To summarize my position on this:
1. Not everything athletic is a sport and not everything athletic should be an olympic sport.
2. If one form of dancing qualifies as a sport, why not all of them? Or at least some of them?
1. There are many examples of athletic activities that just aren't a sport. Hiking is athletic and isn't a sport. Jumprope, rock climbing, walking on stilts, pushups, arm wrestling, cheerleading, yoga, pilates, bungyjumping..
"It's athletic, so it's a sport and belongs in the olympics" is not a good argument, IMO. "It's athletic AND competitive" is a slightly better argument, but there are nevertheless examples of athletic & competitive things that just aren't sports either. Like arm wrestling.. or competitive handstands. or competitive grape stomping. I'm sure there are far better examples.
2. Why should breakdancing be the only dance that's deemed to be an olympic sport? Yes, sure, I understand that a group of people lobbied for this to happen, and that's in part why it did, but there are literally tens of thousands of types of dances out there, if not more. If we're going to make just one of them an olympic sport.. what about the others?
Swimming is another group of activities that's made the olympics. Consider that there exist far less swim styles than types of dances, yet.. do we only have 1 or 2 swimming categories at the olympics? Nope, there's a whole bunch. There's events revolving around the distance, events revolving around the type of swim, there's group swimming events, and probably others I'm forgetting.
Even cycling has 11 different events. And IMO cycling is far more of a specific activity than the vague notion of "dancing", of which there are thousands of various forms.
If we are going to accept that dancing is an olympic level activity and introduce dancing as a group of events into the olympics, we need to bring in a lot more of them than just one. From what I understand there are zero plans for anything of the sort - breakdancing is sort of the only one that's made the cut.
And sure, the following are sort of dances that are or have been at the olympics at some point: Figure Skating, Gymnastics, Synchronized Swimming, Pole Dance.. What pattern do I see here? None of them are something you'd see on the dancefloor, like breakdancing. Breakdancing belongs more in the category of the tango, the waltz, swing, and tapdancing. Not ski jump, volleyball, hockey, or the 100 metre relay
My position is that something like breakdancing would be better suited for a multi-dance event revolving around dancing (and not sport), something where dancers get together and where various forms of dance are performed and judged.
I don't expect everyone or anyone to agree with me, but that's my position on breakdancing in the olympics. It seems obvious that the only reason they accepted it as an olympic sport is because they are hoping it brings in more viewers, specifically more younger viewers. It's all $$$. If people were lobbying to get skanking or the macarena into the olympics instead, it would never happen.
@warpus, I'm going to ask you about your Olympic viewing experiences. Mine began in February 1988, when Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics. I actually knew one of the performers in the Opening Ceremonies. Even Red Deer hotel rooms were sold out because Calgary was close enough to make the commute worthwhile.
My grandmother insisted that I tape the Opening Ceremonies, and holy crap, it was a challenge. They were shown on about half a dozen channels, both Canadian and American, and no two of them had commercial breaks at the same time. Even so, I got most of it.
It was spectacular, and at that point I decided to watch as much as I could, even the sports I'd never heard of (ie. biathlon, which is a combination of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting). There were some interesting controversies that year, over equipment - that was the first year that clapper skates were allowed in Olympic speedskating competition. Some people got sniffy over the 'quality' of the competitors, saying that Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards shouldn't have been allowed to compete in ski jumping, and they figured it was ludicrous for Jamaica to have a bobsled team. Others said that they did so for the joy of competing, which was definitely part of the Olympic spirit.
And there was a giggle-worthy moment (besides the ladies' barrel wrestling at the mini-Stampede they put on for the international visitors): The Americans had been so insistent that Calgary hold the Olympics in February because of sweeps month. The Calgary Olympic Committee tried to explain that February wasn't a good month due to the chinook winds. The Americans brushed that off, got their way about the dates, and one morning they woke up and started demanding to know WTF happened to all the SNOW?!
The Calgary Olympic Committee said, "We told you so." The chinook had come as expected and melted so much snow on the ski runs that they had to make artificial snow in order to hold the ski events.
The talk of the '88 Olympics was, among a bunch of other incredible stories, the Battle of the Brians - Canadian Brian Orser vs. American Brian Boitano. They were so closely matched in skill that either of them could have won gold. As it turned out, Boitano had the skate of a lifetime and Orser made a small mistake that lost him the gold by 1 tenth of a point.
The thing about figure skating that appeals to me is how the skaters interpret the music. The best ones tell a story even when the program isn't obviously based on a movie soundtrack. And as I watched and listened to the commentators, I learned what to look for in the skaters' programs - what they were required to do, how they had to do it, what constitutes a mistake, what's considered sloppy, and how incredibly technical it all is. They don't just make it all up on the fly. And skaters' training includes much more than just on-ice training. They need to cross-train in both athletics and dance, to be able to pull off those long programs and make them look effortless. The psychological pressure on these athletes is incredible.
Here's Boitano's performance:
And here's Orser's performance:
I'll admit it: I was rooting for Orser (naturally), but Boitano had the superior program. Oh, and the bronze was won by Viktor Petrenko, of Russia. Petrenko was only 17 at the time, and by the time of the next Olympics, Canada's Kurt Browning was firmly established as King of the Quad (the two Brians retired from amateur competition after the 1988 Olympics).
The women's singles had a rivalry going on as well: The Battle of the Carmens. East German Katarina Witt vs. American Debi Thomas, both skating to the music of "Carmen." Witt won, as expected, and Thomas choked. She didn't win gold, or even silver. She had to be satisfied with bronze, because Canada's Elizabeth Manley had the skate of
her lifetime and won silver:
Again, I defy anyone to not see the athleticism necessary to pull this off. The commentators point out some of the jumps and other elements that the skaters have to do. Back in the late '80s, part of the marks they received was for figures - the skating equivalent of scales in a music exam (I had to learn a lot of that for my Western Board of Music exams; both figures and scales are a grueling slog, but it's also the foundation for everything else and they had to demonstrate their proficiency at it).
Now, dancing in general. I don't discount breakdancing as an athletic endeavor. Clearly you have to be in good shape to do it well. How they decided on ways to judge it, I don't know. I've never been interested in watching it, and never bothered watching even a single minute of the Paris Olympics. Just reading about how the swimmers were getting sick in the river was enough of a turnoff. I didn't even bother watching the opening and closing ceremonies.
Some years ago there was talk of making ballroom dancing an Olympic sport. There were a lot of naysayers, but again, it is something that can be considered athletic and measurable at the elite levels. I used to watch world championship ballroom dancing on TV. Some of those teams were amazing. As I recall, Canada's best team at the time were from Quebec.
Oh, and your contention that you'd never see figure skating on a dance floor? Well, normally not. But ice dancing is essentially ballroom dancing on skates. And you remember that old dance number to "Singing in the Rain" by Gene Kelly?
Here's Kurt Browning doing it on skates:
