The Olympics (A RANT)

I don’t mind the Olympics. I don’t mark it down in my calendar or tune any part of my life in its direction, but I do appreciate it’s drama and newsworthiness.

But there are a few things that annoy and perplex me. (Apart from its disgusting BUSINESS side).

And swimming is chief amongst the things that grate me for being both annoying AND perplexing. The annoyance of swimming is begins with the fact our TV feed of the Olympics is ridiculously skewed to swimming events. I have learnt to live with this but in doing so it has been just a tiny bit satisfying these Games to see us doing so badly in the pool and these trumped-up “heroes” just being quite ordinary. And then these “heroes” confronted with this pedestrianism just melt and start weeping like babies.

But crucially — the PERPLEXING part is to do with the fact I thought the Olympic’s motto was “Faster, Higher, Stronger”.

And so it makes no sense to me why swimming has FOUR disciplines — THREE of which are retardations of the process of swimming — and consequently, very opposite to the Olympics Motto. Breast-stroke, Butterfly and Back-stroke are processes that are redundant and contrary to any Olympic ideal. They are deliberately inefficient, deliberately slower, and well, just deliberately self-indulgent.

I was talking to some friends about this today and the only other sport we could think of that acted this way was ‘walking’ (which in itself is an absolute joke) and the ‘triple jump’ and maybe ‘shot put’.

See the Olympics, I believe, was established upon the focus of testing military skills. It’s raison d’etre was warfare training or replicating conditions involved in ancient battles. Even modern day team sports are essentially replications of ancient scrimmages. Most team sports like rugby and soccer and gridiron, or whatever, are about possession of territory – just like war.

So any Olympic event that doesn’t involve skills that could be replicated in ancient (or modern) warfare is stupid in my opinion.

JUST SAYING.

PS Beach Volley Ball just might be in that stupid category too.

EDIT:

I might have been too hard on breast-stroke. It has a definite military application in the sense that it is the quietest form of swimming and thus would be appealing to anyone sneaking up on an enemy or those trying to allude.

Also – the “court sports” like Tennis and Badminton are similarly without any military application. They are also just useless cause they are the privilege of anyone with money. These are sports you cannot indulge in unless you have funds. Even basketball requires a net and hard flooring.