Half of the Winter Olympic sports are nothing but opinion based. Figure skating, all those freestyle skiing and snowboarding events. At least curling has a way to actually keep score and you know what the points are. I personally feel the only sport that is being played in the winter Olympics is hockey. You can call these people "athletes" but in my opinion if they aren't playing football, baseball, basketball, or hockey (I guess you can throw in most Summer Olympic sports like the individual running, swimming, jumping, and wrestling, and maybe soccer) then they aren't quite athletes to me and are wasting their time in an activity very few care about. I haven't watched any Winter Olympics this year and I do not plan on it. Let the other countries win and feel good!

Lots of timed and measured events. All the sledding, speed skating, skiing. Hockey is opinion if you take the refs calls into consideration. But I get your drift on the subjective judging part. The old "Russian Judge" reference survives the cold war. The whole thing is a show. They didn't have the snow Olympics in Athens. With an isolated couple of exceptions (one by an American) the idea of all these countries just getting together, basically to have fun, without killing each other is a freaking miracle. I can't complain.

I too hate that most of these competitions are based on people making a determination. I watch a little figure skating last night and the man fell. When the score came up they had no deductions. I said to my wife, "How could they have no deductions when he hit the ice?" Their justification was that the trick was really hard. I also don't like the luge/bobsled events. To me it's basically sledding. I'm sure there is more to it than that, but I feel that gravity is doing most of the work. I watched the luge and all of their times were within a second of each other. Even the 100M dash has more variances in time.

I dare you show me any 100 meter race where the variance is full second. Even a tenth of a second. High school maybe. And yeah, there is probably a little more to going 80mph on a winding sheet of ice than gravity.

I think frozen gemmie tossing should be the next Winter Olympic sport. Judging categories should include longest toss, extra points for most original tossing method and all participants should be required wear decorated waders and vests!! Each toss should be preceded with a hearty "fish on" with extra points for the loudest and prettiest voices.

Nice. A first for the USA.