Things that are and are not Olympic events
Inevitably, when it's time for the every-two-years Festival of Sport that is the Olympics, talk turns to things that are and are not Olympic events. I mean, it isn't representing all of sports. There are plenty of sports that don't make the cut, and plenty that do that make us wonder why.
Rhythmic gymnastic seems to be a frequent target of "wtf" questions. I mean...it isn't really gymastics, is it? They aren't doing any tumbling. It seems to be more or less dancing-with-a-prop. Not that it isn't hard...it looks damn hard, actually...but it doesn't seem to be any more or less a sport than, say, Irish dancing. Then again, if figure skating is a sport, maybe this can be a sport, too. Personally, I'd be thrilled if they added dancing events to the Olympics. I want somebody to win a gold medal in cha-cha, dammit! We could have an American sweep in West Coast Swing! Flamenco! Clogging! Ballet!
Then there are these non-sport sports like synchronized swimming, and its new cousin, synchronized diving. And shooting, which I really don't get. If middle-aged rednecks can do it, is it a sport? It always reminds me of the old George Carlin routine where he claimed that there were only three real sports: baseball, football and basketball. Everything else was a game or an activity. And I'm always puzzled why there are equestrian events, but no horse races. It's just jumping and dressage and stuff. Why not race the horses? Is it too many gambling connotations? Any why no auto races? Not that I particularly want auto racing at the Olympics, but hell, if there's sailing, why not car racing? And why not regular polo, on horseback? There's water polo, after all.
But then, our notion of "sports" here in Amurrca has always been pretty heavily slanted towards team sports, and the Olympics are heavily slanted towards individual sports. The only team sports in the Summer Olympics are basketball, baseball/softball (which have just been axed, so there you go), water polo, soccer and volleyball (when I say team sports I really mean things that can only be played by teams, not things that are just scaled-up versions of an individual sport, like eight-man sculls or relay races). And the winter Olympics? There's hockey, and...hockey. Oh, and curling.
The axing of baseball and softball from the Olympic roster brings to mind another issue. To be an Olympic sport, the sport has to be global enough to be able to mount a competitive international field. This is why cricket isn't an Olympic sport...the gold medal round would always be the UK vs. India or Australia or Bangladesh or whoever, fine, I know nothing about cricket, okay? Baseball and softball are so Amerocentric that it was really kinda ridiculous. The US women's softball team, before this Olympics, had outscored its opponents 54-1 over three tournaments contested. Come on. And imagine if American football was an Olympic sport. Stop and contemplate that image for a moment. It just doesn't work. I mean, I can imagine cricket as an Olympic sport, but football? I can't even fit that in my head. Something about US football just seems antithetical to the whole Olympic thing. But it might be worth it just for the sheer lolz of playing the Norwegian football team. Although there's a real good reason why American football will never be an Olympic sport...you can't have a team play a two week tournament with six-eight games in a row. It's too rough, they'd all be dead. There's a reason football teams only play once a week while baseball and basketball teams play a lot more often.
But my final question, as always, is...why the hell isn't golf an Olympic sport? It's very individual. It's very international. I've posed this question to a number of people and no one has a good answer. Someone suggested it would take too long to play a tournament; I don't see why it should. Just run a standard four-day tournament with a cut. Top three finishers get medals. Simple.
Actually, I'm starting to suspect it might be because golf is a real rarity among sports...it's extremely dependent on the venue. One basketball court is like another, but a golf game is totally different depending on where it's played. So say a city wants the summer Olympics, and golf is on the menu. They'd seem to have two choices: build a new course for the Olympics, or use an existing course. Building a golf course can take two to three years. Is that feasible? Perhaps. But let's say you use an existing course, just for the sake of argument. You'd have to find a championship-level course in vicinity to the host city, which would seem possible...I mean, hell, the equestrian events this year were held in Hong Kong, 1200 miles away from Beijing.
Except...that would give local golfers hoping to compete a HUGE advantage. They could play the course every day until the Games and know it backwards and forwards. That seems an insurmountable obstacle, unless you forbid anybody who's eligible for the Games from playing that course, and even then, they may have already played it.
Even so, I understand that golf was on the list of proposed sports to be added for the London games, along with squash and rugby and a few other things. Dude, I have a few sports I want to see added. How about lacrosse? Why isn't racquetball on the menu? They have handball. I want to see Olympic jai-alai, dammit. And how about inline skating? If speed skating is an event, why can't a non-ice version be? And how about skateboarding? Snowboarding is an Olympic event. Ooooooh...no, I've got it.
Parkour. We need parkour at the Olympics. It's such a new sport...mark my words, it'll show up sometime. It'd give some designer a chance to be really sadistic to design a parkour course. Imagine that first foot chase from Casino Royale, but in the Olympics. That would RULE.
Rhythmic gymnastic seems to be a frequent target of "wtf" questions. I mean...it isn't really gymastics, is it? They aren't doing any tumbling. It seems to be more or less dancing-with-a-prop. Not that it isn't hard...it looks damn hard, actually...but it doesn't seem to be any more or less a sport than, say, Irish dancing. Then again, if figure skating is a sport, maybe this can be a sport, too. Personally, I'd be thrilled if they added dancing events to the Olympics. I want somebody to win a gold medal in cha-cha, dammit! We could have an American sweep in West Coast Swing! Flamenco! Clogging! Ballet!
Then there are these non-sport sports like synchronized swimming, and its new cousin, synchronized diving. And shooting, which I really don't get. If middle-aged rednecks can do it, is it a sport? It always reminds me of the old George Carlin routine where he claimed that there were only three real sports: baseball, football and basketball. Everything else was a game or an activity. And I'm always puzzled why there are equestrian events, but no horse races. It's just jumping and dressage and stuff. Why not race the horses? Is it too many gambling connotations? Any why no auto races? Not that I particularly want auto racing at the Olympics, but hell, if there's sailing, why not car racing? And why not regular polo, on horseback? There's water polo, after all.
But then, our notion of "sports" here in Amurrca has always been pretty heavily slanted towards team sports, and the Olympics are heavily slanted towards individual sports. The only team sports in the Summer Olympics are basketball, baseball/softball (which have just been axed, so there you go), water polo, soccer and volleyball (when I say team sports I really mean things that can only be played by teams, not things that are just scaled-up versions of an individual sport, like eight-man sculls or relay races). And the winter Olympics? There's hockey, and...hockey. Oh, and curling.
The axing of baseball and softball from the Olympic roster brings to mind another issue. To be an Olympic sport, the sport has to be global enough to be able to mount a competitive international field. This is why cricket isn't an Olympic sport...the gold medal round would always be the UK vs. India or Australia or Bangladesh or whoever, fine, I know nothing about cricket, okay? Baseball and softball are so Amerocentric that it was really kinda ridiculous. The US women's softball team, before this Olympics, had outscored its opponents 54-1 over three tournaments contested. Come on. And imagine if American football was an Olympic sport. Stop and contemplate that image for a moment. It just doesn't work. I mean, I can imagine cricket as an Olympic sport, but football? I can't even fit that in my head. Something about US football just seems antithetical to the whole Olympic thing. But it might be worth it just for the sheer lolz of playing the Norwegian football team. Although there's a real good reason why American football will never be an Olympic sport...you can't have a team play a two week tournament with six-eight games in a row. It's too rough, they'd all be dead. There's a reason football teams only play once a week while baseball and basketball teams play a lot more often.
But my final question, as always, is...why the hell isn't golf an Olympic sport? It's very individual. It's very international. I've posed this question to a number of people and no one has a good answer. Someone suggested it would take too long to play a tournament; I don't see why it should. Just run a standard four-day tournament with a cut. Top three finishers get medals. Simple.
Actually, I'm starting to suspect it might be because golf is a real rarity among sports...it's extremely dependent on the venue. One basketball court is like another, but a golf game is totally different depending on where it's played. So say a city wants the summer Olympics, and golf is on the menu. They'd seem to have two choices: build a new course for the Olympics, or use an existing course. Building a golf course can take two to three years. Is that feasible? Perhaps. But let's say you use an existing course, just for the sake of argument. You'd have to find a championship-level course in vicinity to the host city, which would seem possible...I mean, hell, the equestrian events this year were held in Hong Kong, 1200 miles away from Beijing.
Except...that would give local golfers hoping to compete a HUGE advantage. They could play the course every day until the Games and know it backwards and forwards. That seems an insurmountable obstacle, unless you forbid anybody who's eligible for the Games from playing that course, and even then, they may have already played it.
Even so, I understand that golf was on the list of proposed sports to be added for the London games, along with squash and rugby and a few other things. Dude, I have a few sports I want to see added. How about lacrosse? Why isn't racquetball on the menu? They have handball. I want to see Olympic jai-alai, dammit. And how about inline skating? If speed skating is an event, why can't a non-ice version be? And how about skateboarding? Snowboarding is an Olympic event. Ooooooh...no, I've got it.
Parkour. We need parkour at the Olympics. It's such a new sport...mark my words, it'll show up sometime. It'd give some designer a chance to be really sadistic to design a parkour course. Imagine that first foot chase from Casino Royale, but in the Olympics. That would RULE.