Swifter, Higher, Stronger: This is the translated motto of the modern Olympics. The main problem with the modern Games is that they include too many categories that reflect NOT EVEN ONE of the words in the motto, e.g., rhythmic gymnastics and ballroom dance. The Olympics should be track and field, weight lifting, all combat sports, gymnastics, swimming and nothing else. There shall be no sports that depend on machinery, so no extreme sports, no bicycle sports, no auto racing. The Games are about INDIVIDUAL achievement, so no basketball, no soccer. The Olympics derive from GREECE, so bye-bye to the Winter Olympics, which I’ve never recognized as being Olympics; they are Norse games, and we Norslanders had no such Games. Too damn many people and interests have wanted to be recognized as Olympians. It’s become beyond absurd. They are trying to add CHESS to The Games!!
The Olympics has always been about combat skills and exercise that makes you fit for combat.
Training for athletic competition—especially world-class combat—has never, ever been about health. It’s the exact opposite of health. It’s about tuning biological systems to be able to exceed their design specifications, briefly. Athletes time their training to bring them to a superhuman “peak” coincident with the time of their events. They cannot sustain that peak, or they will injure or die. It’s a lot like slapping a supercharger on a car engine not designed for a supercharger. It’ll run like hell, briefly, then it will blow up. The drugs, and other tricks like blood-packing, are reprehensible, but at least it’s a level playing field. It wasn’t so long ago that it was very uneven: the days when all Olympians were required to be “amateurs.” Communist nations (and, before them, the Nazis) gave full State funding and support to their athletes, while US athletes had actual jobs having nothing to do with preparing for The Games. Now everybody’s a pro.
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Otter (24464)
4 years ago
Well said, I must say!
Tell me, knowing all that... are you interested in watching the spectacle?
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R_Kane (15828)
4 years ago
Yes, Otter, I am; but my interest is selective. I’ll keep track of the categories I named. I’ll see the opening and closing ceremonies. I believe the Olympic Games are the pinnacle of sport, and perhaps of human aspiration. The Games began in 884 BC. Athens, weary of the constant war between the Greek city-states, sent a delegation to the Delphic Oracle, to ask how they could make peace. The Oracle told them to gather together the youth of the city-states every Olympiad (4 years) to meet each other in athletic contest, and to learn from each other and make friends with each other. Note that in the modern Opening Ceremonies, every nation enters the stadium as a unified team. In the Closing Ceremonies, the athletes enter mingled with each other.
But let me tell you a personal story about how I realized that the Games tower above all the rest of sport. One of my friends was on the US Track Team in 1984, the Los Angles Games. This was back when we still had the “amateur athlete” mandate in place. My friend griped that nobody took The Olympics as seriously as the Super Bowl or the World Cup. I watched the 84 Opening Ceremonies. And saw 64 Baby Grand pianos played by 64 pianists rise up through the stadium seats. I was tremendously moved, and thought, “No, this ain’t the Super Bowl. This is at a whole other level of its own.”
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strntz (12773)
4 years ago
They are trying to add CHESS to The Games!!
Maybe if the chess pieces were full scale, made of concrete, and the player had to move them by hand ...
Agree on so many points. I don't get the dancing at all.
I'm on the fence with the bicycle races (of which I'm not a fan anyway). Whereas things like auto racing and horse racing depend on the machine a great deal, bicycles are fully human powered.
I don't watch or even like the extreme sports, but if I was on the Olympic Committee, I'd vote to include them. At the end of the day, TV viewers and sponsorship is important to keep the money flowing, and acquiring and keeping younger viewers is necessary.
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