There are a couple things going on with this story:
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.
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
"or how fast a person could swim if there were no restrictions on the swimsuits."
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.
For me it'd be to move through water mostly submerged under muscle power without significantly altering the length/leverage of any limb (trying to avoid tiny boats with oars or something here). Things like diving/'mermaid' fins I'd be willing to allow since they're not significantly amplifying the swimmers power just making it easier to apply it.
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.
> Things like diving/'mermaid' fins I'd be willing to allow since they're not significantly amplifying the swimmers power just making it easier to apply it.
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.
They definitely do make moving through water much easier. What I was trying to get at was that things like fins mostly just allow swimmers to get their natural muscle power into the water better without really providing mechanical advantage where things like oars provide a clear advantage and increase because they're basically levers.
There are lots more rules than that for swimming. The big rule is that swimming must occur at the surface. The fastest means of moving is dolphin-kicking underwater, usually on one's back. [Insert physics discussion re wetted surface and/or buoyancy.] The rule that swimmers must return to the surface quickly after leaving a wall/dive is to keep swimming healthy, to prevent it becoming a breath-holding event.
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).
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.
What I was putting forward was the bare minimum rules for what I'd still call swimming while allowing the most technology to keep it from just being who can make the best human sized torpedo and to see just how far we could push human performance.
Regular competition needs rules for sure, seeing the extremes is really interesting to me too though.
I think that would be cool. I'm not saying that the Olympics and other sports should eliminate restrictions. I just wonder what technology could come up with.
That is exactly the point. You're implying that the current definition (as interpreted by you) is the only possible meaningful definition. History shows this doesn't work out for all definitions.
My implicit statement was that few, if any, sports competitions can do without rules.
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.
Does swimming have a nature? This may be a topic too deep for HN based on current down voting but there are substantial philosophical arguments not withstanding the historical one that such things do not have natures. The historical argument I think is pretty basic. Would people from a century ago recognize competitive swimming as swimming? How about 2 centuries ago? A millennium? When does the nature of swimming get fixed?
This was settles centuries ago. Riding on the water in a boat is called "sailing" and using your body to move through the water is called "swimming". The nature of "swimming" is defined as the verb "to swim". Which curtails that one is not "sailing". So no boats involved.
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.
This seems a bit like wooden tennis rackets a few decades ago, though with a less mainstream sport the rules body may have more pull than manufacturers. But the bottom line is that sports change over time or die. Changes simply mean that a different set of skills come to the fore and others become less valuable.
I can see where the OP is coming from, given that pretty much every sport has had rule changes like this. Baseball's changed the rules of the playing field, and rules of player behavior over time -- they've lowered the pitchers mound fairly steadily over the years as the average pitcher gets better, they set up rules for switch pitchers due to the first one hitting the bigs, etc. Soccer, they've changed offsides rules several time due to things like the offsides trap. Basketball, they added the three point shot, the shot clock, and changed the size of the key to get the game moving and keep it from turning into a slam dunk contest. Cricket has probably changed the least over the years, but even there, the types of matches that are played most often are a lot different than the kinds played nowadays.
Even cricket uses video replay extensively for officiating...at least at higher levels. The reason it is accepted is that it is consistent with the game's higher order values. What changes is mostly just an implementation detail that exists for historical reasons.
> We don't want the teams with the best technology and whoever sponsors who to win
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.
Curling is typically different in that regard I think. Every team I've known personally to go to national or world tournaments were lifelong friends. They grew as a team and there were no "trades" to suit a roster.
Would the 2006 Gushue Olympic team be an exception to that? I'm sure Gushue knew Howard before Howard joined up, but they were from different generations and different provinces. (Not that, to the best of my knowledge, a sponsor had anything to do with that.)
That's going to be a hard question to answer unless Gushue or Howard weigh in personally. I can say as a curler that the curling world is very small. If you want to curl against high-level players often, you need to travel regularly to high-level bonspiels where you meet a lot of the same curlers over and over again. It seems perfectly plausible to me that through curling they'd have gotten to know each other reasonably well.
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.
That doesn't hold in curling. Sponsors aren't putting together teams. Teams are self-assembling. Some of those teams then look for sponsors to offset their costs, but others don't even look for sponsors; the $ amounts are just so very small....
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.
There is that plus the fact that they say it seriously affects the ice for subsequent shots. Curlers are a bit obsessive about the ice, but then again it plays a big role.
If I'm reading the article correctly, they say that a version of the technology produced as a demo by a competing curling broom manufacturer that doesn't want it in the sport seriously affected the ice for subsequent shots. I don't think anyone's had that problem with the icePad version, which is the one that's actually for sale.
My point about drawing a line is that it needs to be defined (i.e. you can't use a broom with coefficient of friction greater than X (for example, I claim not scientific basis on this)). Having top teams indicate they don't like a change is a good signal to the governing body that sets rules but other teams will use the technology if it is better.
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.
Sports draw the line on equipment all the time. Professional baseball, for example, does not use aluminum bats. Pro golf has extensive lists of approved/disallowed equipment.
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.
Having watched the video, and curled, to me it says little to nothing. Two stones thrown that far apart from one another can show wildly different amounts of curl. Every sheet has it's own characteristics, even across different pebblings things will change. Additionally, sweeping is supposed to make the stone go straighter, that;s the basic mechanics of the game.
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.
Well I agree the video doesn't prove anything. Would need to see a more controlled study. At minimum I would like to see what that line does without any sweeping.
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.
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.