Olympic issues

Yesterday, purely because of circumstances after 48 hours ‘on the road’ in various places, was a bit of a personal rest day and I spent some of it dipping in and out of the television coverage of the Olympics.

Here are some observations based upon what I saw – and heard on the radio – yesterday:

First up came the initial events of the two-day women’s track-and-field heptathlon, i.e. the 100 metres hurdles and the high jump, in which British interest was focused on the duel between defending Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill and rising star Katarina Johnson-Thompson (aka ‘KJT’).

This remains an opportunity to review again the advantages and disadvantages of different body types in sporting events.

Much is made of tall, rangy people being ideal for events such as rowing, basketball, volleyball and swimming (most-decorated UK sportswoman rower Katherine Grainger’s rowing partner Victoria Thornley was discovered through a UK ‘Sporting Giants’ programme not least because she stands 6 feet 4) and this begs issues of principle such as whether e.g. those with talent but somehow ‘event disadvantaged’ body-types should be given handicap-support, or even their own events.

Heptathlon is a case in point. Here Ennis-Hill is a ‘pocket rocket’ at 5 feet 4 and 9 stone – helpful for speed and running events, rubbish for throwing ones – whilst KJT (6 feet and 10 stone 10 pounds), no slouch in sprints, excels in the high jump.

For the record, after day one yesterday, Ennis-Hill is leading the field and KJT is in fourth position after a very disappointing shot putt having earlier registered a heptathlon world record high jump mark.

My biggest impression of the competition, however, was the paucity of the crowd in the athletics stadium. Commentators and Olympics authorities can gloss over or ‘explain’ the poor turn outs at some Rio events (e.g. the shooting, equestrianism and archery) – yesterday the talk was of Brazilians not being ‘morning’ people, poor transport infrastructure, high prices and indifferent weather – but frankly it doesn’t look good, even if some might wonder does it even matter if your ‘live’ television broadcasts are supposedly reaching between 500 million and 3 billion people worldwide.

Next up I caught a snatch of the dressage competition – viz. reigning Olympics solo gold medallist Charlotte Dujardin on her mount Valegro performing in the team competition.

I had conflicting reactions to this. First of all, how do they do it? To this inexpert onlooker, the ability of a rider and horse to work together in perfect synch and with such precision – still less how the hell you persuade a horse to prance like that and then switch its front legs over again and again and do that other stuff – seems uncanny and extraordinary. Previous to this I thought of horses as merely big, expensive, complicated to keep and – above all – thick. After yesterday I’m now convinced they’re at least as intelligent as their riders. I guess that’s a plus in my quest to improve as an all-round human being.

Simultaneously – especially in the light of the vast banks of empty seats at the arena – and negatively, I began to question exactly what equestrianism is doing in the Olympics.

Okay, I ‘get’ the fact that the Olympics represents the pinnacle of equestrian competition and that every four years its leading exponents have the opportunity to test themselves against the best … and also place their sport in the shop window for the benefit of the world television audience. However, when you set against that the lack of public interest on the ground in equestrianism, the sheer scale degree of government funding it takes to set up and maintain a production line of leading exponents of the art, and the tiny number of people who actually take part in the sport – what is the justification, especially when the outcome is determined by highly-detailed and obscure subjective ‘judging’ criteria that (however competently the expert pundits commentating upon it do their job, and yesterday they were excellent) that, with the best will in the world, the average punter watching it at home has but a finger-tip hold upon what is going on?

It takes you back to the old chestnut argument as to ‘what is a sport?’ and/or which sports should be allowed in the Olympics.

For, if you have equestrianism, shooting and archery (and all have their vociferous supporters) within the Olympic family, then why not also darts, snooker, falconry, speed chess, Monopoly, shove-halfpenny, cribbage, donkey derbies, hang-gliding and croquet?

Furthermore – and you’ll have to excuse me here for not getting as over-excited and adoring as the BBC commentators and presenters out in Rio – but the admittedly remarkable exploits of Michael Phelps in now amassing a world record 22 Olympic gold medals, or even Katie Ledecky winning 4 individual golds, in the Olympic pool simply reinforce my view that swimming medals should not be treated at ‘true’ Olympic medals.

For me, swimming is a bit like wheelchair racing in the Paralympics. When you can have one (no doubt exceptional) exponent who can not only qualify to enter – but actually win – more than say a maximum of three (I might even suggest just two) Olympics events then plainly the standards in said sport cannot be very high.

In Paralympic wheelchair racing, for example, Britain’s David Weir had won gold medals at every length of race from 100 metres to marathon. In men’s swimming, Phelps has won golds at virtually every length of race and swimming stroke known to man, including in relays. That signifies to me that either men’s swimming generally is pretty damned poor quality-wise (based simply upon the fact that one individual can dominate it to that degree), or alternatively that – in the sport of swimming – no competitor should be allowed to enter more than two events at a single Olympics.

Only that way, in my view, could Phelps be considered alongside such greats as track & field’s Mo Farah or Lasse Viren.

Discuss!