The Winter Olympics: No real sports, just silly games
I love the Olympics.
Somewhere between the Olympic flame, Bob Costas and Team USA hording all the gold medals, I just can’t help it. Anyone who’s ever watched both sets of games will agree: The Summer Olympics are just better. Yes, it’s true, the summer events feature a handful of ridiculous spectacles under the guises of ‘sports,’ such as handball, table tennis and badminton, but these insults to athleticism pale in comparison to their winter counterparts.
Take the event of skeleton for example. No discussion of obscure Olympic sports would be complete without mention of the event in which competitors sled face first down a chute of ice at 80 miles per hour on a space slightly larger than a dining hall tray. Revived in the 2002 Nagano games for the first time since 1948, skeleton actually did not derive its name from the high number of casualties inflicted on the masochists who have attempted it, but I’m pretty sure it comes from the Greek word ‘skeltos,’ meaning ballsy, suicidal men who slide down mountains head-first.
‘I was watching skeleton the other day and it looks really scary and dangerous,’ said William Stewart, a freshman biology major in The College of Arts and Sciences. ‘Those guys are ballsy.’
While the spandex-outfitted daredevils admittedly are not lacking any courage, their sport is better suited for the X-Games than the Olympics, because, like all X-games events, skeleton demands more insanity than skill.
The gold medal for Olympic sporting stupidity goes to the little-understood game of curling. The event S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications alumnus Bob Costas dubbed ‘chess on ice’ is actually no more than four middle-aged dudes trying to position a rock into a circle using brooms. But let’s face it: Chess isn’t a sport. So it hardly seems fair that curling gets to be one. What’s worse than the sport itself are the ‘athletes,’ who receive gold medals for their efforts in swatting stones down a lane of ice when they should be getting a punch in the face from Captain Planet for using polluted jet fuel to fly halfway around the world and sweep rocks at each other.
‘It’s a sport based heavily on skill,’ said Courtland Bradford, an undecided freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences. ‘It’s not as physical as other sports, but it’s all about precision,’ Bradford said. Sure. Admitting you are an Olympic curler is the equivalent of shouting ‘I have a small penis!’ and ‘I never get laid!’ in the middle of a crowded mall.
Why curling anyway? The International Olympic Committee could have picked from a vast array of events cooler than curling. Like icicle growing and igloo building.
I have little doubt the IOC allows the aforementioned tomfoolery to continue only because of the Winter Olympics’ overall lack of competitiveness. Speed skating, cross country skiing, ice hockey and the newly added snowboard cross stand alone as the only Winter Olympic sports involving rivalry against something other than a clock. Alas, there is a remedy for each of the inane Winter Olympic events.
Skeleton needs to incorporate some strategy in order to win the respect of real athletes. The extreme sledding would benefit from a revision of rules sending sliders plummeting to the bottom together, instead of individually. Liability, shmiability.
As for curling, the only way to improve this Olympic embarrassment is to disband it completely and host biyearly ceremonies ridiculing its former existence. Nancy Cantor will erect a statue on a perfectly good sledding hill to commemorate the former sports practicality.
The Olympic committee would be wise to make these alterations to the program of the 2010 Vancouver games. Stop by Schine Student Center all this week to sign the petition for these improvements, in addition to the sports of dog sledding, monster snowplow racing and synchronized alpine tree logging for the next Winter Olympic Games. Shotgun on captain for the snowplow team.
