Do we have to stick with summer olympics? Because there are a couple of winter ones that can go as well.
Cross country skiing where you stop every once in a while a shoot a rifle. Shooting is not a sport.
I think it is called “Hot Dogging” - Stoners on skis with no poles doing flips and shit. Not a sport.
Back to summer, what is with the new one this year -trampolining? come on, they’re getting desperate.
It was in the past, IIRC. Thank god it’s not there now.
I agree that team handball is a good sport, but…
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IT’S NOT HANDBALL!
Handball is played with one, three or four walls. It involves a small blue ball, two or four players, and is a game of strategy and skill. Team handball, while a fun sport, is some kind of weird on land water polo.
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Nope. No ballroom dancing (dance sport as it prefers to be called.) It is a recognized sport by the IOC, but so are a lot of other sports that probably won’t be added to the schedule, like sumo and polo.
Sadly, ice dancing is on the Winter Games menu. It’s pretty much the same thing. And it’s OK to watch, if you want to watch dancing. However, it’s not a sport in my book.
It’s called Biathlon. And I like it: shooting a rifle over 50 meters at a tiny target while you still have a heartbeat of 180 is pretty impressive to me. I says it stays.
Brandocet,
You make an interesting point:
‘Different strokes are like different events in other sports. Just like in track and field there are hurdles and the steeplechase, both slower than if they just ran the distance.’
I’m not sure if I can accept hurdles under my ‘go as fast as you can’ ideal. However once the ‘course’ is set up (swimming pool / hurdles), I think they should go flat out.
Imagine the fuss if a freestyler entered a breaststroke race - ‘hey, they’re swimming too fast!’.
Suo Na,
Thanks for explaining dressage in more detail. I still worry about something so difficult to follow - as you said:
‘For example (the easiest I could think of at the moment), take the horse’s head position. The neck should always be curved (NOT yanked down by the reins, but coming out of full collection, ie, the horse is relaxed and moving with its hindquarters fully engaged…oh it’ll take too long to explain),…’
And that’s one of the easiest?! I’m all for riders demonstrating their artistry to each other, but how is this a sport?
DigitalMuse
You said ‘To all who dissed equestrian, especially Dressage…I have a bone to pick with y’all.’
Hope you don’t include me in that - I said it was skilful and artistic. I just don’t think it’s a sport!
Xizor,
I’m with Coldfire - shooting is a sport. (Remember my main criteria for sport is objective measurement of the winner).
Im glad to see Im not alone here.
The swimming argument is an intriguing one.
Id like to know however just why Sumo is not considered worthy as a sport if Greco Roman Wrestling (a great sport) is.
Also where do you draw the line with the martial arts?
With the new judo rules basically elimainating so many moves what we are looking at is very similar to a wrestling style.
Karate , TaeKwonDo, Kung Fu are grante all seperate sports but why exclude sports such as that Brazilian martial art or the russian Spetznatz style. How “similar” is too similar?
A final point. I remember a long time ago reading about Chess being considered for inclusion. Im sorry : as a strategy game and mental exercise it is without bar but is it a sport?
Oh and what about Trampolining?
And there’s my point. Whether individually or on a team, I always believed the Olympics glorified human achievement. It should not be about who has the best horse.
At least until NASCAR becomes an Olympic event, at which point the question becomes who has the best horsepower. 
Alright don’t get me started with this handball question…
too late
handball, you mean like raquetball with your hands?
yeah i’ve seen it and haven’t sen anyone play since 1979.
In the rest of the world, it is just called Handball. (Just like soccer is called football, which makes all kinds of sense because you use your feet to play, ulike the travasty that is American rules football)
Team handball is the #2 most played sport in the world after soccer and ahead of cricket.
You’re being very ethnocentric in your statements.
And you have to love a sport where the majority of the competitors end up being Green Berets, SAS, Norwegian army (which pretty much wipes the floor with everybody else). Let’s look the sequence:
Ski cross country as fast as you can.
Unsling your rifle as quickly as possible.
Steady yourself quickly enough to aim at 5 very small red targets 50 meters away.
Fire as quickly as possible.
Ski on and repeat over the next few hours.
Endurance, concentration, speed - it’s like the perfect sport!
Probably not up for an Olympic event because there just aren’t that many outside of Japan who practice the art of sumo. Basically, it’s Japan and the USA, and Japan would probably win every medal. No real inducement for any country to get involved in this one.
That being said, the sumo wrestlers for the opening ceremony of the Nagano Olympics were pretty f’ing cool!
Wait, biathlon is an Olympic sport? I don’t remember seeing it on TV! (grumble)
Biathlon and pentathlon are, IMO, probably the two coolest (albeit effectively invisible) sports.
I say we have to dump the entire Winter Olympics, as it discriminates against our Latin, African, and Pacific Rim brethren.
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*Originally posted by Ivar *
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*Originally posted by JosephFinn *
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I’d like to see a cite on it being that popular; not that I doubt you (really, I don’t), but this just seems not quite right.
By the way, I call them both football; I simply distinguish between the two as “football” and “futbal”. Don’t personally like futbal, but I appreciate the skill involved. Football also involves skill, and is not a travesty. It’s simply a different sport.
I was not critcizing team handball as a sport, but pointing out that the name is somewhat of a misnomer.
I got into this late but I have had this discussion many times elsewhere.
The basic requirements for a sport to be allowed into the Olympics are:
Looking at the sports mentioned for inclusion in this thread:
** It has to be a sport. **
A sport is a physical contest with defined criteria for victory where victory is the intrinsic purpose of the contest.
Chess is not s sport; it’s a game. It’s a hell of a game but it’s not a physical contest.
Shooting IS a sport; it’s a physical contest. Believe me, it’s not easy to be a good shot.
As to whether or not judged events (e.g. ice dancing) are sports - I think they are, but I’m not sure I like it. Almost ALL judged sports at the Olympics are corrupt; ice dancing has become a complete joke wherein all results are predetermined, even if the predetermined winners make huge errors.
** It must be played in many countries on many continents.**
This is why sumo wrestling isn’t an Olympic sport yet; for the purposes of Olympic qualification it simply is not played in enough countries. There used to be guidelines for how many countries needed national associations for a sport to qualify (the guidelines are less strict for the Winter Games.) I don’t know if they use the guidelines anymore.
This, of course, is why American football isn’t an Olympic sport; it’s played only in the U.S., by Americans, with a 99% similar sport being played in Canada.
This is also why sychronized swimming is at risk of being taken out of the Games; it was talked about very seriously in 1996. It’s not catching on; not enough countries are trying to send teams. Solo synchronized swimming has already been taken out.
** It has to have an international federation.**
This, incidentally, is non-negotiable. Every Olympic sport, without exception, draws its rules at least in part from an internationally recognized organization. The IOC relies on these organizations to set rules and qualification guidelines.
The fourth criteria the Olympics doesn’t apply is ** it has to be objective.** I’d happily take out every sport with judging. Boxing, gone. Gymnastics, gone. Figure skating, gone. Take the judging out of ski jumping (yes, they judge the quality of landings and add it to your score) and let people do frigging faceplants if they want.
So what sports SHOULD be added to the Olympics? Everyone’s talking about what they’d take out. I wanna be different.
The first spport that should be admitted to the Olympics, beyond any doubt or question, is billiards. Snooker AND nine-ball.
Yeah, I know, it seems silly. But the absence of billiards from the Olympics is completely inconsistent with the requirements for represented sports. Billiards IS a sport. It is played throughout the world. An international federation determines accepted rules. It’s played by both men and women at a competitive level. There is no conceivable reason billiards isn’t in but ping pong is, aside from it always being that way. (And don’t tell me it’s called table tennis. It’s ping-pong, dammit.)
I’m not sure why golf isn’t in the Olympics. Or maybe it is. If it is you never hear about it, like tennis. If it isn’t, it should be, for every reason tennis is.
Stop laughing; some people are REALLY into croquet. There’s an international federation, it’s played throughout the world, and it’s actually hard as hell to play it well.
BobT, you’re dead on the money. I had recalled London Calling’s reply to the Rugby thread. I did not return to see your reply.
Maybe the IOC will someday realize that Ballroom Dancing is no sport, certainly not worthy of Olympic Competition!
For the edification of those who were made more stupid my me earlier:
I stand corrected
Curling: Out stupidest game I have ever seen
Freestyle skiing (ballet on skis): Out dumb dumb dumb! If you want to see me flip over my poles, watch me catch and edge on the back bowls at Vail
Squash: Out Not only half the time it is unknown but people keep saying its badmiton.
Table Tennis: Keep it in. Fast furious and takes a real degree of skill. Plus everyone plays it.
Biathlon: Keep it! Tougher than you may think, almost like a triathlon in terms of mental and physical endurance
Now here is some interesting info:
Discontinued Olympic Events
-Live Pigeon Shooting (In the 1900 games) I know a few New Yorkers that would love to blast those rats out of the sky
-100-meter freestyle for sailors (1896 Olympics in Athens) Why just Sailors?
-1904 all-around dumbbell weightlifting contest Insert your own dumbbell joke here
-plunge for distance-diving (1904 St Louis Olympics) Competitors performed a standing dive, and their distance underwater was measured. Very weird
-equestrian high jump (1904 St Louis) Yes, equestrian and high jumping. Two sports for the price of one! Before the Fosbury Flop thank god
-obstacle race (1904 St Louis) I think the commitee was made up of loons in 1904. Basically this was a obstacle course
-Tug of War (sport through 1920) First team to pull their opponents 6 ft won Interesting tidbit: In the 1908 Games, the U.S. team accused the British of wearing boots with spikes.
-Rope climbing, croquet and club swinging(?) (all medal events at one time) What the hell is club swinging?
-Underwater swimming (1900 Olympics) Swimmers earned two points for each meter they swam and one point for each second they stayed under water. I wonder if anyone drowned in this one?
and the granddaddy of all ‘odd events’
-figure riding (1920 Games) Competitors had to climb over and under the horse and do some fairly weird things. Imagining something like this borders on obscene.
Motor Boating (1908) Why?
Polo (played in all olympics up till the 34)
and here is a REALLY interesting fact:
Gymnasium
The word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek root “gymnos” meaning nude; the literal meaning of “gymnasium” is “school for naked exercise.” Athletes in the ancient Olympic Games would participate in the nude.
school for naked excercise…boy I tell ya, if they ever pushed that, the olympics would get a hell of lot more interesting.
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I was not critcizing team handball as a sport, but pointing out that the name is somewhat of a misnomer. **
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It’s maybe only a mismomer here in the US.
I mean you play the game with your hands, right?
ok, i don’t remember where i read the stat on Handball being #2 in the world in popularity, but i know it was in a newspaper, so I believe I’m going off a reputable source.
Apparently the fastest growing sport in North Africa and Asia.
http://www.handball.worldsport.com/ws/article/0,2196,0_0_0_27076_28234_1_28,00.html
But, um, even in the breast stroke races, the fastest swimmer DOES win!! Even though the overall times are slower than the freestyle times in breastroke, they still zip through the water pretty quick. And in the other events, (such as backstroke)the times are comparable with the freestyle times. They are all pretty fast swimmers! Do they still have the butterfly stroke event in the Olympics? That was always my favorite…very difficult to perform.