The IOC just voted to include rugby and golf in the 2016 Olympics, while denying squash, karate, roller sports (whatever that is), baseball and softball.
What do you think of this? To me, squash and karate are just the type of sports that the Olympics is all about - nobody gives two hoots about them most of the time, but once every four years you patriotically support your local butcher who is now competing on behalf of your country. (Yeah, I know there are professional squash players).
And golf particularly epitomizes the type of sport that should not be in the Olympics. It already has its own massive events that dwarf the importance of the Olympics for that sport. Rugby is similar, but less so.
I am a big golf fan, but I agree with you that it should not get an Olympic spot. It already sports international fields in every tour, many high profile events each year worldwide, and plenty of opportunities for the scratch golfer auto mechanics to get some recognition.
It still saddens me that baseball and softball got the axe, but they have always been a bit of a mess logistically.
Karate is out, but I assume judo and tae kwon do and boxing are still in. Different disciplines, sure, but there’s still plenty of martial arts representation.
I disagee, at least about squash. Squash is played in former British colonies and almost nowhere else. It’s limited severly in the number of countries that play it, which is the very reason that baseball and softball were dropped. Karate is more international, but as I understand it there is more than a small element of subjective scoring based on tecnique, and that is always a problem in the Olympics.
Golf is a perfect sport for the Olympics, it doesn’t matter that there is a professional circuit for it - many Olympic sports have the same - tennis, track and field, cycling, skiing, volleyball, basketball, etc.
Golf is played on every populated continent, and a winner could come from any number of countries. Plus, international golf competition is some of the best tournaments of all - the Ryder Cup is usually better drama than the majors. There could also be individual and team competition.
Rugby is pretty widespread in participation and seems reasonable to me.
It isn’t standard rugby that’s been included, it’s rugby 7’s, a game played with half a team and doesn’t have a huge world cup like standard rugby does (it’s also better to watch if you don’t know the rules, as it’s a lot faster).
Not really. Squash is played widely, certainly across Europe, in addition to the colonies. The top 50 ranked men include players from 13 non-colony countries (counting USA as non-colony because 1776 was before there was any real influence on sports).
That, and baseball’s refusal/failure to stock the national teams with the world’s best players. The IOC wants the Games to be the top event in the world, or at least on par with any. There’s also the difficulty of adapting the facilities for other sports in countries that don’t play baseball/softball. Can’t really fault them for that decision.
Tennis is the best comparison. It was out of the Games for a long time, despite it being ideal otherwise, because there was no reason for the top players to go and play for free instead of in that week’s pro tournament. But tennis’ PTB’s worked it out, and golf’s apparently has too. Excellent news.
Especially because it’s sevens. A small country can put together a decent 7-person squad more easily than a 12-person one.
Inclusion of women’s boxing is a surprise, and an unwelcome one. Professional women’s boxing is terrible - how bad is the amateur game going to be? The bouts I’ve seen have been farcical, makes no sense at all to include such an immature sport in the olympics. It’s especially galling for top class woman athletes who are missing out in other sports, e.g. cycling where there’s 3 women’s events to 7 men’s.
If you watch the Commenwealth games boxing you often see some bad and dangerous mis-matches - e.g. lads from Sri Lanka getting well and truly hammered by experienced British amateurs. Surely this will be ten times worse for women’s boxing, where the very few quality performers are levels above everyone else. Can’t see why the Olympics wants to show such a circus - it will look terrible.
Bad idea for golf to be included. The Olympics should be the pinnacle of the sport and I don’t think it will be for golf. Does Federer give a hoot that he’s not been Olympic champion? I doubt it. Would he swap one of his grand slams for a gold medal? I doubt that too.
I also don’t think that golf should be included. This week is the PGA Championship, the least important of the majors. Do you think Tiger would be skipping the PGA Championship to play in the Olympics? Even if the scheduling was worked around the PGA Championship, I’m not sure the quality of the field would represent the best players.
The only way I could see it working would be to push the PGA Championship into September in Olympic years and allow the Olympics to be the main tournament between the British Open and the PGA Championship. Of course, pushing the PGA Championship into September hurts ratings because they’re going up against the NFL.
If you saw Federer’s celebration after winning the Olympic doubles (check it out on youtube- it’s creepy), you can see that the Olympics do mean a lot to him.
The US has twice won the gold medal at rugby in the Olympics, beating France in the final on both occasions. Mind you, only 2 nations competed in Antwerp (1920) and 4 in Paris (1924). Rugby also featured in Paris (1900, 3 nations) and London (1908, 3 nations).
Golf made its debut in Paris (1900) but was removed from the schedule after St. Louis (1904).
The inclusion of golf is, in my opinion, about nothing more than trying to cash in on a popular sport.
Having said that, the old assertioin made in the 70s and 80s as to why they didn’t include golf was that it wasn’t played by enough of the world. That, at least, is no longer true.
The story last year about softball was that they were dropping it because the US women were too dominant and then the US women . . . didn’t win.
I had no idea they were dropping baseball. It’s pretty popular in the US, Latin America, and Japan at least. That’s 3 continents. Gotta be more popular than BMX racing, which was almost embarassing to watch.