{"id":685,"date":"2008-08-23T12:09:37","date_gmt":"2008-08-23T17:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=685"},"modified":"2008-08-23T12:09:37","modified_gmt":"2008-08-23T17:09:37","slug":"theyre-there-and-youre-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/685","title":{"rendered":"They&#039;re There, and You&#039;re Not"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a similar vein to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/620\">finishing last in the Tour de France<\/a>, there&#8217;s a website chronicling the last-place finishers in the Olympics.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcwetboy.net\/dfl\/\">DFL<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And if you&#8217;ve asked yourself, &#8220;Self, I wonder if <em>I<\/em> could compete in the Olympics?&#8221;  The answer is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcwetboy.net\/dfl\/2008\/08\/getting-to-games-reality-check.html\">almost certainly not<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>During the 2006 Winter Games, I embarked on a study of the qualifying rules &#8212; how hard, I wanted to know, was it to qualify in each sport? As it turned out, very hard. Quotas on the total number of competitors per event. Minimum standards, including a certain number of points earned in international competition. And, even in the more open events, a basic requirement that you be a bona fide competitor with a record of participation. (I didn&#8217;t have time to check the summer events this time around, but I imagine the situation would be similar; apart from the wild card lottery, which is very limited in scope, it&#8217;s very very hard to get to the Olympics.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These people are very talented, and train really long and hard.  Even the ones who finish last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a similar vein to finishing last in the Tour de France, there&#8217;s a website chronicling the last-place finishers in the Olympics. DFL And if you&#8217;ve asked yourself, &#8220;Self, I wonder if I could compete in the Olympics?&#8221; The answer &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/685\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}