IdleRich
IdleRich
Anyway, serious question, why isn't squash in the Olympics when tennis, table tennis, badminton and millions of joke sports (see my post from yesterday or whenever it was) are?
I am not sure if formally laid out the requirements of a non-joke sport but I would say something like the following
a) It is played in several countries by quite a few people - it doesn't have to be every country and be hugely popular, but I have a problem with saying that someone is officially the best in the world at something if 99.9 percent of the world have not had a chance to play it or, in fact, have even heard of it
b) Similarly it has to be relatively accessible in terms of what you need to play it - eg if you need to have own a dancing horse or a specific type of yacht or similar to take part in the sport and it thus restricts access to rich people from rich countries, it doesn't meet the Olympian ethos for me.
c) It has to be physically demanding and skillful.
d) It should not require a judge to decide who won. We can see who ran faster or threw that thing further, it's objective - sports that rely on judges going "I rate that twirl at 6.7 and the other one at 6.6" are officially stupid
So, I think that squash is a non-joke sport and it would make sense to put it in there in place of tennis - instead of giving even more exposure to a load of multi-millionaire tennis players who already have at least four higher priority events in the calendar and who are not really gonna get hugely worked up about this, why not create a huge boost for a smaller, underfunded but actually really good sport?
In general I don't see that the Olympics much helps major sports such as football or tennis, and neither do those sports contribute much to the Olympics as their players are part of a different system, earn way more money than the average Olympian and care more about other prizes. Whereas, on the other hand, minority sports such as basketball or squash (potentially) have the opposite, mutually beneficial, relationship to the tournament.
But still they don't bloody listen.
I am not sure if formally laid out the requirements of a non-joke sport but I would say something like the following
a) It is played in several countries by quite a few people - it doesn't have to be every country and be hugely popular, but I have a problem with saying that someone is officially the best in the world at something if 99.9 percent of the world have not had a chance to play it or, in fact, have even heard of it
b) Similarly it has to be relatively accessible in terms of what you need to play it - eg if you need to have own a dancing horse or a specific type of yacht or similar to take part in the sport and it thus restricts access to rich people from rich countries, it doesn't meet the Olympian ethos for me.
c) It has to be physically demanding and skillful.
d) It should not require a judge to decide who won. We can see who ran faster or threw that thing further, it's objective - sports that rely on judges going "I rate that twirl at 6.7 and the other one at 6.6" are officially stupid
So, I think that squash is a non-joke sport and it would make sense to put it in there in place of tennis - instead of giving even more exposure to a load of multi-millionaire tennis players who already have at least four higher priority events in the calendar and who are not really gonna get hugely worked up about this, why not create a huge boost for a smaller, underfunded but actually really good sport?
In general I don't see that the Olympics much helps major sports such as football or tennis, and neither do those sports contribute much to the Olympics as their players are part of a different system, earn way more money than the average Olympian and care more about other prizes. Whereas, on the other hand, minority sports such as basketball or squash (potentially) have the opposite, mutually beneficial, relationship to the tournament.
But still they don't bloody listen.
