes it any easier to explain to a novice… or makes the sailing results any easier to understand for the casual viewer?”

“It’s much easier to understand than the old system. For example:

• In the medal race for the Men’s 470, the Aussies could have finished miles behind the second-last boat and still won gold, so obviously this would have been great TV.
• In the 49er medal race, the Danes ended up in way out of the medals (7th), so they won gold (derr!).
• The Spaniards ended up in in the Gold Medal position (1st) in the medal race, and they logically therefore won silver.
• The Brits got in the bronze medal position (3rd) in the medal race, and if you’re following this closely it’ll be obvious they finished 9th overall.
• In the Laser medal race, Paul Goodison was second last, so it follows logically that he won the gold medal, while Murdoch won the medal race but obviously he didn’t get a medal…..’cause that’s how it works.

“If it’s not obvious, see me after class.

“The system was designed by ISAF because (as the RS:X class president said) they wanted sailing to be like Formula 1, where the winner of the last race is the winner of the world title…once every ten years or so – even if they are dead when the championship is half over, like Jochem Rindt was when he won the F1 world title. But we choose not to let facts stand in the way of cool-sounding hype.

“It’s all perfectly clear and simple, and obviously worth prostituting the sport for.”