My first criteria for dropping sports from the Olympics would be not having an objective system for deciding who won. Second would be the athleticism of the people involved and third would be that an Olympic Gold needs to be the pinnacle of the sport.
Based on that I would want diving, gymnastics, horse dancing and the synchronized swimming events eliminated. Since swimming as a whole is mostly objective events I didn’t consider them and at least Equestrian has some timed events. I think gymnasts are more athletic then the divers so I picked diving as the first sport I would eliminate. There is a strong argument to get rid of equestrian due to the fact it’s as much about human competition as F1 or Nascar but I’d still take a competition with objective criteria over non-humans competing.
I don’t get why people are in such a rush to REMOVE events. There should be more.
I think every single sport that has a wide following in enough countries and has an international federation governing it should be in the Olympics, as long as it doesn’t involve riding an animal or a motorized vehicle, which is kinda silly.
I would, however, agree that boxing should be taken out, as well as any other sport that falls into such preposterous corruption and disrepute.
I agree that it’s just as silly as the various swimming medals. I’m ambivalent about dropping either of them though. What I’d like is for there to be a 200 mile freestyle run. Olympic-paced jogging for 200 miles is more in the spirit of racewalking than silly-walking for 12 or so miles.
Equestrian is my first vote for all of the already stated reasons, but I actually voted “Diving” in the poll, because 1) I hate subjective judging, 2) there are like 80 subtly “different” diving events, and 3) not a single one of them is particularly interesting or compelling.
I agree with your choices except hockey. I voted “Basketball”, for one, because it’s a winter sport, albeit played indoors in a heated room. And I just can’t think of it, or baseball for that matter, as an Olympic sport. Hockey has a history as an Olympic sport including the US vs. USSR showdown in the 1980 games, and it’s a classic winter sport, played on ice.
I’ll add that my opinion about this is formed perhaps mainly on the basis of degree of exposure. We in the US are already exposed to plenty of televised basketball, football (US), baseball, tennis and golf, so I don’t want to watch these sports in the Olympics as well.
And the tennis and golf we see is largely indistinguishable from what we’d see in the Olympics. It’s different for the team sports, because what we see normally is professional club competition. I say basketball does belong in the Olympics,* where it is important for other countries if not so much for us; American football would belong if other countries played it, but they don’t; baseball would if there wasn’t a better international baseball event, but there is.
And it has to be the Summer. It’s not played on a snow or ice surface, which is the definition of a Winter event.
Really? What event is this, that brings together multiple countries in an international tournament? I’ve heard of one that features teams from the U.S. and a couple from Canada, but that’s it. Whatever this tournament is, that includes teams from, say, Japan, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic as well as the U.S. and Canada, it has escaped my notice.
Anyway the real problem with baseball is that relatively few people play it, worldwide. I think cricket is played more than baseball. Not sure about that-- would be interesting to see statistics. Baseball in American is supported by way more money, for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more people play and watch cricket, owing to its popularity in places like India.
Rhythmic gymnastics are good for guys to be able to watch highly-flexible, scantily-clad females without the Chris Hansen feeling of regular gymnastics.
My understanding is that one of the reasons they got rid of softball was that one country (the US) simply dominated the sport all the way through. If that is the case, maybe they should look at synchronized diving.
The poll options aren’t specific enough. I mean, I would never say cut all swimming, but some stuff like synchronized swimming could certainly stand to FOAD.
And women like it, too. Growing up, I thought gymnastics was the Olympics, as that’s the stuff that was on all the time. And I thought the Winter Olympics was skating.
Even losing one gold there were few serious contenders.
Women’s hockey is at risk of being removed from the Games after 2014 for much the same reason; Canada and the United States utterly dominate international competition to the point that it’s frankly a bit disgraceful and unsportsmanlike. In one 2010 match Canada beat Slovakia 18-0, a defeat so horrible that many Canadians were saying their own team was being cruel.