The Olympic Spirits

I am kind of pleased the Olympics are now over. The pressure to watch serious, but very boring sports over entertaining, but very silly sports becomes a bit much after a fortnight. I mean, the events range from watching paint dry (target shooting) to circus events (rhythmic gymnastics), with some recognisable athletic effort somewhere in between (the marathon). I keep wondering what the organiser of the ancient Olympic games would have thought of what goes on 2797 (2021 + 776BC) years after the first event. Once he got over the shock of the presence of women at the games, he would have been baffled by the amount of lycra, as the ancient games were supposedly performed naked. I think of this whenever I hear anything about the Norwegian women’s beach handball team protesting the requirement that they wear bikini’s instead of more practical and modest shorts. I wonder if the organisers are trying to return to a more traditional Olympics by slowly reducing the amount of clothing worn by athletes until we once again achieve full nudity. Although women athletes have been wearing panties and a bra on the track for several years now, I was quite alarmed at how little, if any, underwear the men wear under their running gear. The lack of support provided by ultra breathable lycra is well, quite 776BC.

Pierre de Courbetin, the originator of the modern Olympic Games would be more scandalised. He would be deeply shocked by the swimsuits worn by the female divers and the synchronised swimmers, basically g-strings, they are not designed to withstand the ripping forces of a triple backward somersault. The gymnasts, who spend half their routines with one foot behind an ear, get modest and substantial leotards to wear, but the synchronised swimmers who spend most of the time upside down with their legs spread skywards, sport an alarming lack of coverage. All the sequins in the world don’t make up for the fact that the free routine in artistic swimming is basically pornography.

This is an immense pity because synchronised swimming, or artistic swimming as it is now known, is one of, if not the most difficult sports at the Olympics. How you can compare 4 minutes of holding your breath while thrashing about underwater with archery, a sport performed from a position of the utmost stillness? Although it would be a small leap for our ancient Olympian to accept to the modern bow, one could even explain that bicycles are a modern form of horse free chariot, artistic swimming would be completely incomprehensible to him. We would have to explain that it was the water nymphs or river goddesses entertaining the crowds, rather than an actual sport. I think he would understand. The rest of the female athletes would be seen as competitors from Amazonia and would be treated with the fearful amount of respect afforded to women warriors. We would have a harder time explaining golf to our ancient Olympian than 13 year old girls on skateboards

To avoid this difficult conversation, I have developed a ranking system for Olympic sports. Each sport gets a number of points based on the criteria explained below. Any sport scoring less than three is out. As you can imagine, golf doesn’t make the cut.

• If the sport requires speed, strength or height, give 3 points immediately for fulfilling Olympic requirements.

• Give ONE extra point for each of the following:

• Takes place in water – extra point for the risk of drowning
• Requires a ball – this covers the traditional sports
• Requires basic equipment – like a tennis raquet or a hockey stick
• 2 Points for complex apparatus – like a bicycle, a sailing boat or a horse
• Requires fixed apparatus – like parallel bars, a beam or hurdles
• Requires team co-ordination – like getting a ball into a goal
• Requires team synchronisation – where points are given for the whole team doing identical things like rhythmic gymnastics or synchronised diving
• Requires choreography – any “routine” that has to be memorised
• Requires music – a whole new dimension is added
• Requires superhuman flexibility or agility – starting with the pike position and ending in the triple backwards somersault
• Requires any kind of “aiming” – this is a nod to the ancient Olympics which included archery and actually hitting something with your javelin
• Is a re-creation of some form of fighting or combat – the ancient Olympics were actually war games, so fencing and wrestling qualify.
• Is horribly dangerous – the risk of smashing your face on concrete earns you a danger point. (Skateboarding)
• Requires endurance – should be an Olympic requirement as in higher, faster, stronger, for longer.

Then, any sport that requires sparkly costumes, make up, glitter or a fancy hairstyle, gets a bonus point. That’s why you see the bog ordinary track athletes sporting pink hair and glittery nails – they are trying to up their glamour score.

So golf, would score 2. It has a ball and a basic piece of equipment, a club. It doesn’t qualify.

Water Polo scores a 3, it takes place in water, with a ball and is a team sport. I reluctantly let this one in.

The cycling road event scores a 6: 2 points for complex apparatus, 3 points for speed and 1 for endurance.

Rhythmic gymnastics scores a 6: Points for basic apparatus, flexibility, synchronisation, music and choreography and a bonus point for glamour.

Rowing would score the highest – it’s a water sport (1), with complex apparatus (2) requires speed (3) and endurance (1) and is a team sport (1). That’s an 8 overall.

So handball is out, it only scores 2. So is shooting, although it scores three, for aiming(1) and complex apparatus (2), a point is deducted for requiring the lowest heartrate of all activities, other than sleeping. It doesn’t count as combat as the person being shot isn’t a factor. If they upgraded it to paintball, duelling or some sort of gunfight, then it would score an additional point for combat and everyone’s heartrates would soar.

So, back to the synchronised swimming. With a score of 6, it qualifies as superhuman, which is why only river goddesses and water sprites can do it. It is therefore an exhibition sport staged purely to please the gods which means they will smile on future Olympic games, provided we keep the golfers and handball players out of site in the bunkers.

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