I like the idea of the Olympics, bringing the greatest sportsmen and women in the world together to find out who really is the best in their chosen discipline. What makes the games more credible is the fact that it has history behind it. We all know it started in Greece at Olympia, but did you know it dates back almost three thousand years? Certainly puts the Commonwealth Games in the shade in that respect. At the last summer games there were 10,500 competitors from 204 countries. Impressive.
Well, kind of. What the hell were these people competing in exactly? They can’t all run the 100m (although it’d be fun to watch). I wonder how many events the average person on the street can name. A dozen? Twenty? Well there are apparently twenty six sports but after you break them into disciplines and weight divisions you’re looking at three hundred events (since a sport called ‘athletics’ would be pretty vague). That’s quite a lot. There are thirty four swimming events and that’s just races, not any of that synchronised stuff or falling off a tall ladder gracefully crap. Thirty four! How many different ways of swimming from one side of a pool to the other do we need? Surely it shouldn’t matter? No-one defines how people run in the 100 metres; they’re just told to do it as fast as possible. Same should apply with swimming: get from point A to point B as fast as you can. Job done. Besides would anyone really use the butterfly stroke if they fell out of a boat? It’s as pointless as the egg and spoon race at school, and they’re not making that an Olympic event.
There are plenty of daft events at the Olympics. You know what makes no sense to me? The walking race. Talk about an oxymoron; no-one ever raced anywhere by walking. Honestly, it’s so stupid it hardly bares thinking about. These people waddle along, looking like they’re in desperate need of a shit, for fifty kilometres. I just don’t get it. If it was a race then you’d run, or at least jog. Surely no-one takes them seriously. Are these athletes not good enough to run anywhere but they’re brilliant waddlers? Is it how the long distance runners start off and then they graduate into a sport where people won’t mercilessly take the piss out of them? And who watches each person for fifty kilometres in case they try and break into a bit of a jog when no-one’s looking?
Every now and again a bunch of people get together and lobby for additional sports to be added. Normally the people doing the lobbying are the people who are really good at the sport in question. Makes sense to me, which is why I’ve been lobbying (unsuccessfully) for Jagermeister drinking to be included in 2012. American football was included a couple of times (1904 and 1932) and guess what? That’s right, almost everyone competing was American... because no-one else plays it. That’s a sure fire of boosting the medal haul, eh? Hot Air Ballooning was included once, and I’m all for that. As long as it’s combined with shooting that could be loads of fun.
Football (the real name for what some people refer to as soccer) is an oddity at the Olympics, mainly because countries are restricted in who they can use. Obviously there are many, highly organised and well known football leagues around the world governed by FIFA who don’t want something as trivial as the Olympics overshadowing the World Cup. So the compromise is that Olympic football squads need to be compiled almost entirely of players under the age of twenty three. While I understand the issue it does serve to make something of a mockery of the Olympic competition.
Every time the Olympics (or any sporting event for that matter) comes around the media become obsessed with how well Great Britain is doing. Because of the pessimistic nature of the media we never think we’ve done as well as we should have done, but let me tell you that we’re third in the combined (summer and winter) overall medal table, behind the USA and Soviet Union. The latter doesn’t even exist anymore so we’ll overtake them eventually (although the ‘new’ Russia will probably have overtaken us by then). The USA’s population count is five times ours though and Russia’s is double, so they both have a much bigger pool of talent to choose from. In that respect we’re doing well, since we’re only the twenty third most populated country in the world.
So now schools have stopped competitive sports on the basis it excludes those who are not good at it while lowering their confidence and self esteem. Here’s a newsflash for the morons who came up with that pseudo-protective claptrap: life is a competition and the kids you’re trying to shield need to get used to it. The sooner they do, the better, because you can’t stick them in a protective bubble for their entire lives. Will they get the same protection at interviews so they won’t feel bad if they don’t get the job? When they’re looking for a partner and their ideal one chooses someone else who will pat them on the head and offer consolation? If anything you’ll be leaving them at a bigger disadvantage because some schools will be sensible enough to continue competition and its children will embrace it from an earlier age.
If schools stop mucking about we can look forward to the next generation of successful sportsmen and women coming through the ranks, otherwise we’ll be left with a bunch of crying babies. That’s never going to look impressive when the Olympics are broadcast to the world.
Update: Even British Prime Minister David Cameron agrees with me. I didn't know he was a reader.
