Tag: sport

How Daniel Ricciardio’s unfortunate position might be to the world’s benefit

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New F1 rules prohibit the use of more than 100kg of petrol an hour.

via "Cruel twist for disqualified Daniel Riccardio" in The Australian.

The idea of fuel consumption in a Formula 1 race is a positive move. It encourages manufacturers to develop more fuel-efficient engines.

Ricciardo's position is one of a team-member. The entire team is stripped of its second place position, not just Ricciardo. But he is part of a team and has to wear its failings.

Maybe instead of focusing on the hardship of the Australian driver we should look to Mercedes and ask how they managed to get those speeds on less fuel consumption.

Formula 1 technologies progress to domestic vehicles over time and better fuel consumption in powerful engines is something the market will definitely be interested in.

Winning as a goal

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Yesterday, on the flight to Wellington from Melbourne, I caught up on the whole Essendon, ACC, doping and gambling in sports rubbish.

I look at the outrage people feel around this and I don't understand the shock they exhibit.

This is the culture we have built for ourselves. Sport, for the longest time, has been about winning. So has politics.

It is up to us to take winning and relegate it to an outcome or a by-product, rather than a goal. We need to change the way we think about these things.

A game of football should be enjoyable to watch because of the quality of competition and not whether or not our team won. It's difficult because winning is our measurement for success. So divorcing the idea of winning from the joy of competition takes a lot of effort.

Similarly, in government, winning the next election should never be as important as doing the best job possible now. Campaigning should be about belief in what the best job could be rather than what people want to hear.

It is the fault of no particular group that this is what our world has become. It's the way these things evolved.

We have the power to change them,
slowly and over many years. It is incumbent on us to be vigilant and vocal about what we really want.

That being said, if I'm wrong and all we want is to win, then let's stop it with the bullshit shock and disgust. Be honest about what you want, for fuck's sake.

This is about the nature of competition, cockhead.

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He's a criminal. He has stolen people's livelihoods. There must be thousands of clean athletes scrabbling around on the bottom end of the employment structure because that's all that's possible, and he's taken away their career.

Nicole Cooke in The Guardian

This is the truth of the matter.

Armstrong says that cheating was the only option left to him if he wanted to succeed.

He should be shunned from society. He is a man with no sense of honour. His photos should be torn down. His memorabilia should be burned.

For the crimes he has committed to his community, in the pursuit of being a somebody, the appropriate penalty is to make him a nobody. He should feel shame for the rest of his life.

His "poor little Lance" routine is nothing but a spit in the face of those who were in the same situation and chose to not cheat.

"But I wanted so badly to win" is the same excuse my five year old niecews would use if they were to cheat at a game.

Winning is not the point of competition. Competition is about testing oneself. Lance Armstrong failed that test and Nicole Cooke has succeeded. That's what makes her the winner.

We should be paying more attention to the ones who played by the rules and were not rewarded. They deserve our respect, admiration and probably some compensation.

Round 4: I’m Already Bored

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It takes a lot to keep me interested in a tipping competition. Last week my stupid dice only tipped 4 out of a possible 8. That's not the magical results I was hoping for and I'm starting to get bored.

Incidentally, the dice I'm using are in an iPhone app called Diceshaker. Is that more or less nerdy? Am I relying on an unreliable randomiser?

Anyway, I might venture into a store this weekend and get myself a couple of actual d100s to use and see if that makes any difference.

In the meantime, here are my tips for this week:

  • Richmond to beat Collingwood by 37 points
  • Hawthorn to lose to West Coast
  • Carlton to beat Essendon
  • Sydney to beat Geelong
  • Port Adel to beat Adelaide
  • Gold Coast to lose to Melbourne
  • Fremantle to lose to North Melb

Round 3: A Change of Dice

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Last week there was a draw. Also, my dice tipped a draw. That was lucky. What was unlucky was that the drawn game and the game I tipped to be a draw were completely different. Not even on the same day. Stupid dice.

I realised that, using 20-sided dice, my chances of tipping a draw were just 1/20. That's just too high to be a proper random model of a non-random event, or something.

So this week I've changed my rules. Now I use 2 x 100-sided dice to determine the winner of home and away matches. I still use the 1 x 100-sided die for the margin.

Last week I only tipped 3 and the winner of the comp yet again tipped 6. These are my tips for this week.

  • Collingwood to beat Carlton by 36 points
  • W. Bulldogs to lose to Gold Coast
  • Adelaide to lose to Fremantle
  • Richmond to beat Hawthorn
  • West Coast to lose to Sydney
  • Melbourne to lose to Brisbane
  • Geelong to beat Port Adel.
  • St. Kilda to beat Essendon
  • North Melb. Bye

Round 2, 2011

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Last week I told you all about my dice tipping technique. I managed 5 out of a possible 8 and I'm ranked 11th. This week, with the dice tipping a draw between Carlton and Gold Coast, I don't like my chances of getting 8. I've put in the odds according to BetFair in brackets and italics.

  • St. Kilda to beat Richmond (1.28)
  • North Melb. to beat Collingwood (8.00)
  • Port Adel. to beat West Coast (1.50)
  • Gold Coast to draw with Carlton (55.00)
  • Fremantle to lose to Geelong (2.00)
  • W. Bulldogs to beat Brisbane (1.14)
  • Sydney to beat Essendon (1.82)
  • Hawthorn to lose to Melbourne (3.15)

If you find this boring because of its relationship to football, think of it as a stats exercise. That's what I do. I lead a rich and fulfilling life.

Dice Do for Footy Tipping

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Brucedoullpic

I don't really follow footy. I come from Melbourne and therefore am congenitally obliged to barack for a team. That team, for me, is Carlton. If pressed, however, I'll admit that I barack for the 1982 Carlton team, which was the last time Bruce Doull played and won a premiership.

When Doull retired at the end of the 1986 season, my enjoyment of football began to wane. Doull was then as old as I am now.

I'm involved in a footy tipping competition with one of my clients. This client is footy mad, and yes, I mean the entire organisation. It's a family-run business and their offices are filled with St Kilda memorabilia.

I can't compete in a footy tipping competition in any real sense. I don't know enough about the league now. I don't care either. One year my interest came so close to zero that it was virtually indistinguishable when drawing the graph. Who knew that interest could be asymptotic?

That being said, I want to participate because there are fun prizes like Gold Class passes to be won.

So I do the only thing that makes sense to me. I leave it up to the dice.

I roll two 20-sided dice. Anything less is just too likely to result in a draw. One die is assigned as the home team and the other is the away team. Whichever is greater is the winner of that match.

The tie-breaker is decided with a single roll of a d100.

With that nerdy display, I present you my tips for round 1 of the AFL's 2011 home and away season.

  • Carlton to beat Richmond by 83 points
  • Geelong to beat St. Kilda
  • Collingwood to beat Port Adel.
  • Adelaide to lose to Hawthorn
  • Brisbane to lose to Fremantle
  • Essendon to beat W. Bulldogs
  • Melbourne to beat Sydney
  • West Coast to lose to North Melb.
  • Gold Coast Bye

I'll keep posting my tips for as long as I can be bothered for any stats freaks who are interested.