Baseball should be in because there’d be a pretty wide diversity of nations interested. One could easily see the US, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Domican Republic, Japan and Taiwan fielding teams… maybe Finland as well.
Golf actually requires some of the most infrastructure, not least, and I’d sooner put it in the “game” than “sport” category (along with curling, dasts, bowling & tiddlywinks.)
And yes, the tiddlywinks people are pushing for a demo sport in 2012…
You’re missing the point - baseball has been included in the past, but (a) the USA didn’t have a decent representation from their best players, and (b) that isn’t actually a very diverse set of countries.
Would the IOC ever vote for a host city that didn’t have a few decent golf courses nearby?
I agree with golf, but not the namby pamby game that the PGA endorses. Olympic golf would have a few changes: No caddies and it would be a timed event (like biathalon). Scoring would be a combination of number of shots and total elapsed time.
Cyclocross should be a winter Olympic event.
Ice Judo
Javelin Catch
Luge Skeet
Doubles Fencing
Tongue Wrestling
That’s only true if you assume South America is a part of North America, which it’s not, and that baseball isn’t popular in Australia, which it is. You can argue that baseball is “concentrated in North America and Japan,” but it’s equally true that cricket is “concentrated in Britain and Southern Asia.” All sports are concentrated somewhere.
You can’t possibly say with a straight face that cricket’s more popular than baseball. If baseball doesn’t belong, cricket doesn’t belong.
Assuming this is a serious discussion and we’re leaving out stupid jokes like “ninja chess” and “Ice judo,” the strongest arguments, by far, are for golf and billiards. It’s difficult to explain why they aren’t already in. Both sports are immensely popular in multiple countries, have international federations that can sponsor them and set the rules and qualifications, and have the added advantage of not being subjectively judged.
glee:
They dropped solo syncronized swimming a long time ago.
:: straight face ::
Cricket is more popular than baseball.
Mamboman may have been chastised for the tone of his post, but that doesn’t negate his argument. ‘Audience of billions’ was quite accurate.
Ummm…I posted a link already which explains the position with regards to golf.
True, but considering the standard of living in many of those Asian countries, it may not be far fetched to expect that the actual audiences for the two events are comparable.
I went to the CIA world factbook web site and added up the populations of the countries in which cricket and baseball are popular. For cricket, the countries I included were the U.K., Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the West Indies (i.e. the countries that were once members of the West Indies Federation, plus Guyana). The total came to about 1.55 thousand million people (I’m avoiding use of the word “billion” as it means different things in different places).
The countries I included for baseball were the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The total came to about 683 million people - about 44% of the total for the cricket-loving countries.
India is the most-populous cricket-loving country, by far. Its population of about 1080.3 million accounts for about 69.5% of the total for all the cricket-loving countries I included. The population of the United States doesn’t dominate baseball to the same degree - the roughly 295.7 million people living in the U.S. account for about 43.3% of the total for that sport. With India and the U.S. excluded, the totals for cricket and baseball are about 473.8 million and 387.3 million, respectively.
Also, cross country running would be great to see in the olympics. It used to be, but after a disasterous run where many a participant suffered heatstroke or got lost, it was nixed. But I say, bring it back!
I’d love to see the argument for how “the US, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Domican Republic, Japan, Taiwan and Finland” (and let’s throw Australia in there as well if indeed baseball’s popular there, which is new info for me) are “not very diverse!” :rolleyes: Those countries are about as different from one another as possible.
Cricket might well have a larger potential audience than baseball, but not spread across many more nations. That bit probably works out evenly, and I’d argue both sports belong in. American football has a much larger audience than, say, curling, but as it’s concentrated heavily in one large country that makes it an iffy Olympic prospect.
I don’t see how the US not fielding the best team for a demo sport negates it at all. Among other things this argues that the US should necessarily win the gold every year, which isn’t the case. In any event MLB in the US features as has featured a large number of foreign players in recent decades, an increasing trend.
I’m sure that Brazil hasn’t always fielded the strongest soccer (football) team every year out it’s possible pro players and World Cup team but… so?
We’re getting bogged down with cricket vs. baseball…if I had to be impartial, I’ll say that neither deserves Olympic status, because neither has a really wide appeal, nor the best offering to general non-partisan spectators.
Rugby sevens, however…
Another problem with American football is that it can’t be played every day. Players usually have a week to recuperate from the battering they get during a game. Every so often a team will play on short rest (like three days for the games played on Thanksgiving). Given how much time there must be between games, I don’t see how a tournament could be organized in the time allotted.
Cricket vs. baseball debate can move here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7105310
Another vote for various billiards. It meets all the requirements. There are established rules. There is international competition. World sanctioning bodies.
And the thing is, many, many countries could win. World champions in past few years have from frmo England, the U.S., Canada, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, and a few other countries I can’t think of offhand.
The game has a long history with international competition in the various disciplines going back to the 1800’s. And it has the advantage that a country doesn’t have to have multi-million dollar facilities to develop competitive players.
Also, Karate. Yes, there are many styles, but I don’t see why two or three of the major styles couldn’t be brought in. Or you could do what other multi-style tournaments do, and have a ‘traditional Kata’ competition with judges from many styles. And point sparring is style-irrelevant, as is full-contact sparring.
And failing that, how about Rollerball?
Tug-of-War.
toboggan – singles, pairs, triples, and / or quads.
A lot of the problems come from overcrowding in the summer Olympics (too many events) and too few in the Winter games. The charter of the WO requires snow or ice to be involved—eliminating several sports.
Baseball didn’t have much of a shot since several of the host countries would have had to build an expensive venue for a single sport that would get little/no use after the games (see Athens where they were actively recruiting American minor leaguers of Greek ancestry to field a team).
Golf is a different story since nearly every host site has a suitable golf course in the general vicinity (and ‘vicinity’ can be stretched pretty far—the soccer prelims can be a long ways away) but the general trend is to get less sports so it would take a strong effort (which hasn’t emerged).
Beach volleyball is the amazing story—with a single-use, new-venue-required sport, it was widely seen as a temporary inclusion but the popularity has earned it full medal status.
Curling is in because the winter games wanted more sports and it can easily fit into an existing venue (a moderately sized hockey rink with temporary seating).
Skeleton made even more sense. A winter sport in an existing venue (which had limited use over the Olympiad calender).
Snowboard downhill seems to have the best chance for inclusion as an existing venue and established popularity.
Summer: Disc Golf
Winter: Skibobbing
Yes. I’d like to see UltraMarathon (50 miles +) in the Olympics. I don’t remember it ever being in there though… Ultra Running is very popular in countries other than the U.S. I’d be willing to bet that it isn’t in there because most people would rather watch paint dry. sigh