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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

The way to solve this is to let any gymnast decide if they want music or not and eventually either music won't be used by most or most will want music.

I mean why not? Tradition? That's an illusion. In a generation people won't even remember if men had music or not.

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Or maybe even a second category of gymnastics for both men and women, one focused more on rhythmic acrobatics that uses music and another one that's focused more on feats of strength and raw skill without music.

From the sounds of it, they're two different skills with different kinds of training I don't see why there couldn't be room for both kinds of gymnastics for both men and women.

I feel like you just described Rhythmic Gymnastics, which is a sport in the olympics.

If we were going to sign our daughter up for an Olympic sport it’d be this.

That's not necessarily useful because the issue isn't music per se, it's the "artistic" part of scoring which may implicitly require music due to judge biases.

Artistic scoring is also where a lot of subjective corruption is, so it should be removed.

In the aquatics part of the Olympic we got swimming women only, swimming men only, and synchronized swimming with women only. Synchronized swimming got recently renamed into artistic swimming.

Separating gymnastics from artistic gymnastics seems like it would follow a pattern. Artistic vs non-artistic versions. There are quite a few different artistic sports during the Olympics and I suspect it would be an unpopular decision to remove them all.

Oh this so much. Breaking is evidently in the Olympics this year, which is explicitly a form of dance. Why not just add ballet and dispense with the idea that this is about sport at all?

Today you learn about competitive ballroom dancing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancesport

There used to be painting competitions, so you're not exactly breaking exciting new sarcastic grounds here.

It's in the Paris Olympics, not this one. Breaking actually requires a lot more athleticism than e.g. diving.

I'm not sure it is becoming of any of us on HN to be critical of the athleticism of Olympic athletes.

While I agree that criticizing by-definition world-class athletes' athleticism isn't particularly becoming, I am little curious regarding the "anyone of us on HN" specifier. Is the implication that HNers are, in particular, less likely to be athletic enough to make those kind of judgements?

I've had a few interactions with some HNers that low-key demonstrate knowledge/experience that (in my opinion) probably puts them well above the general population average regarding athletics, and considering the size of the community, I wouldn't be surprised if there might be a few highly-competitive current or former athletes lurking around here.

Also, I realize that your original comment was most likely a little tongue-in-cheek, but it got me thinking about some of the people who I've seen pop up on here that have "don't you know who I am?" creds that are somewhat astonishing.

very tongue in cheek. Much more ' lets not argue athletics on the internet' and I'll admit I do it too. I say it as a, pretty terrible, ultramarathoner who regularly questions decisions other runners make :)

I am equally astonished by the creds on HN - its why I love it and keep coming back. It's sort of how I ended up here in the first place.

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