The Olympics have begun, and, as happens every Olympiad, I begin to sound like the old man yelling, “You kids get off of my lawn—and I’m keeping your ball!” This time, the ranting began as I perused the list of so-called sports to be included in this incarnation of the quadrennial event.
When I was a kid, I watched every minute of the Olympics. There were a few hours of coverage every day and I cheered for and admired athletes of all countries. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Native-American Billy Mills sprinting from behind to win gold in 1964, Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy clinging to the edge of his skis in his all-out effort to win his third gold medal in 1968, Finnish distance runner Lasse Viren falling down in 1972, but getting up and winning with a new world record, and Russian Olga Korbut captivating the world with her charming smile and spectacular accomplishments in gymnastics.
This year, I’ll watch some of the Olympics, but it has definitely lost much of its allure for me. I’ll watch the track events, because that was my sport as an athlete and coach, and I’ll watch swimming, primarily to see a former student of mine, Alex Walsh, compete in the women’s 200 IM. Some people argue that the Olympics have become too political. That is certainly true, but politicization of the games is hardly a new phenomenon. The Nazis, the communists of the USSR and China, and the US have all used the games as propaganda to promote the superiority of their particular economic/political systems. Others argue that the Olympics have become too commercialized, too focused on making money for corporate sponsors. All true. For me, however, the most off-putting aspect of recent Olympic Games has been the proliferation of events seemingly designed for those who are not good enough to compete in traditional sports. Can’t ski very well? No problem; we’ll add snowboarding. Couldn’t make your high-school team in a traditional sport? Fine; we’ll invent beach volleyball and 3-on-3 basketball. To my mind, these sports have been added to the Olympic roster simply because the beer industry, which advertises heavily during those events, lobbied hard to have them added.
Not that I have a problem with beer. In fact, I prefer competing in sports that are generally played by people with a beer in one hand. I just don’t necessarily believe they belong in the Olympics. Curling certainly falls into this category, although it has been a part of the Olympics since 1924. For those who don’t recognize this sport by its name, it’s the one where one player slides a “rock” down the ice as his teammates try to maintain their balance while sweeping the ice frantically. If curling can be an Olympic sport, why not darts, or horseshoes, or pool, or pub trivia? Those games require about as much athletic talent, and the consumption of beer might actually enhance a player’s performance. For other athletes, particularly those who like to ingest stronger substances than beer, the Games offer skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing. Those I’ve known who participate in those sports tend to perform best with a cloud of smoke wafting around their heads. For spectators who are already buzzed, the Olympics give you other options. You can watch synchronized swimming or diving and spend an hour blinking and wondering if you are seeing double. Finally, while watching rhythmic gymnastics, I have to wonder: in which of Dante’s circles of Hell is ribbon twirling considered a sport?
“So,” you might ask, “If you were king of the Olympics, what would the reconfigured Games look like?” Well, first of all, there would be no events in which the results are determined solely by judges. Almost all of the great controversies from Olympic history involved decisions made by a subjective judging panel. Growing up in the Cold War years, I often heard something like, And the judges’ scores for Penelope’s dynamic performance: 9.6, 9.4, 9.8, . . . What! I can’t believe it! The Russian judge gives her a 4.3! Oh, the humanity!
In my perfect, imaginary world, we do away with all sports that involve judges. Those are usually artistic endeavors anyway, so why can’t we just appreciate them for their visual beauty and stop trying to turn them into competitive events? Gymnastics? Gone. Diving? Gone. Figure skating, ice dancing, surfing, freestyle skiing, equestrian events, snow or skate boarding, synchronized anything, competitive smiling (okay, I made that one up), all gone.
The other ones to be eliminated would be events using anything other than simple human muscle. There is so much money to be made today in sporting equipment that more scientists are working on those items than are trying to solve global warming. Look at running shoes for example. In the early Twentieth Century, some long-distance runners competed in heavy, military-style boots because they were sturdier than the athletic shoes then available. As recently as the 1970s, legendary Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman made rubber soles for running shoes on his wife’s waffle iron. Today, however, technology has leapt forward, and a controversy has flared over the use of the Nike Vaporfly, a high-tech shoe worn by record-setting distance runners. The shoes employ a polymer called “Pebax” which, according to an NPR piece, combines “with carbon fiber plates that work together to absorb and then return a percentage of the energy that the runner puts into them.” Most experts agree that these new shoes give the runners who wear them an advantage. The rub is that only athletes sponsored by Nike have access to this game-changing technology. Therefore, in my Olympics, all runners must compete barefoot. Events that depend completely on other space-age devices are omitted. That includes archery. I guess I still have this image in my mind of Robin Hood, carving a bow from a humble Yew tree, yet still being able to fire arrows long distances with great accuracy. In today’s event, archery bows look like something designed by Lockheed Martin for the War on Terror. They need to go. Because of the technology involved, sledding, cycling, tennis, canoeing, rowing, sailing, shooting, and the pole vault are all eliminated from my Olympics.
So what are we left with? Perhaps my Games would look much like the original Greek Olympics: a handful of hairy, sweaty guys, racing or wrestling each other in the nude.
On second thought, maybe we’d better keep things the way they are.