Should we eliminate the bronze medal game?
- Thread starter Dontdive
- Start date
It seems that only North American hockey fans (what a shock) and some North American hockey experts are the only ones who doesn't care about playing for Olympic Bronze. Athletes do care. How often you can compete for the Olympic medal and win it? Not so many and that makes it very special. Olympic bronze is a bigger thing for athletes than World Championship bronze or other..and this includes every sport.
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I'm going to guess the thread starter is a non-athlete who thinks he knows how high-level athletes feel.
The Finns and Swiss were elated to win the bronze medal. Hundreds of athletes received a bronze and were thrilled to be recognized as one of the top-three in the world in their chosen sport.
Countless more athletes went into the Olympic games knowing they had pretty much little to no chance to medal, but were proud to put up personal records, perform their best, place in the top-ten of their events, or even just have the honor to be named to their country's Olympic team.
I've ran four marathons, and in none of them did I have an inkling of a chance to win it, or even finish top ten. Yet I was extremely proud to have run every one of them, and ran my guts out, legs cramping, in every one. The proudest moment of my life was running the Athens marathon and doing my own victory lap inside the Olympic stadium in Athens.
TLDR version: no, and this is a ridiculous idea.
stayinalive
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- Jul 29, 2012
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if the US would have won the bronze medal, no one would talk about eliminating the bronze medal game...just sayin..
I'm amazed at those who think the bronze medal game, and winning bronze, is such a great idea. Are they forgetting what sport this is? And that most of the top players in the olympics in this sport are from the NHL? Where a "Stanley Cup or bust" attitude prevails? They don't drop that attitude just because they go to the Olympics! Not if they really expect to win Gold, that is...
Ask Vancouver Canuck fans (like me!) how much winning the President's Cup trophy really meant to them, or how much coming second in the Stanley Cup finals meant. Second is the equivalent of silver at the Olympics, right? Heck that's even better than bronze, so it must have felt great to get that far....
Except wait... no it didn't, it felt like crap. You see, I'm a Canucks fan, and I didn't give a damn about the President's Cup trophy wins, and "winning silver" at the Stanley Cup finals just left me upset we didn't win the Cup. And I'm sure most other Canucks fans would agree.
So yes, it's possible to have that "win it all or else" attitude as a fan, you don't have to be one of the athletes participating to feel that way.
Sure, give out the "second best loser" bronze medal if you have to, but award it based on results up to that point - don't make teams that may be dominated by NHL players have to stick around to play it.
They deserve better.
(And no, anecdotal evidence from over the few like Teemu Selanne who did maybe like playing that game won't change my mind. I'll bet the vast majority of top players in bronze medal games would rather not have to play it.)
Ask Vancouver Canuck fans (like me!) how much winning the President's Cup trophy really meant to them, or how much coming second in the Stanley Cup finals meant. Second is the equivalent of silver at the Olympics, right? Heck that's even better than bronze, so it must have felt great to get that far....
Except wait... no it didn't, it felt like crap. You see, I'm a Canucks fan, and I didn't give a damn about the President's Cup trophy wins, and "winning silver" at the Stanley Cup finals just left me upset we didn't win the Cup. And I'm sure most other Canucks fans would agree.
So yes, it's possible to have that "win it all or else" attitude as a fan, you don't have to be one of the athletes participating to feel that way.
Sure, give out the "second best loser" bronze medal if you have to, but award it based on results up to that point - don't make teams that may be dominated by NHL players have to stick around to play it.
They deserve better.
(And no, anecdotal evidence from over the few like Teemu Selanne who did maybe like playing that game won't change my mind. I'll bet the vast majority of top players in bronze medal games would rather not have to play it.)
Arne
Registered User
It is what is is. Excuses are for certain type of people. Let them have them.
It's absolute nonsense that someone stops playing after losing in the semis, when there's still an Olympic medal to be gained. That's not what you came for but neither did anyone else. It's like no one else aims for the gold except these mysterious "gold or bust" guys. Kane almost started crying when he stepped out of the penalty box when Finland scored. He didnt' care? Right.
They did care, just like every other nation, no matter what some fan says from his sofa.
If your attitude is this "North American sports psyche" where you quit, good luck, you can keep enjoying getting beat up. There are teams willing to do that.
Arne
Registered User
Are they forgetting what sport this is? Should you maybe moan about this somewhere else than the Olympic board? Just saying. Olympics are Olympics, not just hockey.
Except the most ardent proponent of getting rid of the bronze medal game is probably me, the original poster of this thread.
And I'm a Canadian, not an American. You know, Canadian, the country that won gold? Again? On both the men's and women's side? We didn't have to play in any bronze medal games.
This "attitude" you're criticizing is one thing that almost certainly helped Canada win those gold medals. At no point were those Canadian players thinking of anything else.
And, in my opinion, if you're not playing to win it all and thinking of yourself doing that, and only that, you don't deserve to win gold, in any case. Or the Stanley Cup. Ever.
Get rid of the bronze medal game. It is quite literally a game for losers.
We'll see how you feel in a few years when your Canucks' window for success shuts & they consider just making the playoffs an accomplishment in itself. You may change your tune.
No, because I think their window has already closed, and I still feel this way. But they still have a chance to get into the playoffs, so since I'm a real fan of theirs (but not a fan beyond reason) I'll stick with them until they're out of the race.
So I'm being consistent here.
Hey, I have an idea, let's remove ice hockey from the Winter Olympics.
Or we can just accept that the Olympics has three types of medals and that's not negotiable.
Or we can just accept that the Olympics has three types of medals and that's not negotiable.
Arne
Registered User
MOD
North America = Canada, USA even Mexico and some others. Not just, you know, "America". I've heard about this "North American sports psyche" several times.
Again, we've been through this so many times that I don't understand how you've missed it. Finns, Swedes, Russians etc. are not there to get bronze, they're there to win it all(That's not North-American sports psyche? Oh, it didn't include quitting when **** hits the fan, sorry.). If that fails, you don't throw in the towel.
Get rid of the bronze game in the Olympics? Ok, just don't quit if people don't find that interesting.
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To be fair, as far as evidence goes, I'll take the many anecdotes of elite athletes/happy-looking bronze medalists, over the 'win or bust' opinion of a few fans.
I don't think you understand the mentality of an athlete. Of course they care.
Even as a recreational athlete, I care about every game I've played, won and lost. I lost a curling game last night and I'm still mad about my missed freeze in the 8th end. I have a martial-arts trophy (open style, 3rd place, sparring) from years ago that I'm still proud of, and I won it tourny-style after I lost in the semi-final round. I finished 3000-something out of 13000 in my last marathon, was limping as my calves cramped at the 30k mark, forcing me to walk, but no way was I not going to finish. There was a summer softball tourny where a bad game still bugs me a tiny bit.
And these guys are probably 100x more competitive than I am.
How about all the other Olympic sports which use a bronze-medal final? Should we get rid of those too? Or any sporting event that uses a tourny and a 3rd/4th place standing decider? Because it's cruel?
There's nothing cruel about it. Athletes live for cruelty and challenge. They train for it, eat, sleep, and breath victory and defeat. Whether it be in a gold-medal match, a bronze-medal match, a Stanley Cup, a top-ten finish in athletics, a personal best time in race, a push to improve their World Cup standings, or even just to beat their buddy in beer pong, or 'not come in last' in some party game.
They already effectively threw in the towel when they lost, and it too often shows in the bronze medal games, which are almost always awful. The one we had on the men's side definitely qualified as that.
Yeah, I know sometimes one of the teams in it are happy to be there. They know it's likely the furthest they were going to get. But usually at least one of the "top four" (Canada, Russia, Sweden, the U.S.) nations are in there, and it's torture. They don't try anywhere near as hard as they did in the game before it, and it shows.
It leads to too many bad hockey games. But that's what a game meant literally for losers will get you.
Uhm. Who is not playing for the gold? Why would someone want to lose the silver/gold medal just to get to the bronze game? Bronze is there for you to win the last game so you don't have to go home empty handed.
But it is easy for some random nerd behind a screen to tell the sportsmen what they deserve and what not.
Arne
Registered User
They didn't throw in the towel, they lost a close fight. It's getting pretty obvious I'm talking with some dude with absolutely no experience in any sort of competition, ever.
and it too often shows in the bronze medal games, which are almost always awful. The one we had on the men's side definitely qualified as that.
Yeah, I know sometimes one of the teams in it are happy to be there. They know it's likely the furthest they were going to get. But usually at least one of the "top four" (Canada, Russia, Sweden, the U.S.) nations are in there, and it's torture. They don't try anywhere near as hard as they did in the game before it, and it shows.
It leads to too many bad hockey games. But that's what a game meant literally for losers will get you.
Yeah, it did. USA folded after the 3rd goal.
McGuillicuddy
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- Sep 6, 2005
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It all comes down to performance vs. expectations.
I think personal pride and respect for the game and the opponent means all players in these situations try as hard as they can. But it is understandable that the passion may not be the same when the true goal that they have spent years dreaming of was the gold medal. Frankly in the case of the US (or Canada in Nagano), the bronze medal was not what they were dreaming of. It's just human nature when you have failed to meet expectations that some of that fire will be lost for the consolation final/bronze medal match. It doesn't mean they are "losers" or "disrespectful" or whatever other adjective you want to hurl at them to make yourself feel self-righteous, it just means they are human.
That said, I think eliminating the bronze medal match is a silly idea.
Prediction before reading this thread:
USA fans are saying that it should be removed as their team do not care about it. Someone shows few videos like these:
Yankee players seem to be happy to win a bronze medal in a meaningless(according to hf) competition. Yet team USA doesn't care about winning a bronze medal in the best competition there is.
Yeah, right.
USA fans are saying that it should be removed as their team do not care about it. Someone shows few videos like these:
Yankee players seem to be happy to win a bronze medal in a meaningless(according to hf) competition. Yet team USA doesn't care about winning a bronze medal in the best competition there is.
Yeah, right.
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Yep that was a dagger. As competitive at these guys are, they're still human and they were pretty deflated at that point...beaten. But not for a moment do I think they went into the game not wanting to play it, and win it, and they looked strong and confident in the first period.
It's not self righteous to ask a competitor to dust himself off & get up for the next game when a lot of people have spent a lot of resources to enable him to be there. And I wonder if the people in the stands who paid for tickets to watch that game on saturday felt self righteous for wanting more from that team.
They already effectively threw in the towel when they lost, and it too often shows in the bronze medal games, which are almost always awful. The one we had on the men's side definitely qualified as that.
Yeah, I know sometimes one of the teams in it are happy to be there. They know it's likely the furthest they were going to get. But usually at least one of the "top four" (Canada, Russia, Sweden, the U.S.) nations are in there, and it's torture. They don't try anywhere near as hard as they did in the game before it, and it shows.
It leads to too many bad hockey games. But that's what a game meant literally for losers will get you.
We came out guns a blazing in the bronze game.
But we embarrassed ourselves by giving up once all hope was lost.
I doubt it would be any different in the semi if we were down 3-0.
Sorry, I think that's a ridiculous suggestion.
If we're going to get rid of the bronze medal game, then why not get rid of silver and bronze medals for every sport?
Obviously the goal is to win gold, but the way people discredit the value of winning bronze here is crazy. Some of what I'm seeing is straight up cognitive dissonance.
If we're going to get rid of the bronze medal game, then why not get rid of silver and bronze medals for every sport?
Obviously the goal is to win gold, but the way people discredit the value of winning bronze here is crazy. Some of what I'm seeing is straight up cognitive dissonance.
