The Worst-designed Sport Of All Time

The fourth run of an international bobsled competition, then, is the most meaningless event in all of sportsor at least tied for first in the meaninglessness rankings with every preseason NFL game. The team thats leading after two runs has gone on to win 85 percent of the time, and even after one run the leading team wins 70 percent of competitions. That means the Russian two-man team of Alexander Zubkov and Alexey Voevoda, which sits in first place after the first two runs in Sochi , should feel very, very good about its chances. While we would expect the first-round leaders to have an advantage, this is a bit much. There are 30 competitors in the two-man bobsled competition in Sochi, and they each have a very small slice of the 30 percent chance of stealing the gold medal from the first-run leaders. (As you could have predicted, the Russians also led after the first run.) If youre not in the lead after one run, you should probably give up on the gold. And if youre in fourth place or worse, your chances of getting any kind of medal are slim. In more than 70 percent of all races, every position on the podium is locked in once three runs are complete. A well-designed sport has enough variability to create suspense. Imagine if after three quarters of a football game the winner could be predicted 100 percent of the time. (Ad time in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl would be much cheaper, at least.) Golf, similar to bobsled in that it features an open field competing on the same course four times, is vastly different in terms of predictability. Over the past 10 years of golf majors, the eventual winner was in the lead 15 percent of the time after the first day. After days two and three, the percentage increased to 35 percent and 45 percent respectively. (Even when you account for the fact that there are a lot more competitors in a golf tournament than in a bobsled event, these numbers are still stark45 percent is a whole lot less than 100 percent.) Is it inherently bad to have a sport thats so predictable? It is at least in the case of bobsled, considering that it features four anonymous helmets poking out of identical sleds, with no particular strategy discernible to the naked eye. Given those parameters, youd think suspense would be the only reason to watch. Since theres absolutely no suspense to be had, youd be better off switching to Animal Planet whenever you see a bobsled charging across your television screen. Can this terrible sport be fixed? While the Olympics and the world championships feature four runs per team, all other competitions governed by the IBSF mandate only two runs. Bringing that format to the Olympics would increase variability and make the final result more dramatic. Considering that most bobsled competitions are already two runs, it wouldnt bastardize the sport to make this move. Of course, having fewer runs would decrease the chance that the best team wins. But that would at least inject a little bit of life into one of the dullest sports ever concocted by man.
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