Give Us a Game: Two British Teams that Want to Join the Olympic Party
One goal of the Olympics is to celebrate the essence of sport, and all the athletes at the Beijing games were admirable for the sacrifices they made in training and the skills and spirit they showed in competition. But be honest - were you bored by the weightlifting? Confused by the rules, or even the point, of events like keelboat sailing?
You’re not alone in scratching your head at certain Olympic sports. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) tries to reflect modern sport and keep the hosts and the watching world happy by swapping older or less popular events with new or well-liked sports at every Olympics.
Yet only 28 types of sport are allowed in the games, and the IOC can’t please everybody. It’s moneymaking party everyone wants to gatecrash, and two British teams are queuing up to get in to the 2012 celebration.
Cricket: The Sport Where You Break for Lunch
The athletic merits of any sport where lunch is part of the game are suspicious, yet there are serious efforts to lobby for cricket’s inclusion in the London Olympics.
Traditionally a long game played over a few days, cricket has made some changes in recent years. Twenty20 cricket lasts for about three hours and it’s the game’s attempt to become sexier and appeal to a wider audience. Some of the audience, for example the baseball-fixated Americans and nations such as Brazil who know what a sexy sport is, might think it takes more than rock music and garish kits to make cricket, a sport were standing around is a big part of the game, cool enough for the Olympic party.
Football – The UK Team
Football is, along with the works of Shakespeare and the music of The Beatles, one of the undoubtedly beautiful things that the UK has given to the world. Yet we don’t compete in the football tournament at the Olympics. This might change. Prime Minister Gordon Brown says, "We all want to see a Great Britain football team. It's the right thing to do to have a successful Olympics."
A united UK team under the management of Sir Alex Ferguson would certainly be a strong and entertaining advertisement for the national game in its home country. Better still, we might even win a football tournament at last.
But not everyone shares the PM’s enthusiasm for a GB team. The supporters of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales love the rivalry between the footballing nations. Many worry that a United Kingdom Olympic team is a step towards a UK World Cup team. The man with the real power, FIFA’s erratic President Sepp Blatter, seems to change his mind about a UK team every time he returns from the toilet. We’re still waiting to see if Blatter allows us to play at being together for the Olympics and still return to our happy rivalry for the World Cup. Even then, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland might simply refuse the invitation to celebrate the national game coming home.
What, exactly, is an Olympic sport?
The current shortlist of new sports for London 2012 includes squash, rugby union, golf, karate and – do not adjust your head, this is true – roller sports.
It boils down to this: what is an Olympic sport? The games originated as an entertaining way of keeping fit. Over time, they’ve come to mean much more. The IOC poetically state that "Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind.” You might struggle to think of where the ‘mind’ is involved in such events as weightlifting, and how golf is in any way more part of the Olympic ‘philosophy of life’ than cricket.
In the 21st Century the IOC needs to look at sports that most people actually like and, more importantly, can play. Here’s hoping that someone has a fit of commonsense and invites at least one new sport to the London Games that people want to watch. It would make the party a lot more fun.
Author: Tony Wildman
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