Otherwise known as “The Olympics”.
No, seriously. If you really consider what the Olympic Games has become, it is mainly a collection of events you wouldn’t ordinarily switch the TV channel over to watch and certainly wouldn’t pay an entrance fee to attend.
Sure, the track and field events can pull a crowd outside of the four year cycle, and some swimming and cycling events have support but our friend Pareto then produces a very low and long tail of barely-supported sport for the rest.
Follow this link to the full list and count how many of the categories you’ve physically attended in the last decade. If the answer is more than 4 and you aren’t employed by Sky Sports or aren’t the parent of a very athletic child, I will be amazed.
Nobody in the history of the planet has ever said to their significant other, “Hey, there’s a rhythmic gymnastic competition on Saturday and an indoor climbing event on Sunday. That’s our weekend sorted then“.
Pierre de Coubertin’s re-imagining of the Olympic Games adopted “Citius, Altius, Fortius” as its motto. Or, for those of you who didn’t have a classical education, “Faster, Higher, Stronger“. I’m not sure which of those three categories Artistic Swimming falls under.
A side note, I’m scratching my head as to why the motto is in Latin, not Greek.
“Grigorótera, Psilá, Ischyróteri“, for example.
But I digress.
You and I vote with our wallets and feet on non-Olympic years. We don’t attend, watch or have anything to do with most events deigned by the Olympics organising committee to be worthy of time and resources at their games. I would guess that perhaps 95% of the sports don’t have any significant number of spectators who aren’t relatives of the competitors outside the four year festival.
For Australia, the breakdown of sports’ attendance was helpfully recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2010. The following summary table is interesting:
Obviously Australia has its own unique code of football which hasn’t penetrated much in the rest of the world, possibly due to a slight marketing problem with the name, but horse racing and motor sports are popular elsewhere.
So why no Olympic V8 car event?
Because it needs expensive equipment? Go visit a boat show and examine the prices of the various categories of Olympic class racing vessels….
My hypothesis stated in the title seems robust, especially given the ridiculous news that breakdancing is likely to be an Olympic sport.
Breakdancing. Is. A. Sport.
Bill’s Opinion
One feels the Olympics may have been just a little guilty of overreach over the years. When League of Legends is made an Olympic sport, the shark will have been truly jumped, altius.
Oh, and for those curious why I was reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, I was sent there from David Thompson’s place to read this. It isn’t a parody.
The Olympics!
I have had to stop in Casino on route to Byron Bay from Tenterfield so that my oldest son could watch the UFC title fight live in Vegas time.
No boozers are showing it here so we settled for a bootleg stream instead and watch it in the pub on his laptop. Just seen one guy get knocked out with a knee hit in three seconds a world record.
Other son sitting in the car pissed right off that I have pulled over here for this and refused to come in and watch it. Two Sheila’s are up now should be interesting. Then the final, then a one hour drive to Byron Bay.
That reminds me, why isn’t WWE an Olympic event either?
Sheila was knocked out with a kick to head.
Final starts now the Brazil’s must knock out the seven year champion American negro.
No national anthems either.
Breakdancing is an Olympic sport?
Call me Nostradamus if you like, for I’ve a feeling this is more to do with either serious cash, or blowjobs, from a champion breakdancer (or someone close to) for more than one of the Olympic Committee.
I’m not discounting the possibility of corruption but I have a more General Theory of Olympics; it’s a self-sustaining entity requiring more and more niche activities to justify its continued expansion.
The wider wing spanned African American won by one point in this very disappointing fight that went the full five rounds.
On a bright side, the earlier fight result has now been confirmed as the earliest ever KO. Having had the pleasure of witnessing something like this in the first hand, I can tell you that it’s sacred as the KO was on the first hit, when the other guy erroneously head butted his forehead directly into his rising knee on the very first contact.
I have my son to thank for my enrichment today.
https://youtu.be/LT4M_XcGrYY
Worse yet, Wimbledon is here. At least the Olympics are held only once in four years. But there’s a sport one often sees in public parks with giant chess pieces which require lifting and hefting around. Surely that would pull in at least seven television viewers. And that synchronised choreography that the cabin crew do before takeoff. How farcical that baking has not been shortlisted for future Olympic participation. Do you have no idea what endurance and stamina it takes to be a marcher, for women’s rights, gay rights, global warming, anti-Monsanto…
Antifa are the new football hooligans of our time, it’s certainly not about politics and causes, so you may be into something.
I see synchronised swimming is now called ‘artistic swimming’. If they were going to change the name they should have taken ‘swimming’ out of it, because there’s not much swimming involved, is there? ‘Artistic bobbing’ would be more like it. (I’m sure other readers can think of even more unflattering-but-accurate names).
What’s that you say, “artist swimming”?
https://youtu.be/t2VvcOHi2E8