Why is Race Walking an Olympic Sport But Dodge Ball Isn't?

[RickJay]

@Wordy

The comparison of Golfers vs. Usain Bolt is the duck test of obviousness. You take a look at a group of golfers compared to Usain Bolt and it is immediately obvious that one is athletic and the other is not.

So now you want the Olympics to be a bodybulding contest?

[Jenaroph]

@RickJay

So now you want the Olympics to be a bodybulding contest?

Yeah, the irony is, most of the weightlifters wouldn’t qualify because they look too fat. They work for sheer muscle strength, not looks.

[kenobi_65]

@Telemark

Non-answer. Do you expect all athletes to have low body fat? It’s not needed for a lot of sports. Do you expect all athletes to have massively muscled arms? Again, not needed in a lot of sports.

Exactly. A few more examples of top athletes who would clearly fail Wordy’s “duck test”:

Asashoryu, one of the all-time top Sumo wrestlers.
Babe Ruth, still considered to be among the best baseball players of all time.
Vasily Alekseyev, two-time Olympic gold medal weightlifter, and one-time holder of 80 world records in the sport (he’s listed in Wikipedia as having been 6’1", 357 lbs., at the 1980 Moscow Olympics).

[Randy_Seltzer]

@Shagnasty

You might question why the marathon distance specifically is so important but it is the longest running race in the Olympics and the goal is just to finish as fast as possible. It could be 20 miles or 50 miles but it is still a legitimate measure of an athletic skill in the unrestricted sense. Race-walking isn’t. It is a competition where performance is purposely suppressed because of rules about form for no obvious reason. To be fair, some of the swimming categories are the same way. Only freestyle swimming challenges the athletes to get from point A to point B in the fastest way they can.

I would personally do away with all the events that have an arbitrary handicap for no obvious reason but they didn’t ask me.

Well, we should do away with the marathon then, since they won’t allow bikes. The disallowal of bikes is a purposeful suppression of performance by rule about form with no obvious reason; or at least no reason more obvious than those that limit racewalking.