Ohboy. Guys, you have been dissing my favorite Olympic sports for TWO PAGES.
Sorry, but any sort of dancing is not a sport.
Whether an event is more entertaining than another one should have zero bearing on it being included as an olympic event. Olympic events should be restricted to sports only.
I mean sure, if the Olympics wants to rebrand itself from being sports-oriented to being all about competitive events, including both sports and non-sports, then they should do so. I think it would be a stupid move, but if they want to include darts, poker, dancing, chess, checkers, video games, competitive wall painting, and snakes & ladders as events, then they should just rebrand and be honest about what the olympics are even supposed to be.
Obviously the biggest factor here is $$$. They are including non-sports as events because they need to keep the olympics relevant by attracting more viewers. Sure. Fine. I don't care, just be honest about it, and don't pretend that you are only including sports, when you aren't.
Some types of dancing most definitely qualify as sport. You can't tell me that ice dancing isn't athletic. The reason it was nearly dropped from the Winter Olympics wasn't because of a lack of athleticism. It was because of egregiously corrupt judging in the late '90s - mid-'00s. A side deal between France and Russia meant the Canadians were shut out of the medals -
twice, when they should at least have had bronze. And then that disgusting mess that was Salt Lake... the Russian woman fell in the long program. The Canadians skated flawlessly. The Russians were awarded gold. The Canadians were awarded silver. It took days to get a protest heard, but finally the Canadians were awarded gold.
The Russians should have been stripped of their gold. They weren't, though. That team was Sale & Pelletier. The ice dancers who got cheated were Bourne & Kraatz.
Here's Bourne & Kraatz' 1998 Riverdance program:
Ignore the fact that the commentary is in Japanese (1998 was the Nagano Olympics). At least these commentators didn't chatter throughout the program like a lot of the Canadian and American commentators do.
Bourne & Kraatz had to learn the non-ice version of Riverdance before they could devise a program to do it on ice. You try tapdancing while wearing skates. I know I couldn't do it.
The thing about ice dancing is that yes, music interpretation is a huge part of it. But there are required elements that have to be performed in every ice dance. It's up to the teams themselves where and when they do them. Ideally they should be part of the interpretation and enhance it, rather than be a series of mechanical moves that don't do much to interpret the music.
Here's another type of ice dancing (1990). The team is Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay. They have dual Canadian-French citizenship and skated for France.
"Missing" was one of the programs that just blew people away. It's mesmerizing (though I'm probably the only one in this conversation who thinks so). You can see that they execute a series of required lifts, spins, twizzles, free skating, and cover a required pattern on the ice (all figure skaters have to do this). These are where the technical merit scores come from (perfect marks are 6.0).
Again, skating at this level definitely requires athleticism. Ice dancing is both artistic and a
sport.
A competitive physical activity that includes a tool such as a ball, skiis, surfboard, etc. OR forces athletes to compete for some concrete goal such as "fastest to run to such and such wins"
Yes, this eliminates synchronized swimming as a sport, which I don't think it is. It's just water dancing while making silly faces.
How many types of dances do we have around the world? Thousands? More? Polka dancing is a sport now? If all forms of dancing are a sport, this opens the door to soooo many other activities being sports as well. Is competitive yodelling a sport too? Is karaoke a sport? Poker? Video games? Competitive painting?
What I can't fathom is why table tennis is an Olympic sport. Is there any great amount of athleticism involved in this?
My dad once said, it's only a sport if a layman can tell you who's won. So...
Swimming races = sport
Synchro swimming, diving = not sports
Slalom skiing, Nordic skiing = sports
Freestyle skiing = not sport
Ice hockey, speed skating = sports
Figure skating = not sport
I always thought that was a little unfair, especially since it also pretty much ruled out all gymnastic events -- even though (Olympic) gymnasts are quite clearly some of the fittest and most athletic humans on the planet.
I should think that a layman could tell if someone does something egregiously wrong.
Hockey vs figure skating, hooboy. Before he became Canada's premier figure skater, Kurt Browning was into hockey. Like most other little Canadian boys, he had Stanley Cup dreams. But somewhere along the line he tried figure skating, enjoyed it, discovered he was good at it, and has his place in the record books of being the first figure skater to successfully land a quadruple jump in competition. Elvis Stojko, another Canadian figure skater, holds the record of being the first figure skater to successfully land a quad combo in competition.
You know, given how much corruption and controversy there seems to be when it comes to the judging of some of these events.. I am almost tempted to agree with you here.
In the end dancing and synchronized swimming are more like a performative art than a sport to me. A lot more. At least in events like ski jump and boxing, which also have subjective components, there are also non-subjective components like "knock the other athlete out" or "jump really far and stuff"
You bring up an interesting point - gymnastics. Under my earlier definition most of these events would qualify as sport, since these are athletes competing using some sort of a tool. i.e. that horsey thing they spin around on, the balls they throw up in the air, the ribbons, etc. Gymnastics also has a lot of history in terms of it being an athletic sport, roots going back as far as the ancient Greeks (from what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong)
Figure skating? Yeah, that's closer to dancing than a sport for me, but hey at least they use skates - a tool. So under my earlier definition that would be defined as a borderline sport. Having said that, given the controversy when it comes to judging.. and all the bias and corruption.. I wouldn't mind throwing it out completely as well, if we can for a second ignore the feelings of the competitors.
If breakdancing utilized some sort of a tool like a ball they have to balance on their head while breakdancing or something, then it would be more like a sport to me. The 100% subjective judging would still be an issue, but at least then it would fall under my personal definition of what a sport is.
There are two types of gymnastics. The one most people are familiar with are the standard ones where the gymnasts do routines on the parallel bars, the uneven bars, rings, balance beam, vault horse, floor routine on the mat, etc. Then there's the rhythmic gymnastics that uses things like a hula hoop, ball, long ribbons that they twirl around, and so on. I don't find the latter appealing at all.
I'm not sure if trampoline counts as gymnastics. There are gymnastics moves that are performed as part of the trampoline routines, and they have to stick their landings just like the regular gymnasts do.
The thing is, I get the impression that some of the people in this conversation haven't actually really
watched gymnastics and figure skating enough to know that there are most definitely required elements that have to be done the right way for the athlete to get a high score. This isn't the interpretive element. It's a standard thing they all have to do.
It's the same with synchronized swimming, btw. These swimmers have to be fantastically good at holding their breath, swimming, and dancing while being mostly underwater
all at the same time, in perfect unison with their partners. It takes swimming ability and breath training that most people don't have.
I sense an opportunity: Presenting the CFC Olympics!
What other events would there be?
Synchronized cross-posting?
(hilarious video BTW, definitely worth a watch)
