Olympics Trolling

I misread the title as ‘olympic trolling’. Lower left quadrant is the place for that. (Or IS it?)

Maybe trolling is more of a winter sport. Like curling.

high quality but strictly local interest (Hurling)

Also basketball.

borderline absurd events that you don’t think about at all for four years but then find yourself completely fascinated by when you accidentally catch the final on TV

This is precisely why curling wins the Winter Olympics.

I thought this was mildly amusing until your unfortunate remark about ultimate frisbee. Look at the sportsmanship and grace on display in this recent world championship match between Canada and Japan and tell me this shouldn’t be an Olympic event:

I take it you put Beach Volleyball in the lower left-hand corner because you want to host an unprecedentedly long 3000+ comment thread arguing with exasperated volleyballers, to test a new behind-the-scenes logfile caching routine or something. *cracks knuckles*

Beach Volleyball is the Zen Chess of the Modern Olympics, to which it brings unprecedented grace. And, since each beach volleyball player does the three times the physical work and easily more than times the mental work of a regular volleyball player, beach volleyball belongs upward-rightward of the point (x, 3y), where (x, y) is the placement of volleyball. And also it’s more fun to play, less standing around, far fewer collisions. And requires less pestering random people in your dorm’s hallway to put a team together. QED.

Kieran, you don’t actually have to be a cable subscriber. You just have to borrow the password from someone who is. They allow several feeds per household, and most households usually only using one, esp. if there’s only one person in it. That’s what tv-less me did. And I must say it’s glorious to escape the American announcing and editing. This will be the first Olympics I’ve ever enjoyed in the States, where our patriotic narrative procrustianism always seems to chop the head off its joyfully chaotic cosmopolitan jumble.

Opinions on the value of sports are surely going to differ. Hey water-polo was the only sport I played (barely) in college, I thought it was a great sport (as did Johnathan Archer, the fictional captain of the first Enterprise). I’m not even interested in watching the Olympics this go around. I don’t know how much of this is that now now old enough I only excercise for health and not enjoyment of the activity anymore -or if I’ve just been jaded by the whole Olympics things, including especially the massive increase in the number of sports -many of which I can’t take seriously. I also learning to have white-hot hatred for the coverage, as any sport I was actively interested in (Water-polo, and later X country skiing) would receive virtually zero coverage in favor of complete fluff sorts.
If I ever get picked to run the Olympics, I’d be massively unpopular, as I’d chuck out at least 90percent of the sports and only allow a few classics. This thing has gotten obscenely out of hand.

rhythmic gymnastics is a kick-ass sport, and as olympic as they come.

also, you forgot chess.

In many ways these are the purest Olympic sports.

Perhaps a bar graph indicating Ways-Per-Sport would help.

Now you made me think of the Monty Python sketch about the world hide-and-seek championship.

Why is tennis not suitable but table tennis is?

Correct apnea federation link here.

Regarding dressage, it is (a) one of the few sports that older people (in their 40s and 50s and even 60s) can compete in and (b) one of the few sports where men and women compete against one another (the others are also equestrian events).

Looking at the Italian team marching in I assumed Bocce had been added, otherwise how would you account for the seemingly dozens of elderly Armani-clad men?

I am a winter Olympics fan, and ski jumping is my favorite sport. Perhaps there should be a winter olympics edition?

No Darts? No Snooker? For that matter, no Conkers?

The thing about biathlon is that the skiing makes the shooting much harder. So for Olympic Trolling people would need to intersperse the fallacies and absurd historical analogies with, say, reading some elementary logic, or to interrupt every vile comment with cuddling some kittens or enjoying the love of a good woman/man/whatever.

Kieran, Kieran, Kieran. My man. I hate to do this to you, but this is straight up 16 kinds of wrong. Rhythmic Gymnastic is the bomb and totally belongs, WTF? Do you see that shit those girls can do with those long-ass ribbons? That’s fucking awesome! Beach Volleyball likewise. Get all that California shit up in there. Ultimate with mandatory post-game bonfires and nude beach celebrations of life! I think some of this is because you’re from a country that values being totally bummed out way too highly. For a while, OK, sure, but then y’all get over y’all’s selves. Maybe drink more. No, drink less, probably, it doesn’t seem like it’s helping.

Dressage–dressage is great! It’s soooo hard. You have to know your horse so well, and practice with just that particular horse for an astounding period of time; you teach him to dance, essentially, while picking up his hooves in a particular perfect way. And how the hell is sailing not Olympian? If rowing can get in there, how not? Ain’t like it’s not hard. I bet some crazy carbon steel and polymer oars get your rowing gear costs up in the area of the coat of that little ketch or whatever they’re sailing in. Sails aren’t made of platinum. And Ballroom Dancing belongs in failures that don’t remotely seem to meet any attributes. All in all, well played. I’ll be seeing you in the Winter Olympics for the Olympic Trolling Biathlon: Skeet Shooting with a 12-gauge plus trolling the reddit MRA board. Upvotes and responses are both counted. Shit be hard.

“The failure to but hockey at the top of the the upper right-hand quadrant clearly invalidates the otherwise quite plausible exercise. Where was Berube to edit out this glaring error?”

Field hockey……the one the Canadians like is at the Winter Games….

Quidditch is a “California weekend activity”?? Maybe when Owsley was dealing.

I think the underlying aesthetic criteria Kieran is employing are as follows:
Olympic sports should be…
A. Old, as in hundreds of years old
B. Not have a high profile alternative venue. (No tennis or football)
C. Be the kind of thing that, by dint of luck, talent, and ambition, but without gadzooks of dough, someone from practically any country could conceivably become the best at the world at.

I’m unclear why Kieran seems to think that Rugby and baseball are less Olympian than football and cricket. I would instinctively place them all in an equal stack at the extreme left. But the general principle is right.

Belle is, I’m afraid plain wrong about horse dancing. It’s wonderful, but it belongs in purpose build 18th century ballrooms in Vienna, not at the Olympics.

The most awesome Olympic sport of all, totally top right hand corner, but as far as I know never included since 1896 (which is more than can be said for cricket), would be Pankration.

I’d also like to see single-stick, in Robin Hood costumes.

Hip-hop dressage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knCj92zA0tU&feature=related

Heh. “Shot putt.”
Really, really big putter.

“Back in the old days the Olympics used to have target shooting.”

These are the good old days. But not really, because they used to shoot pigeons.

That chart is rubbish, and the reasons are so obvious I will not deign to explain them. (How’s that for Olympic trolling?)

“Nah, middle right. It should just be subsumed into general gymnastics.”

Agreed. If the bar is horizontal, it’s sport, but if it’s vertical, it’s not? That’s an unacceptable application of Euclid’s Parallel Postulate.

There’s a lot of leg sweeping but not much real proper shin kicking in that video. Also too much use of the arms to wrestle the opponent to the ground.

Does rugby include sevens?

Poledancing shouldn’t be in the Olympics. It should have a World Cup of Poledancing that is bigger than the Olympics.

I agree. However, synchronized poledancing would be right up the Olympics’ alley. I’m also in favor of introducing animals other than horses to the Games. Might dolphins adapt to chlorinated pools? And the 15000m three-legged wildebeest relay would be awesome.

And the 15000m three-legged wildebeest relay would be awesome.

Especially if the spectators get to barbecue and feast on the 4th leg of the competitors while the event is in progress.

I note that the International Quidditch Association has a commitment to amateurism which would warm the withered heart of Avery Brundage:

No team or club of any kind which is part of the IQA may earn a personal profit from their activities. Teams may engage in fundraisers, but all of the money earned must be directed entirely toward supporting and sustaining their team or donated to nonprofit or charitable organizations. Teams that do not comply with these rules are not considered to be part of the IQA and may be subject to litigation for their actions.

Foosball. Sadly, Asteroids and Donkey Kong helped kill it off during Reagan’s first term.

Parkour. Miniature golf. Pac-Man. Competitive eating. Evangelical preaching. Air guitar. Fasting. Iron chef. Mountain climbing. Oyster shucking. Tax evasion.

I am 58 years old and never ever heard of ‘handball’ before, even though I have watched the Olympics on TV many times. It has a Wikipedia entry, though.

But what flag would they play under?

Cayman Islands.

“White people who go out of their way to announce they don’t like basketball should know that some people will place them in their “possibly racist” mental category until they prove they don’t belong there.”

Cannoneo. . . going for the gold in Olympic Concern Trolling. . . AND HE STICKS THE LANDING!!!!!

Jacob Hartog #37

Olympic sports should …
D. Not be something you have to smile while doing.

I know synchronized swimming is really difficult, but it’s still not a sport.

Excerpt: “The mainstream press began to focus on a specific playing style of New York schools based on constant motion, quick passing, and deliberate cuts to the basket. Both Jewish and non-Jewish commentators connected this style to the mental acuity and lack of size of Jews. This style challenged Western teams who played with the more open, fast-breaking style. The doubleheaders became testing grounds for regional supremacy.” (My maternal grandfather was a Jewish player coach in the teens and twenties).

“And speaking of equestrian events, how does everyone feel about buzkashi?”

Beat me to it. The Olympics need more goat carcasses.

Olympic flash mobbing? Could be dangerous: if a bunch of Pakistanis appear on the high street in Chipping Norton, and start acting oddly and in concert, it might not be handled correctly by local authorities.

How about mule dressage?

http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20100409/NEWS0107/906080305/

A fine first effort from Healy, here on the second day of the trolling competition.
The scores are going up:
9.2
8.4
9.0
9.1
7.2

I accept this medal on behalf of all the pioneering concern trolls who toiled in those dark days when our sport was not even recognized as such by the IOTC.

But honestly, I didn’t mean it as prick-ish as it came off. In my U.S. experience, basketball hating is prominent in racist signaling, that’s all. Probably no more relevant to this thread than the fact that homophobes mock ice dancing. Consider me trolled.

It’s because there are fuddy-duddies like you on the IOC that the market created the X Games.

Kabaddi should be an Olympic sport, but I won’t hold my breath.

Cheese rolling?

Kabaddi should be an Olympic sport, but I won’t hold my breath.

I was about to mention that. The ‘K’ sports are under-represented. A case could be made for Kho kho or Korfball as well.

if kabbadi were made a sport, perhaps pakistan could win a medal!

I assume polo itself would be upper left with the other non-dressage horsery?

I’m that this is all tongue in cheek, but I hate to see the myth perpetuated that sailing is an upper-class sport – it’s simply not true, especially for the dinghy/small keel boat classes featured in the Olympics, which most people sail for recreation or club racing.

Quidditch is a bullshit English prep school sport, like rugby and football.

By the way, when I was new to Crooked Timber one of the editors asked me not to use mildly obscene words, because it triggered school filters and such. I am glad to see that policy is no longer in effect.

All right.

I’ll bite.

The failure to give baseball the highest y-coordinate of all clearly disqualifies you from talking about which sports are great or not great.

And by the way: tennis, table tennis, volleyball, badminton, handball? How many versions of “Let’s hit something back and forth until someone misses,” can anyone stand?

Delighted to see walking right down there. In addition to the horrendous way the athletes bend their legs, which always looks like they’re about to break with bits of bone poking through, and makes me want to hurl, dude, if you need to get there quickly, just run.

If we can’t get Tug-of-War back into the Olympics, maybe we should shoot for getting Battle of the Network Stars back on TV.

#100

OK. So it seems to be a sort of anti-soccer. An improvement over soccer, anyway.

I would guess that making a class issue of any sport in the Olympics is a dead end, since one country’s elite sport is another country’s workhorse. e.g. skiing &c are elitist in Australia, rugby is working class in NZ but not Oz, horse-riding is pretty ordinary activity in Mongolia, etc.

Beach volleyball: if you didn’t see Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh (US) win 21-18, 21-19 against No. 22 Natalie Cook and Tamsin Henchley of Australia in London, you missed an amazing match. Both teams were simply superb, and the last point was incredible. Hopefully that shows up on YouTube or somewhere. I’d never seen Natalie Cook before, and at 37, she was impressive for any age.

“Btw, does anybody know why they ditched the Tornado class?”

Good question. I would like to see something like the Sidney Harbour 18’s only at a fragility level that it would be more of a demolition derby type sport. Now that I think of it why isn’t demo derby a Oly sport. Sure is a cheap sport.

I would support Olympic Walking if it were done with a 55lb load over hills, because the result would be vast amounts of Olympic r & d into better rucksacks, walking boots etc which would benefit the millions of Brits who like hillwalking.

Clearly, Calvinball should be placed at the very top right.

Well, at least the way I play it.

I did a double-take rereading this and seeing mention of “tape delay”. Next time I’m in the US, let me tell you about this Intertubes thing we have here which might help you avoid this.

Not that we needed the Intertubes – Australians routinely stay up until 2am to watch the qualifying heats in the Slovenian handball championships and other such vital sporting events, and the results are common currency first thing next morning, so there’s no point in tape delay.

re 110, the ancient and traditional sport of synchronised boxing is otherwise known as Irish stand down. The scoring is very simple – it’s always 1-nil.

ballroom dancing is better for gender equality.

I once tried to figure out why I thought some sports were “real” and others were not and came up with this pseudo-theory:

Sports are structured activities that act as metaphorical substitutes for fighting, racing, or hunting. The “core” sports are thus boxing, wrestling, and most kinds of track and field; more elaborate sports like soccer, football, tennis, and basketball are variations on fighting and racing; even baseball relies on the hunting skills of hitting and throwing.

But there’s a simpler rule–if a sport requires a panel of expert judges to decide whether one competitor is better than another, then it’s closer to artistic performance (dance is the closest analogy) than sport.

YMMV, of course. It’s not quite a match for Kieran’s scatter plot, except maybe for a tight line from lower left to upper right.

Unfortunately for the RSA theory, I think it classifies darts as a sport.

My criteria for a proper Olympic sport are three, and simple:

1) No sports that need judges.
2) No team sports. (Time-trials are in, mass-start cycling is RIGHT OUT.)
3) No sports where the equipment can’t be standardized. (Gets rid of the equestrian sports.)

Hm, darts makes me think that bowling sports create a difficulty for my theory.

Bowling would definitely be out, but bocce, lawn bowling, and pool would all be in. Perhaps a way to get them out would be to qualify physical interference as *active*. This would seem to lead to the disqualification of any game where a static piece does the job of physically interfering for you – where on one’s own turn, the opponent cannot do anything to modify the field of play.

So for all sports where possession switches, the real sports are ones where a lack of possession does not lead to a lack of any way to modify the field of play. If you can’t do anything when you don’t have possession, you’re playing a pseudo sport. If what you’re doing has only a psychological effect on what your opponent is doing, you’re playing a pseudo sport.

I would make three changes. First, Kendo should be included on the right side of the graph as it is essentially fencing, but with slashing swords instead of piercing ones. Second, the positions of volleyball and beach volleyball should be changed, as beach volleyball is clearly the superior sport in regards to athleticism, strategy, and “summerness”. Third, given the Olympic dedication to “legacy games” like the track and field events, wrestling, soccer and the like, I would include Lacrosse on the right side as well, given its history as the traditional game of North American Natives. It might be worth considering including Ulama as well for similar reasons.

I gotta disagree with those punting for Pankration. Pankration isn’t even a sport, really; it’s a bar-fight in a ring. MMA fights already have a tendency to get out of hand; do we really want to increase that temptation by throwing in gold medals, global fame, the possibility of million-dollar endorsement deals, and nationalism?

Bernard, I would guess that alot of people enjoy the back and forth action of seeing two athletes strike a ball at high velocity, spin and crazy angles for lengthy rallies. It’s fairly constant action. Unlike baseball, where hitless innings, base on balls, strike outs etc., often results in long periods of non-action*.

*I’m mostly playing devil’s advocate here, as I actually love baseball BECAUSE of the quirky rhythm of the game. But I understand why alot of people think baseball snooze-worthy, even though I don’t share the sentiment personally.

No sports that need judges.

It’s a continuum, not a clear divide, between “judge” and “referee”.

If you can’t do anything when you don’t have possession, you’re playing a pseudo sport.

On a related note, proper volleyball and badminton both switched from “you can only score points when serving” over the past 20 years, which has vastly improved them as spectator sports and changed the strategy required to win.

Uncle Ebeneezer,

I would guess that alot of people enjoy the back and forth action of seeing two athletes strike a ball at high velocity, spin and crazy angles for lengthy rallies. It’s fairly constant action..

No doubt they do. I don’t. In any case your description seems to apply only to tennis and table tennis.

Unlike baseball, where hitless innings, base on balls, strike outs etc., often results in long periods of non-action*.

Action, in the sense of demanding physical activity, is not all there is to sports. Hitless innings, walks, and strikeouts all have fascinations. Indeed, walks and strikeouts in particular are often the culmination of very interesting pitcher-batter struggles. At other times a strikeout can be a brilliant performance by a pitcher under pressure, while a walk carries with it portents of disaster that stimulate the attentive viewer rather than boring him.

I could go on in this vein, but I suspect it gets tedious.

I’ll watch the Olympics when they finally include 43-man squamish.

high quality but strictly local interest (Hurling)

Also basketball.

how’re the 70s treatin’ you?

Ferret legging.

Also, the clean and jerk and the snatch should be renamed in order to make the sport appropriate for HS kids.

“If you had chariot racing at the Olympics, -Alcibiades- Romney would sponsor a team which would be so spectacular that on the strength of it he would -persuade the Assembly- win the Election and lead his country to -invade Syracuse- bomb Iran. With disastrous results.”

I can think of all sorts of ways in which that analogy doesn’t really work, but as a specialist in the modern reception of Thucydides I absolutely love it.

What ever happened to that walking sport where people go along jerkily needing to always have part of one foot on the ground?

Uncle Ebeneezer,

Indeed, someone could make those arguments.

Putting bikinis on mountains?

For those who want pole dancing in and may be unaware of it, the international pole dancing federation <a href="http://www.ipdfa.com/events/2010-events/2012-2/"held a contest before the olympics this year, at least partly as a demonstration of the sport for entry into the olympics.

If rhythm gymnastics are allowed, then so should be exhibition fencing, pirate movie-style. One event with stray halyards, one event with candelabras, one event with out-sized capes. Points for technical difficulty, touching the opponent, and of course panache. I would watch the heck out of that.

@ 154

I have long planned to establish a commercial bikini curling league. Given the camera angles usually used in presenting the sport, I think it potentially enormous mass appeal, at least within a certain demographic.

Anything that requires judges to assign points, as opposed to timing or other more objective criteria

There’s the potential for a false dichotomy here. The existence of judges doesn’t necessarily make a sport or event subjective, either wholly or partially. It might just mean it needs experts to assess the objective measure.

Gymnastics is a perfect example of this. No one could seriously argue that the judging of gymnastics is wholly subjective and there is no objective element at all. There is of course going to be some measure of subjectivity, but there are all sorts of measures put into place to try to minimise that. Changes in scoring method mean that the techinical difficult of a routine is scored alongside the judgement of the how good the performance of it is. Using a panel of judges rather than a single one smooths out the subjective element of things, and most events using a panel also chop off the highest and lowest score (or some variation of that method) to get rid of outliers.

Let’s go total old school here. Any sport can be accepted into the Olympics – provided they’re willing to compete naked. With perhaps an exception for the weightlifters.

Now under way: #RejectedOlympicEvents : https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23RejectedOlympicEvents

I don’t know – do the nootropics like these help chess players?

Gymnastics is a perfect example of this. No one could seriously argue that the judging of gymnastics is wholly subjective and there is no objective element at all.

If someone falls off the beam, that’s pretty objective. Similarly, if I can do two flying somersaults and you can only do one, I am objectively better at flying somersaults. In fact nearly all the judging in gymnastics is against objective criteria – it takes skill to be able to judge those given the speed at which gymnasts move, but no more so than boxing.

So you’re reinforcing Katherine’s point. Correct?

Maybe they should bring back plunge for distance as an Olympic sport.

How about tossing the caber and throwing a fifty-six pound weight over a bar? Also, the plunge for distance (or as we called it, the ‘long plunge’) was something we did as a competitive sport when I was at school.

Bernard Y @97
How many versions of “Let’s hit something back and forth until someone misses,” can anyone stand?

Tennis is more like “let’s hit something back and forth with great speed, skill, guile, precision, and also while strategically thinking ahead….”

One person’s “with great speed, skill, guile, precision, and also while strategically thinking ahead….” is many other people’s “until someone misses.”

@Bill #41:

That dressage video is amazing.

@Jackmormon #157:

Yes, yes: pirates, please!

LFC, I assume you have read David Foster Wallace’s essay String Theory. If not, make sure you do. There’s a pretty awesome passage in it detailing how difficult the sport is.

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is 35 and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that weird mix of caution and abandon we call courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical variables. Given a net that’s three feet high (at the center) and two players in (unrealistically) fixed positions, the efficacy of one single shot is determined by its angle, depth, pace, and spin. And each of these determinants is itself determined by still other variables — i.e., a shot’s depth is determined by the height at which the ball passes over the net combined with some integrated function of pace and spin, with the ball’s height over the net itself determined by the player’s body position, grip on the racket, height of backswing and angle of racket face, as well as the 3-D coordinates through which the racket face moves during that interval in which the ball is actually on the strings. The tree of variables and determinants branches out and out, on and on, and then on much further when the opponent’s own position and predilections and the ballistic features of the ball he’s sent you to hit are factored in 36. No silicon-based RAM yet existent could compute the expansion of variables for even a single exchange; smoke would come out of the mainframe. The sort of thinking involved is the sort that can be done only by a living and highly conscious entity, and then it can really be done only unconsciously, i.e., by fusing talent with repetition to such an extent that the variables are combined and controlled without conscious thought. In other words, serious tennis is a kind of art.

If you’ve played tennis at least a little, you probably have some idea how hard a game is to play really well. I submit to you that you really have no idea at all. I know I didn’t. And television doesn’t really allow you to appreciate what real top-level players can do — how hard they’re actually hitting the ball, and with what control and tactical imagination and artistry. I got to watch Michael Joyce practice several times right up close, like six feet and a chain-link fence away. This is a man who, at full run, can hit a fast-moving tennis ball into a one-foot square area seventy-eight feet away over a net, hard. He can do this something like more than 90 percent of the time. And this is the world’s seventy-ninth-best player, one who has to play the Montreal qualies.

One thing that he failed to mention is how difficult it is to return a serve. We often hear about how trying to hit a baseball is the most complex task in sports because of the two rounded surfaces, relative lack of surface area of the bat and ball, and the speed and movement (spin) of the ball. But the batter only has to protect a small area (strike zone) and knows that the pitcher has to get the ball in there. In tennis, the returner has to cover a huge amount of area, and on either side of the body, at any height. The ball is coming at up to 150 mph, flat or with heavy spin and can be anywhere from knee high to 9 feet up (Isner serve), aimed at the body, or completely out of reach. If the returner manages to put the ball back in play, he now has, likely, another ball coming back again at 90+ mph, and he/she must now cover twice as much court laterally, and all the way up to the net in case of a drop shot. Not to mention, if the ball goes from one side of the body to the other, the player often has to change their grip on the racquet handle all while running to get in position to try and track down the 90 mph ball. And that’s before we even get into strategy…

One of the few sports I actually go to watch with any regularity is wood-chopping (a routine event at agricultural shows here in Oz). It’s definitely a candidate for top right, I think.

GaGa!

Oops. I’d have put snooker in bottom right.

Road rage was in the news at about the same time as the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, so it seemed reasonable to propose, as the summer biathlon, driving and shooting. This is not quite as idiotic as it sounds when you consider that the course for the Long Beach Grand Prix is a deliciously curvaceous public roadway, and one wouldn’t necessarily be shooting at the other drivers.

Red Ruffansore said it all back in ’76: “by sports I mean teams, a ball, physical contact, and some real money changing hands.”

Uncle Ebenezeer @183
Thanks. I knew Wallace was a v. good tennis player and had written about tennis and worked it into Infinite Jest (which I couldn’t get into past the first few pages), but I had not read the essay ‘String Theory’.

Let’s go total old school here. Any sport can be accepted into the Olympics – provided they’re willing to compete naked. With perhaps an exception for the weightlifters.

Until you get to the superheavyweight class, there’s no need to exempt the weighlifters. In the classes with weight limits, they are generally impressively and athletically built. There are even a few superheavies that would look good naked. Not many, but a few.

Dressage does belong in the Olympics. It used to be the riding taught to the military before the advent of tanks, etc. Alexander the Great trained his horse in the art of dressage. The horse had to be able to do all sorts of movements on his own as the rider used both hands to fight. It’s a very complex art as you can imagine. Horses were used up until World War 1. Dogs used in war also have special training and they’re still out there.

See, “Disc” sounds like an entire field of endeavor, with competitions for distance and accuracy alongside the team sport of Ultimate.

Given that the ancient Olympics were designed to show off military skills – the javelin, for example, was thrown for accuracy rather than distance, a bit like a giant version of darts – this theme should be followed through in the modern games. Close-order drill, assault course and armoured steeplechase.

Interstellar pig.

I have no doubt that a person should wear special gloves a special glove for it. For example. So there are commercial endorsement possibilities there.

Given that the ancient Olympics were designed to show off military skills… this theme should be followed through in the modern games

Global Thermonuclear War.

Given that the ancient Olympics were designed to show off military skills – the javelin, for example, was thrown for accuracy rather than distance, a bit like a giant version of darts – this theme should be followed through in the modern games. / … / Global Thermonuclear War.

Gold medal automatically awarded to all countries who do not field a team, because the only winning move is not to play. (Which almost turned out to be true for badminton, too.)

LFC and Uncle Ebeneezer,

May I stipulate that tennis is indeed a difficult game to play well, and that the top players are exceptional athletes? Still, I do find it boring to watch, in large part, probably, because I don’t grasp its subtleties. Forgive me, but the post is entitled “Olympic Trolling.”

As to Wallace’s description, I think it’s over the top. There are an awful lot of things that athletes do that, when described in the same physical terms as his description of returning a serve, will sound equally impressive. Similarly, his comparison with hitting a baseball understates the relative difficulty of that task by overlooking or misstating the demands it places on the batter, not the least of which is self-protection.

Just yesterday Felix Hernandez of the Mariners threw a two-hit complete game shutout against the Yankees. That was an exceptional performance by a great pitcher, but it illustrates the point. Hernandez faced 30 batters, of whom four reached base, and only one got as far as second. I’m not sure what the tennis equivalent of that would be.

One point Foster makes about tennis is equally true of baseball. Watching in person conveys a much stronger sense of the difficulty of aspects of the game than watching on TV. What looks, on the screen, like a routine grounder to the shortstop is often in fact a nasty, hard-hit, erratically bouncing ball that the fielder must pick up cleanly, transfer to his throwing hand, and throw accurately and quickly 100-120 feet to get the runner out. Not easy.

As to Wallace’s description, I think it’s over the top.

I like to think he wrote the whole article specifically so that someone could make this pun at his expense. “In tennis, every serve is over the top!” Though I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t choose to contrast tennis with softball, so that we could also call the comparison ‘underhanded.’

Salient at 215: I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t choose to contrast tennis with softball, so that we could also call the comparison ‘underhanded.’

This made me laugh.

Gymnast or swimming training: Starts at age five (give or take)… continues with daily, dedicated, hours of training until reaching the skills, strength, precision and capabilities to achieve the chance to be an Olympian. Beach volleyball training: Begins, probably in late teens after days of keggers on the beach. Then “hey let’s play off our drunk with a pickup volleyball game”. Then, “hey, let’s become Olympians”. There is a marked difference between real Olympic sports and lower right and left quadrant sports such as Beach Volleyball. Anyone can play beach volleyball… no most likely not as well, yet most adults can hit the ball over the net-even when drunk. A select group of people around the world can do an exercise on the balance beam or uneven paralells. The rest of us can’t… even badly…. let alone at the skill level that the Olympic teams do.

Another big issue I have with tv coverage… camerawork. Extreme close ups, that last forever, well into a gymnast’s or diver’s event, so that you end up looking at their eyes, nose and lips (yes, that close) rather than seeing their entire form prepare for their routine, vault, dive or whatever. Winter games are the same, with ice skating the biggest offender. Note to cameraman/director: 99.9% of the time there is NEVER any reason to have extreme close ups …or any close ups… during an athlete’s performance. When the camera work insinuates itself into the actual event, then you end up wondering why you’re not being allowed to watch the event. Instead, you’re watching some camera guy or director’s idea of creativity. What they’re doing is putting their own egos above the material they’re supposed to be shooting, and most likely are totally clueless to what they’re doing. They just don’t get that it’s not about what they think is artistic… it’s about what the audience wants to see.