I was having this conversation the other knight, er, night, with my girlfriend. We thought wouldn’t it be cool if tilting (jousting) became an Olymic event? I’m not sure why it hasn’t, except for the following four reasons:
No one has thought of this before. Hey, problem solved. I’ve thought of it.
It’s too dangerous. Except I can’t think of any reason it would be more dangerous than, say, a rodeo.
It’s too hard to transport the horses around the world to wherever the events are held. Except highly trained horses are flown overseas all the time.
It might be seen as offensive by many international communities. For instance, Middle Eastern peoples might see it as a reminder of the Crusades. This is the only real stumbling block I can see. And even then, Crusaders didn’t go to Jerusalem to joust, they went to conquer.
Are there any other reasons this sport couldn’t become an event?
Are there already a multitude of organized tilting leagues with common rules? Sure, there are live-combat folks that go to various Ren Faires, but it’s not really an organized sport. I imagine the biggest thing holding tilting back is the lack of interest.
I don’t think the Olympics is in the business of resurrecting defunct sports. You would need to establish an official ruling body for the sport, demonstrate that the sport has enough support worldwide and that it is truly a competitive sport and not just a fairground attraction. Finally you would need to lobby the Olympic committee and persuade them that jousting is more deserving of representation than all the other sports which vie for inclusion, bearing in mind that there are limits on the number of sports which can reasonably be held at any one games.
That seems to be one sticking point. The Ren Faire people do it as theatre, with as many safety procedures in place as they can put. True, when they hit each other, they really do hit each other, but it’s clear that when they become unhorsed, it’s largely fake. It looks about as real as pro wrestling.
If it were a truly competitive sport, how dangerous would it actually be?
Curling is a winter sport, so you don’t need to have as many countries playing it to qualify. If a lot of the countries who typically send large teams to the winter Olympics have a sport in common, it doesn’t matter if it’s not played in the hotter regions of the world.
And, lots of those more northerly countries have well-established curling programs: Canada, U.K., U.S.A., Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, even Australia has some curling activity. Those are pretty much the heavy-hitters in the Winter Olympics - the only one that I don’t recall having much of a presence is Russia, and I think that’s just a matter of time.
And, those teams are competitive. Canada is traditionally always a strong team for both mens and womens, but so too are the Scandavian countries and Scotland (cough - I mean, “the U.K.”). The U.S. and Switzerland are a bit more fluky - they depend more on individuals coming to the fore in a given Olympic cycle. But there’s no way to say that country X has a lock on the gold for either mens or womens.
As for basketball - not sure I understand your comment? It’s played worldwide, and no country has a lock on it. For example, I seem to recall the U.S. making an early exit in Athens…
I have some friends who joust. I can’t provide any solid numbers, but based on my friend’s description, my guess would be that people and horses would die from time to time if they were competing at the world-class level. If you’ve gotten the idea that it’s a cool sport from watching A Knight’s Tale, remember that those lances were built to shatter and filled with shards of balsa wood, so it would look like they got completely nailed by the other guy, when in fact he barely felt it.
If the lances were real and an Olympic-level championship was at stake, people and horses would get badly hurt, and there would be some deaths. More injuries and deaths than, say, high school football.
Some pretty good arguments against, I would say, except for this one. From what I’ve seen of actual jousting, and what I’ve read of history, Medieval tilters were not out for blood, but to either unhorse each other or to break their own jousting poles on each other’s shields. The weapons were built to minimize injury and maximize weapon breakage.
A jousting pole is not a lance (common misconception).
A few years back there was talk that rock-paper-scissor (or scissor de papel de la roca, the Spanish and official name for the sport) was to be added to the winter games. Anyone hear any recent news on that front?
If you’ve ever watched jousting at a ren fest, you’d see that the participants are always pulling their punches to avoid injury to each other, and, especially, to their horses. Even if tournament jousting wasn’t ordinary intended to be lethal, you’re trying to knock people of horses – there’s lots of risk.
To lend some greater fidelity to earlier answers, the International Olympic Committee will only approve adding sports to the program if it meets four criteria:
To be included in the programme of the Olympic Olympic sport must conform to the following criteria:
1.1 only sports widely practised by men in at seventy-five countries and on four continents, and at least forty countries and on three continents, included in the programme of the Games Olympiad;
1.2 only sports widely practised in at least twenty countries and on three continents may be programme of the Olympic Winter Games;
1.3 only sports that adopt and implement the Doping Code can be included and remain programme of the Olympic Games;
1.4 sports are admitted to the programme of the Games at least seven years before specific Games in respect of which no change shall permitted, subject to paragraph 6 below.
