Wednesday, 20 August 2008

Speed Walking: The Olympic Oxymoron

So you won a gold medal in speed walking, eh? Well congratufuckinglations. I'll bet I can kick your ass at power sitting.

If I were in Jacques Rogge's shoes for a day, the first thing I would do is strike "walking" from the next Olympics, and here's why:

  1. It's impossible to officiate. The walkers move their feet so quickly that even if you're looking carefully it's difficult to tell if they have both their feet off the ground for a fraction of a second. Over a 20km course, there's absolutely no way you can properly monitor all "racers". I am sure they cheat their assess off when they're in the middle of the course without any judges near by.
  2. It's a poor spectator sport. Really. Marathon is boring enough, but this is like a marathon in slo-mo. Not only that, the racers look ridiculous. Imagine if you will, a worm dancing upright on the pavement. That's about what they look like.
  3. It's a fringe sport. Very fringe. There are other fringe sports in the Olympics, like two man luge, but you need to draw a line somewhere.
  4. The sport just fundamentally doesn't make any sense. If you want to get from point A to point B quickly, what do you do? You run! You don't fucking walk, you idiot.
If you're going to have a contest for who can walk fastest, why don't you also have a hurdles event for walkers? The racers will speed walk up to each barrier, and them climb over the barrier without jumping. To make it really authentic, you can give each racer shopping bags and hold the event in an Impark lot. That's something I'd be more likely to watch.

7 comments:

Christian Cassidy said...

Lol - great post ! I like the walking hurdles idea !

Anonymous said...

Speaking of events to can from the Olympics...

BMX? WTF.

And did you see this olympic trial thing where a few guys with hockey skates and equipment go downhill on an ice track to see who can get to the bottom fastest? Like thats the kind of shit game you make up when you're drunk.

But back to BMX-ing...if that's a sport then why the hell isn't golf in?

cherenkov said...

MrC: Thanks!

G: Golf should definitely be in. It's a true international sport. I think it will be in soon.

I was surprised to see BMX there, but I kind of enjoyed watching it. I'm a little torn about whether it should be included. Maybe as a demonstration sport...

Marginalized Action Dinosaur said...

G: Golf should definitely be in. It's a true international sport. I think it will be in soon.

Anonymous said...

"To make it really authentic, you can give each racer shopping bags and hold the event in an Impark lot. That's something I'd be more likely to watch."

I LOLd

Anonymous said...

Golfing, seriously? Okay, i admit that speedwalking is an absurd sport to be called don the title of an "olympic sport." But golf? I concede that it takes a lot of skill to hit a small white ball to a very far small hole, I'll give you that. But BMX is a sport where you have to employ a variety of hand-eye, feet-eye, coordination. And try speeding down one of the those hills going 45+ miles per hour, and lets see if you don't eat shit because those guys have to have a lot of discipline and skill maintaining their balance on a sport where you can actually get injured! (Don't think that can happen in golf)

cherenkov said...

I must have come close to 45 mph going downhill on #9 at Clear Lake in the golf cart.

 
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