The Spectator

Last week the IOC Executive Board took a vote on which 2 sports out of 7 finalists to recommend to all the IOC members to include as Olympic sports from 2016. I’m still a bit confused as to the process of eliminating or adding sports to the Olympics - it seems to be quite fluid, but that’s another blog post.

I like the idea that the Olympics showcases the worlds best in whatever the sport - when Olympic Gold is the highest achievement in the sport - or at least comparable.

I think getting rid of baseball after 2008 was a good idea - the fact the Americans, whose local competition is named the “World Series” can’t even qualify for the Olympics (as was the case in 2004) says something about the Olympic competition being a bit of a joke. It’s like having Aussie Rules as an Olympic sport, and the Australians field such a weak team they don’t event qualify.

On the other hand, the elimination of softball as “the girls version of baseball” was just plain unfair - there is no “World Series” of softball (actually there is - but judging by their website, it’s hardly world class - they even have to differentiate themselves from little league softball).

Both Softball and Baseball were among the 7 sports vying to get back on the programme from 2016 until last week - both failed. So did karate (which I’m a bit indifferent about - there is already Judo and Taekwondo in the Games, and buggered if I know the difference between them all, although I would have guessed karate was more popular than taekwondo), roller sports (meh - stick with the X Games) and squash (hardly a good spectator sport).

The two which did get the vote from the Executive were Rugby Union 7s and Golf. Had you asked me 6 months ago what I thought of Rugby as an Olympic sport, I wouldn’t have been very supportive, but 6 months in Fiji, I’ve discovered more about Rugby 7s and that it is a lot more widespread than I ever knew. The fact the IRB are also willing to work it so the Olympics are the top competition for the sport (although I think it would have naturally become it), only adds to its appeal.

Golf on the other hand… stupid. I put it in the same Olympic Sport category as tennis.

Who won gold in the men’s tennis singles last year? Don’t know? Can’t blame you - you’re far more likely to remember who won Wimbledon, or the French Open, or the Australian or the US Open (although as per the tennis trend in recent years, you only really have to take a guess out of two players - it was Nadal; Federer won gold in the doubles but failed to medal in the singles). The Olympics - despite drawing all the best tennis players, is not the pinnacle. Rather than train for four years with your eye on going to the Olympics, the players have to squeeze the Games into their US Open preparations in the Olympic years (Federer went on to win the US Open the month after Beijing - perhaps he was better prepared not winning the singles Gold). Beijing even had to move the dates of the 2008 Olympics from September to August (a much hotter month) so it wouldn’t clash with the US Open. Stupid.

Now add golf to the mix - a sport with a whole lot of international competitions worth a lot of money, and a few HUGE competitions to potentially clash with the Olympics every four years - why bother? They should have gone with softball - it would have done more for evening up the male/female divide too.

On the subject of gender equity at the Olympics - there have been two incidents of note recently - one good - the introduction of 3 weight classes for women’s boxing from 2012 (and if you object to that, there’s a good article here) and one bad - the rejection of a women’s ski jump event by the IOC. The latter is a really interesting case, 15 female ski jumpers ended up taking the Vancouver Olympic Committee to court to attempt to force the inclusion of the event in next year’s Vancouver Winter Olympics on grounds of it being against Canada’s anti-discrimination laws. It was found by the BC Supreme Court that the omission of the event was indeed discriminatory - but VANOC was not the decision maker and the court had no power over the IOC. You can read a good summary of the case here.

But the main question of gender equity in the Olympics with me remains with beach volleyball - why on earth are the male beach volleyballer players allowed to wear singlets when the women have to wear a skimpy bikini!? I won’t go into the impact of uniform regulations on women’s participation in sports - beach volleyball is clearly a sex-sells sport, so make the men wear swimmers too!