Some people think gymnastics isn’t a sport because the result is determined by judges. I think gymnastics isn’t a sport because puberty is a career-threatening injury.
-Jeff Neumann of RealClearSports
Also, here’s a great article about the silliness of cutting softball from the Olympics to make room for BMX biking / synchronized diving / underwater kite flying etc:
For my money, there should be a two-part litmus test to determine which sports are Olympics-worthy:
-No sport shall be added that owes its visibility to made-for-TV programming (read: beach volleyball).
-If a sport has a championship competition that is bigger than the Olympics, it should not be included (read: tennis, men’s basketball).
…
All of which brings us back around to softball. It is a perfectly wonderful sport played in more than 100 nations.
When it comes to universal appeal — a term IOC President Jacques Rogge likes to throw around to justify some of the organization’s half-baked decisions — softball supersedes, say, beach volleyball and BMX in terms of global exposure.
No matter how Rogge and his cronies try to spin it, the decision to evict softball from the 2012 Olympics is classic anti-American bias.
Sure, the U.S. has dominated the sport since it debuted in the ‘96 Summer Games. In ‘04, the Americans outscored everyone else 51-1. Right now, the U.S. appears to be coasting to the gold. So what does the IOC do? Pull the plug.
Why? Other nations dominate certain sports — China in table tennis, for example — but those sports remain part of the Olympic experience.
Another way of looking at it: Is swimming going to be eliminated just because nobody could beat Michael Phelps?
I don’t think so.
Hmm…I’ve been thinking on these issues
The FIG and IOC…doping…big no-no…millions of dollars to catch cheaters…and they may not even be that successful…Bolt anyone…I hope he’s not juiced…but he’s so far ahead of everyone else…Phelps too…it will be sad if they find out he’s juiced…but you can’t trust anybody anymore…
Anyway…how hard would have been for the FIG and IOC to find out if the Chinese gymansts are too young. Apparently, it’s common knowledge in China, where the girls have been competing for years in regional competitions, that several of them are young….Good grief, just enforce your rules…
Softball. One writer suggests that three things will bring it back
1. Japan wins gold
2. The number of dollars (yen, etc) that Asian nations have dumped into softball
2. Obama becomes president, thus reducing anti-American angst throughout the world
I kid you not.
I had to laugh, because I had thought the same things. BMX? They’re dumping softball but we have BMX? And synchro diving? What’s up with that? Trampoline? And one of my personal favorites, rythmic gymnastics? And we thought regular gymnastics was a little lite on tangible scoring! Let’s add NASCAR and export that cash cow to the rest of the world. Actually I guess, on the world stage they’d probably only go for it if it was Grand Prix or something.
How about Sky Diving? How many tricks can you do in 10,000 feet and then stick a landing in the center of the target area?
I’m sure Obama’s plan to pull out of a permanent trade agreement (NAFTA) will do wonders for world opinion of the U.S.