Only now that T20 cricket is played in many countries including USA and continental European countries does it make sense to have cricket in the Olympics. That really only became true in the past year with USA participating in the ICC T20 World Cup.
With older forms of the game (5-day test cricket and 1-day/50-over cricket), matches took too long and it was played by too few countries to make sense.
I’m sure another motivator to include cricket in the Olympics is to appeal to viewers in/from India, Pakistan and other south Asian countries that aren’t so prominent in other Olympic sports.
I’m kind of surprised bowling was an event (briefly) but now is not. I don’t keep up with it but I’ve somehow been bowling in a variety of countries. Is it the professional game is just too biased towards the USA? I believe top player is Australian?
Also I have to imagine Pickle Ball will be featured in the next Olympics. Maybe it can take break-dancings spot.
It was an event at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, but attempts to have it made a permanent event failed, apparently partly because it requires expensive facilities that aren't always available in poorer countries. Doesn't seem to have been a blocker for sailing or ski jumping...
> Doesn't seem to have been a blocker for sailing or ski jumping...
The boats they use in the Olympics are generally standardized designs that have been around for a very long time.
The most common Olympic boat is the Laser, which has been around since the 1960s. You can make one yourself if you feel like it. They'll take out a measuring tape and if all the dimensions are correct you are good to go. You could buy an Olympic-quality one from a manufacturer for $6k or less, including all the sails. You can watch out for a Craigslist post offering one up for free if you just come get it. There are stacks and stacks of them all over sailing clubs everywhere in the world - because they've been building them exactly the same for 70 years. There are so many Lasers out there people don't know what to do with them.
The exact kiteboarding thingy they use can be bought off the shelf at plenty of sailing stores for $3k or less.
Yes, the bigger boats they are using for the two-person races can get pricy, but that's just a fraction of Olympic sailing.
They held an event in 1936 and tried to make it an official part of the 1940 Olympics. If the Olympic games of 1940 hadn't been cancelled it might have made it in.
Bowling lanes are a bit more involved than a race track, but it doesn't seem that involved. It's basically waxed wood flooring with some dividers. You can just put that down in a regular stadium for a couple days.
Normally bowling alleys are expensive because of the machinery, but the Olympics aren't lacking in manpower. Just dedicate one person per lane to manually setting the pins. If you dress them up a bit that can even add some visual flourish.
The concern isn't that the country hosting the Olympics won't be able to afford a bowling alley, it's that competing in the sport would be economically out of reach for much of the world.
Tim Duncan famously took up basketball after his swimming career was derailed when a hurricane destroyed the only pool on st Croix, and they couldn't rebuild it.
>Plus, as another poster pointed out, I think several other sports would be rejected for the same concerns if they weren't effectively grandfathered in.
There's no such thing as grandfathered in, events are we considered every olympics. Just because there is no world where the 400 m sprint will be removed does that mean it is grandfathered in. Wrestling was almost removed from the Olympics a few years ago. Which is one of the actual events from the ancient olympics.
I am aware, which is why I said "effectively." The bar for removing a sport is different than for adding one. For one thing, swimming and similar events have over a century of work making them more accessible.
But doesn't the same line of though still apply? Making a bowling lane in your back yard or in a community center is pretty cheap if you set the pins manually.
In terms of costs for a training spot with Olympic-like conditions it would be pretty middle of the pack and probably in the cheaper half. It's more expensive than say table tennis or marathon, but a lot cheaper than swimming, pole vault or golf, never mind the heavy hitters like ski jumping.
Making a 60ft flat level surface is harder than you'd think, and even with your human pin setters a lane would effectively allow 1 or 2 people to practice at a time.
Plus, as another poster pointed out, I think several other sports would be rejected for the same concerns if they weren't effectively grandfathered in.
My local bowling alley charges $25 an hour to rent a lane. Practicing
20 hours a week makes it $2000 a month. Admittedly, they probably have strong discounts for someone bowling that much, but that's only the price for a beginners practice spot.
Winter sports and some older competitions probably match that, but I think they try to be more aware of that for summer sports. Compare it to another recent addition, skateboarding. One of the competitor's (medalist I think?) family went without electricity for a month to afford her first board, but after that it with some luck it was affordable enough to get her to the Olympics.
The sports for 2028 have already been decided. Flag football, baseball/softball, cricket, lacrosse and squash will be added. Breaking will not be included.
Flag Football sounds interesting. I’m curious if much of the world will compete in it. Looks like a fun format with a small field, 5 players per side and clear rules - 4 tries to get a touchdown. And very fast I’m guessing.
Apparently 42 teams competed in the last IFAF Flag Football World Championship. More countries than are members of the International Kabaddi Federation.
Though tbf, I'm not sure any competition with an artistic element belongs in the Olympics. I would ditch stuff like figure skating and synchronized swimming. Gymnastics can stay, but I'd prefer it be more standardized.
All the sports you mention have had most of the artistic elements beaten out of them by standardised scoring systems. No one wins olympic gold in figure skating or synchronised swimming by being artistic, they do it by repeatedly and perfectly executing the highest scoring techniques as defined in the rule book.
How familiar are you with gymnastics scoring? It's quite rigid. The ongoing controversy is not really related to the objectiveness of judging, but an administrative error (assuming the IOC is truly in the wrong here).
I saw fire fighting was in there. That could make a comeback, there is (at least in the US) actually still a national circuit of firefighting challenge courses and they are pretty sweet to watch. Plus, firefighters are good for PR in basically every country in the world, right?
I've also seen lineman challenges where they compete to rescue a dummy from the top of a pole. Lineman is always interesting to me since nobody wants to get close to the kinda things they have to get close to, so they end up needing to do all of their own stunts.
I find it sadly shocking that they have "breakdancing" as an Olympic sport and not squash -- which is played worldwide at a very high level. It's not as popular in the US as other countries, but at least as popular as badminton.
Honestly the last one needs to be a thing for so many reasons. I had an experience in the Florida keys a number of years ago that has stuck with me. I was on a snorkeling charter and some foreigners were aboard [of Asian decent]. (I've included their race here just for context, not racism, as formal swimming lessons overseas are not nearly as common as they are in the USA). I was near the front of the boat on the second level when I saw someone splashing. I had a small flashback of what a swim coach had told me at 13 years old: Drowning does not look like drowning in the movies. I yelled that captain who was setting an anchor, and the first mate who was helping tourists put their fins on. Both looked confused what I was trying to signal through the bussle, so I dove off the second deck and swam to the person. He was under before I got behind him, so I yanked him above water by his un-inflated vest and tipped his head back over my shoulder. He rapidly tried to pull me under so I had to restrain his arms with one hand and inflate his vest with my other hand and mouth, while treading with just my legs. Scariest 10s of my life, but it was over that quick once I got a little positive buoyancy into his vest. The current had pulled us about 35 yards from the boat at that point so I had to swim towards the boat a bit to grab the rescue line. Captain and first mate thanked me profusely. The guy couldn't speak english and didn't realize he needed to wait in line for the first mate to check everything (including vest inflation). Instead he just jumped in off another part of the boat. The tour company gave us a refund and bought us dinner.
What I'd like to see come back is amateurship, or at least non-professional, non-salaried participants again. Like, it's not their main gig. They do something else, but are level A amateurs who love a sport or activity without getting paid a salary.
Because no one watches something like the shot put other wise, EVER.
It use to be the Olympics were the one showcase for the non-popular sports.
Case in point, the shot put. One of the long standing "unbreakable" records was Randy Barnes shot put from the late 80s.
Ryan Crouser broke that last year and won the gold medal this year, again.
It is an incredible accomplishment but no one cares because Lebron and Steph Curry were going for the gold or why watch the shot put when you can watch break dancing.
I feel bad for anyone who is not old enough to have watched it when it was all amateurs. It was something so special.
Just have the Taylor Swift karaoke event already. I am sure that would get great ratings and that is all that matters obviously.
I don’t see why allowing professionals to compete prevents anyone from enjoying other events.
It sounds like your complaint is that the professionals consume the oxygen of the Olympics and prevent the rest from getting as much share of the public’s attention.
For the record, the break dancing was really fun to watch, all the track and field events are always fun to watch, and the training and dedication to all the competitors is admirable.
The real problem is that the enshitification of all modern media means that there’s not a single repo of video of all the events. Even finding the video of one specific event is a gigantic PITA.
I want to see scrappy people with verve vie for glory, not a bunch of overpaid spoiled egotists showing off.
Professionals already get good remuneration, sponsorships and glory --have a forum for the college student and for the guy or gal who really love this one activity on the side so much they're willing to give it their all despite the meager monetary reward.
I goddamned hate these billion-dollar industries contaminating the spirit. I hate the quantization of performance where they're scientifically extracting the last bit of juice that they can out of a body. What the hell is the fun in that?
Not the Olympic "cannon shooting" event, but there is a tradition of athletic competitions for gun crews. A 'famous' example is the Royal Navy Field Gun competition, an obstacle course for howitzer and crew:
Architecture event: provide a site in the host city and make it a design competition, and then build the winner. The hall of submitted 3D models would be a great attraction.
That would be nice, though modern official architecture (and art) always ends up quite ugly and appalling, so it'd only be nice with proper judges (quite rare apparently).
Architecture and art done on ArtStation alone is superior to anything that is funded by your local government usually.
>so it'd only be nice with proper judges (quite rare apparently).
Taste is just nostalgia with extra steps. Whatever the prestige class was building when the present adults were kids (or during a noteworthy economic boom time) is "good architecture", and everything else sucks.
Why not have all judging panels selected like this? I'd love to see 6 people chosen at random judging the dressage based entirely on whatever they happen think dressage should be judged on. And at the same times the riders are trying to alter their routine based on what they think someone who knows nothing about dressage would want to see in a dressage competition.
Yes, why wouldn't those that trained some disciplines for years want to have their fate decided by complete randoms with no judging experience in their sport!?
One particular difficulty is that now we have hundreds of countries with hundreds of languages (thousands) so you will not be able to put any objective (and probably even subjective) criteria to judge. Some languages have better poetry structure by default (i.e Arabic) and if we translate everything to English (one of the worst languages for poetry in my subjective opinion) then you will lose much of the originality and meanings that is attached to language structures used.
It sounds like "professionals" weren't allowed to compete. Image if no one from the NBA was allowed in the olympic basketball games. It would be pretty second rate.
That's kind of how men's Olympic football is, isn't it? You don't see the top football players in the tournament, because FIFA prevents them:
> In order to avoid competition with the World Cup, FIFA have restricted participation of elite players in the men's tournament in various ways: currently, squads for the men's tournament are required to be composed of players under 23 years of age, with three permitted exceptions.
> It sounds like "professionals" weren't allowed to compete. Image if no one from the NBA was allowed in the olympic basketball games. It would be pretty second rate.
TIL Olympic basketball of my childhood was second-rate.
That was true for a long time, used to be NCAA players competing for olympic medals. I believe the Dream Team was the first team (not sure if ever or in a long time) where Basketball pros could compete in the Olympics.
> “The main stumbling block can be summed up in a few words: fear of the classical,” the baron wrote. He believed this fear permeated every category. Take literature: Writers were “wholly unfamiliar with the joys of violent muscular effort” and therefore “incapable of describing them for a public that was not very familiar with them either,” he bemoaned. “In painting, sports scenes required more line than color, that is to say the opposite of the reigning trends.”
Whether this describes the original reason for removing art events from the Olympics, I don't think it's why we won't bring them back.
I also don't believe it's because poetry is wildly unpopular these days. After all, how closely does anybody follow most Olympic events outside of the Olympics themselves? That's kind of the cool thing about the Olympics: they make you white hot interested in diving, curling, etc., for a little while.
Personally, I think the reason a traditional poetry category wouldn't work is because the idea that you can objectively judge poetry is anathema these days. People would hate it, call the judges sorts of disparaging things. It would only be controversial, not satisfying.
Also, poets themselves generally want their work to be appreciated in a different way other than by live, public snap judgments. Our whole orientation toward art is so different these days that this would all be an alien concept.
That said, a battle rap event seems plausible, and would be pretty interesting. But that's distinct from the type of poetry the article is concerned with, both in form, process, and tradition. Low odds that it'll happen in the short term, but it would be pretty neat if it did.
It's like that fake smile and arm gesture after a landing in one of those gymnastic events. And then to think some are trying to include ballroom dancing as a discipline.
Poetry is a hard sell but musical performance is close to an athletic competition -- requires precision and style.
Host city chooses five songs by living artists in a couple of genres, and for each song they decide whether the competition is technical or stylistic. Live performances, nothing pre-recorded, and professional musicians can represent their country of residence.
How does one judge and score style in this case? Would an EDM and soul fusion cover of Mary Had a Little Lamb defeat an instrumental acid progressive rock version of the song?
So for the technical variants it would mostly be a question mof fidelity.
For the style variants, you could have a bunch of different judging criteria, but in the end, yes, very subjective, and the panel of judges would give ratings, drop the two highest and the two lowest, average the rest. You could even constrain this to matching the genre/style of the original, or specifying a genre/style for the performance independent of that of the original. Or could just go head-to-head and let the judges decide rather than trying to give an objective ranking.
If a host country chose "Mary Had a Little Lamb" as their "song by a living artist" then this competition is taking place in the 1830s and we'd probably need to address that first.
On a similar note, the Irish Free State's first Olympic medal was a silver in Painting at the 1924 games, for The Liffey Swim by Jack Butler Yeats, brother of the better-known William Butler Yeats.
Playing devil’s advocate, many of the judging criteria for the sports seem pretty subjective.
For example if diving or gymnastics was purely objective, you wouldn’t need multiple judges (or any). Track and field is a lot more straightforward in most cases.
I would even go as far to say the “criteria” the judges are looking for have some analogous counterparts in poetry.
I think breakdancing was a sport for this Olympics, so poetry doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. Maybe it’s just not “exciting” to modern people?
Gymnastics and diving have had multiple judges for another reason, which is that the nominally objective portions of the judging involved spotting things at the edge of human perception. (That is, I'm discounting the obviously subjective things like "style".) The judging is definitely not just "hey, that looked good, I think I liked that 8.5 worth"; you can tell just by listening to the commentary. Things like "they're attempting an 8.6 point dive" and "that'll be two tenths off". They're often not guessing at the numbers in question, though it may be a tossup whether the human judges see the same thing the commentators did.
There has been some discussion of moving to computer vision analysis for these portions.
While one could easily judge poetry by equally objective metrics, I don't think it's hard to imagine what the result would be once the min-maxers get into the game.
Love! love love love love love poet,
love! hate no! love love love throw it.
.,!.,!.,,..,,,.!!!!.,.,,.,,!!..,.!
rhyme time lime slime mime mime love,
a a a a a a glove
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o love.
There was a scene in the not particularly accurate First Olympics miniseries back in 1984 where the college students looked at books about the ancient Olympics and saw that the athletes competed in the nude so they came out of the building, sheepishly, in the nude and were sent back by their coach to put some clothes on.
Just looked up videos of the first and second place medalists for breakdancing this year. It was decent, but I've seen better breakdancing in random videos taken on the streets of LA back in the 80's, for example. Or pretty much every single sequence in Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.
It might have to do with the fact that was the very first edition at the Olympics. It may also be the last because it won’t be there at Los Angeles in 2028.
That’s what you say when you don’t accept your defeat but it’s hard to prove. I’ve seen the finals and the Canadian guy who won was clearly better than the French one; if it were 95% politics the French would probably have won.
It matches my reality perfectly, but maybe it doesn't match yours. When medals are clawed back years after the competition and awarded to the loser - there is no other explanation. And the loser with a medal they didn't win is even more of a loser.
Judging by how thing goes in the Olympics and high level competition in general, probably using technical criteria. Like rhymes, meters, and form, quality of delivery with proper prononciation, rhythm and lack of hesitation, grammatical correctness, etc...
Maybe no emotion will come out of it, but writing a sonnet with perfect rime riche an two alliterations delivered with perfect pitch and with the accuracy of a metronome will certainly win gold.
Those aren't decided by judges, they are decided by clocks. Olympic events decided by judges include things like figure skating, gymnastics, and diving.
Those events aren't decided by the judges just going on how 'cool' they think the performance was, but by comparing how close to perfect (as defined in the rule book) the techniques the athlete did was and then giving it a score based on how that technique is scored in the rule book.
The rulebook will say something like "technique A is worth 4.5 points; subtract 0.1-0.3 points if the arms aren't straight throughout the whole technique...". The judges role is then to judge if the arms where in fact straight or not. These sports are a lot more objective than people think.
> giving it a score based on how that technique is scored in the rule book
giving it a score based on the judge's interpretation on how the technique is scored in the rulebook — there have been plenty of unpopular interpretations over the years
Rank the different poetic metres from lowest to highest score? What is objectively the hardest type of metaphors to execute perfectly? How many fewer points should a simile get compared to an equivalent metaphor? Are onomatopoeia worth any points? List all the allowed poetry topics and then given them a base difficultly score from 1-5.
Once you have finished writing the rulebook for Olympic Poetry, do you think the poetry that would result from people going through that rulebook and min-maxing their poem would actually be interesting.
I'm not suggesting that poetry should be in the Olympics, I'm just agreeing with the parent comment saying that judging could be done the same as any other Olympic sport that uses judges.
No it can't. That's GP's point. We can reason that one gymnastics skill is more technically difficult than other skill, with various degrees of certainty. We cannot reason and especially codify the same for poetry or its component parts.
there are existing olympic sports with "artistic" scoring components, and poetry was already in the olympics for nearly 40 years... ya'll are overthinking this
Marathon kayaking is huge in South Africa, Europe, and other countries. Makes a much better show than sprint but marathoners have to move to sprint to go to the Olympics (SA Andy Birket) Much less popular, shorter, less fun.
They’re a thing in the US as well. I think, in fact, that the first slam poetry event took place in Chicago. The youth slams that I heard while I was teaching tended towards overwrought, but I’ve heard some good stuff at the more professional level. HBO used to show slam poets, but I don’t think they do anymore.
Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) and Russell Simmons hosted/ran a TV Series on HBO in the early 2000s called Def Poetry: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329823
And there the contestant from Belgium strikes the one knee bent backwards pose, immediately followed by thoughtful face with sunglasses profile glance in the distance, which makes for ten poses in the first 60 seconds.
- Pigeon racing
- Cannon shooting
- Life saving
Among other interesting entries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_sports_a...