You can now win an Olympic Gold Medal in......

[Deleted member 15344]

It's an accolade not rewarded by money but purely for the sporting achievement. Golf is not really different to so many other sports where an Olympic gold is something rather special, it's not about World records, it's not about winning the British or USA accolade, it's about winning an international championship that sees the winner as the Word champion for the next four years.

In my opinion it's a true pinnacle of a sporting career. Mo Farah probably treasures his Olympic medals above all the rest and I guess the same holds for Justin Rose.

So you think Rose holds his Olympic Gold medal over winning the US Open ?

What do you think any pro golfer would rather win ? The Masters / Open / Us Open or an Olympic Gold medal - also worth noting that each country was limited to how many they could send and even then a good number of the best players didnt play.

For some sports it is the pinnacle - athletics, swimming , rowing , gymnastics etc

For the likes of Golf , tennis , football it isn’t - there are bigger events for those sports

 

[greenone]

It's an accolade not rewarded by money but purely for the sporting achievement. Golf is not really different to so many other sports where an Olympic gold is something rather special, it's not about World records, it's not about winning the British or USA accolade, it's about winning an international championship that sees the winner as the Word champion for the next four years.

In my opinion it's a true pinnacle of a sporting career. Mo Farah probably treasures his Olympic medals above all the rest and I guess the same holds for Justin Rose.

I'd say it's sport dependant. In athletics the Olympics is unquestionably the pinnacle of the sport. It's not in other sports. In golf I'd say winning the open or the masters beats an Olympic gold. Tennis has the grandslams which have bigger fields making it harder to win than the Olympic tournament. Football has the world cup(s)...

Winning Olympic gold doesn't make you world champion for 4 years. It never makes you world champion as the vast majority of Olympic sports have separate world championships.

 

[Fade and Die]

Break dancing! Why not? They used to have Artist competitions in the Olympics up until 1948! Only abandoned because the Artists were considered professionals!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_competitions_at_the_Summer_Olympics

 

[Slab]

Break dance eh? Well I suppose if we’re gonna have ‘who can make a horse dance’ as an Olympic sport we'll get ‘who can make a street urchin dance’

Re golf: Its clear from his own comments that Rose holds his Olympic golf gold higher than his US Open win (there are after all only two people on the planet that have one of those) Between each Olympiad there will be about 16 mens majors contested with as many as 16 winners. Rose has something so elusive & exclusive that Tiger, Nicklaus, Palmer, Player et al will never get it. With the current best of the best in Koepka, Dustin, Bryson etc etc one of them just might get one Olympic gold but the odds are against it

To deny golfers that opportunity while giving it to a kid on a skateboard or one of the six different 1 on 1 combat styles with dozens of weight divs, seems a bit hypocritical. Swimming is a joke, jeez we even get hockey played on different surfaces with medals for each, pick one folks!
It's almost like some would rather see a couple of English football fans windmilling into each other in one of 4 weight divisions than allow golf to be represented

 

[Dibby]

Break dance eh? Well I suppose if we’re gonna have ‘who can make a horse dance’ as an Olympic sport we'll get ‘who can make a street urchin dance’

Re golf: Its clear from his own comments that Rose holds his Olympic golf gold higher than his US Open win (there are after all only two people on the planet that have one of those) Between each Olympiad there will be about 16 mens majors contested with as many as 16 winners. Rose has something so elusive & exclusive that Tiger, Nicklaus, Palmer, Player et al will never get it. With the current best of the best in Koepka, Dustin, Bryson etc etc one of them just might get one Olympic gold but the odds are against it

To deny golfers that opportunity while giving it to a kid on a skateboard or one of the six different 1 on 1 combat styles with dozens of weight divs, seems a bit hypocritical. Swimming is a joke, jeez we even get hockey played on different surfaces with medals for each, pick one folks!
It's almost like some would rather see a couple of English football fans windmilling into each other in one of 4 weight divisions than allow golf to be represented

From her comments it is also clear that my mum thinks I was the best looking boy in the school....

What the individual who won the medal thinks, doesn't mean his peers and general golf community think the same. I'm sure a lot of these golfers wouldn't turn down an Olympic medal, but would prefer a major. Scarcity can't replace the tradition and history that the majors have.

 

[Slab]

From her comments it is also clear that my mum thinks I was the best looking boy in the school....

What the individual who won the medal thinks, doesn't mean his peers and general golf community think the same. I'm sure a lot of these golfers wouldn't turn down an Olympic medal, but would prefer a major. Scarcity can't replace the tradition and history that the majors have.

Isn't there kinda only two opinions that actually count though, Rose and Park; because they are the only ones who have won both a golf Major and an Olympic golf Gold

If you ask 100 golfers that have won a major which they would hold in higher regard between that and an Olympic gold (that they haven't won) the question is loaded at best or just hypothetical
And what the golfing community judge to be the bigger win (having won neither a major nor a gold medal), is just irrelevant

 

[PJ87]

See that breakdancing has been included as an Olympic Sport in Paris. What the actual?!? The French have always been a touch “different” in their popular culture but this just takes the biscuit. Breakdancing went out of fashion decades ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/55223554

France are very much in touch apparently break dancing has had a second coming and it's huge

Skate boarding is going to be a sport aswell

Best brush up on my Tony hawk 2

 

[Pathetic Shark]

I still think they should have a 100m with no restrictions at all on what drugs and performance-enhancers people can take. Then we'll see just how fast a human can run.

 

[larmen]

Rose has a gold medal, maybe because a lot of others couldn’t be bothered to turn up?

Boris Becker talks about Wimbledon a lot, not so much about his gold medal.

Michael Jordan, 2 gold medals but everyone talks about his 2 threepeats. Maybe Charles Barkley and Stockalone care about it a little because they didn’t win anything else.

A lot of people in big money sports seem to have ‘bigger’ targets.

 

[Imurg]

From her comments it is also clear that my mum thinks I was the best looking boy in the school....

What the individual who won the medal thinks, doesn't mean his peers and general golf community think the same. I'm sure a lot of these golfers wouldn't turn down an Olympic medal, but would prefer a major. Scarcity can't replace the tradition and history that the majors have.

If Golf had been in the Olympics since the modern games came into being then it could be said that a Gold would, at least, rival if not better a Major.
As it is, Olympic Gold in Golf can't have the historical gravitas that an Open has.
In some sports it does, but I think they're the ones where the sport has been included since Adam was a lad.

 

[ger147]

I'm looking forward to seeing it but it's a mess. It's not organised in disciplines, they're doing it as a combined format of Speed, Lead and Boulder. Speed climbing is a small niche within climbing that most climbers don't like as it's much less technical. Lead and Boulder are technical but incompatible with Speed as they are not a race against the clock. The combined format is essentially shutting-out people competing within their preferred discipline so many of the best climbers aren't interested in turning up. The combining scoring system looks crazy, it's a bit like like putting a 100m sprinter in a marathon and asking them to the accept the average position of both races because they're both running and there's only one medal.

France is going to be slightly different, they're separating Speed from Lead and Boulder but it still won't attract many of the world's best climbers because the best technical climbers are not the best competitive climbers and vice versa. All in all it's another example of sports governing bodies going giddy by chasing Olympic funding and satisfying almost none of their members in the process.

Anyway, I've just remembered people dress up on horses and make them dance at the Olympics too. I'll take Break Dancing over that.

The very least they could do is give the horse the medal instead of the jockey.

 

[Dibby]

Isn't there kinda only two opinions that actually count though, Rose and Park; because they are the only ones who have won both a golf Major and an Olympic golf Gold

If you ask 100 golfers that have won a major which they would hold in higher regard between that and an Olympic gold (that they haven't won) the question is loaded at best or just hypothetical
And what the golfing community judge to be the bigger win (having won neither a major nor a gold medal), is just irrelevant

Thats a strange way to decide who is allowed an opinion. You don't have to have something to know whether you want it, or what value it has, things can also be of different value to different people, hence why we look at the golfing community as a whole, rather than 1 individual.
What about the players that have majors and didn't even bother turning up to the Olympics because they really didn't care? By default they will never get an Olympic medal, but it doesn't invalidate their opinion.

If you ask 1 golfer that has won a major and an Olympic gold medal (that only that golfer has won) which they would hold in higher regard the question is loaded. See how that question has bias in both directions?

Maybe in future it will change, but the fact of the matter right now is that if you ask people to pick the top golfers of the current generation, majors will carry more weight than Olympic medals. Thats not to saying winning an Olympic medal isn't an achievement, it's just not considered by most to be the pinnacle of the sport.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Indeed we might ask Andy Murray what he feels about, and how he rates, his Olympics 2012 singles gold medal win. I suspect that in the context of what was to follow and what he achieved, he rates it extremely highly indeed.

 

[Slab]

Thats a strange way to decide who is allowed an opinion. You don't have to have something to know whether you want it, or what value it has, things can also be of different value to different people, hence why we look at the golfing community as a whole, rather than 1 individual.
What about the players that have majors and didn't even bother turning up to the Olympics because they really didn't care? By default they will never get an Olympic medal, but it doesn't invalidate their opinion.

If you ask 1 golfer that has won a major and an Olympic gold medal (that only that golfer has won) which they would hold in higher regard the question is loaded. See how that question has bias in both directions?

Maybe in future it will change, but the fact of the matter right now is that if you ask people to pick the top golfers of the current generation, majors will carry more weight than Olympic medals. Thats not to saying winning an Olympic medal isn't an achievement, it's just not considered by most to be the pinnacle of the sport.

I never said they couldn’t have an opinion though did I. Its what that opinion counts for that I stressed.
Look I totally get that his peers will only have one answer for which one is more important to them personally, we can actually see how that Q/A will play out…

'So thanks for coming Dustin, Rory, Jason, Jordan, Louis, Charl, Adam etc etc and answering this question'; You lads are all major winners and you all bottled going to the Rio Olympics, but to a man you were all happy to expose yourself to a more serious risk of illness last month at Augusta. Which title is more important to you?

I totally get it, they will all rank a Major win as a much bigger deal than an Olympic gold & I'm fine with that… but as I said it’s still a loaded question to an extent because none of them know what it is to win an Olympic gold, so they really can’t answer the same way that Justin/Inbee can

 

[USER1999]

Thing with the olympics to me is it's a limited field event. For what ever sport, not all the best performers are in the field. Particularly ladies golf, and probably mens sprinting, to name but two.
It's a bit Jingoistic, a bit flag wavy, a bit crass nationalistic to me.
It's not a competition for the best of the best, it's for the top performers, by country. So if the best 10 female golfers are Korean, and only 4 can go, who ever wins it had an easy ride. Much harder to win a major.

 

[sweaty sock]

I think Rose holds his medal in very high regard. Definitely in his top 2....

3x3 Basketball....

No further questions your honour.

 

[Dibby]

I never said they couldn’t have an opinion though did I. Its what that opinion counts for that I stressed.
Look I totally get that his peers will only have one answer for which one is more important to them personally, we can actually see how that Q/A will play out…

'So thanks for coming Dustin, Rory, Jason, Jordan, Louis, Charl, Adam etc etc and answering this question'; You lads are all major winners and you all bottled going to the Rio Olympics, but to a man you were all happy to expose yourself to a more serious risk of illness last month at Augusta. Which title is more important to you?

I totally get it, they will all rank a Major win as a much bigger deal than an Olympic gold & I'm fine with that… but as I said it’s still a loaded question to an extent because none of them know what it is to win an Olympic gold, so they really can’t answer the same way that Justin/Inbee can

So you can see that it's loaded the other way too?
As the only people that have a gold of course they will say it's the best thing since sliced bread, even though up until 2009 when golf was announced as an olmypic sport they would only ever have dreamed of majors and not even considered an Olympic medal.

 

[Slab]

So you can see that it's loaded the other way too?
As the only people that have a gold of course they will say it's the best thing since sliced bread, even though up until 2009 when golf was announced as an olmypic sport they would only ever have dreamed of majors and not even considered an Olympic medal.

Sure can, but I wasn't touting that golf shouldn't even be an Olympic event because its not the sports pinnacle or suggesting what the winners think etc

If I was a pro golfer I'd rate wining The Open ahead of a gold medal too, but that doesn't mean that golf shouldn't be there

 

[Dibby]

Sure can, but I wasn't touting that golf shouldn't even be an Olympic event because its not the sports pinnacle or suggesting what the winners think etc

If I was a pro golfer I'd rate wining The Open ahead of a gold medal too, but that doesn't mean that golf shouldn't be there

I never said it shouldn't be there, just why it's not the pinnacle. I don't think we are disagreeing here.

 

[2blue]

...but have you crapped and clapped? That's what we really want to know!

No we don't!!!!...... more interested in how I lose that image!!