Sports On the Chopping Block
Sports On the Chopping Block by Joe Brackets:
When the IOC meets next week, one of the items on the agenda will be which sport to cut from the Summer Olympic program after the Rio Games. They want to add a new sport for 2020, but there’s a max of 28, so the only way to do that without going over the maximum is to get rid of another one. This is, of course, assuming golf and rugby are in the Olympics to stay (which they should be).
I absolutely hate this arbitrary maximum the IOC has imposed. Part of the rationale for it is to control costs and curb the ever-growing size of the Summer Games. I get that, but I also don’t think it’s right that for a sport to be added to the Olympics, it has to be at the expense of another. There’s a way to do both. Reduce the number of events or cap the number of athletes that can enter one sport. Then you can add something else without having to drop another.
Different sports have grown in popularity, thus their inclusion in the Olympics. Take beach volleyball. It wasn’t an Olympic sport until 1996, yet has quickly become one of the most popular. That’s why golf’s inclusion seemed like a no-brainer. And there are going to be more sports that become desirable to the Olympic Movement as they continue to draw TV viewers/younger fans that the IOC covets. But the ultimate slap-in-the-face of telling a sports federation that it’s no longer worthy of Olympic inclusion isn’t right. Nor is it fair to the athletes in that sport, whose lifelong dream to be an Olympian will never be realized. And for the sport itself, the instant credibility and funding that comes with being associated with the National Olympic Committees will be gone, dropping it immediately to second-tier status.
Alas, I don’t have a say in the matter. They’re going to drop a sport from the “core list.” That sport will then immediately be put on the list of sports vying for a place in the 2020 Games, but there’s absolutely no chace it’ll be reinstated immediately after getting cut from the program. With that in mind, some Olympic sports have much more reason to worry than others.
The sports that are completely safe are all the obvious ones: track & field, swimming, gymnastics (including trampoline and rhythmic), diving, beach volleyball, volleyball, basketball, soccer, water polo, field hockey, handball, equestrian, triathlon, rowing, canoe/kayak, boxing, wrestling, fencing, weightlifting and synchronized swimming.
Judo has become an Olympic staple that more and more countries have won medals in (and not just the traditional powers). As a result, I think judo’s in the “safe” column. Same thing with the China-dominated sports of table tennis and badminton. They’d like to see a little more diversity in the medalists (which almost always go to East Asia), and, believe it or not, the biggest controversy to come out of the London Games was in badminton, but I don’t see them touching either one of these sports. China’s too important to the Olympic Movement to take away a whole bunch of Chinese medals without a fight.
Sailing’s an interesting one. It’s never held in the same place as the rest of the Olympics, it’s hard to follow, not TV-friendly, and usually an afterthought for spectators (who’ll only be able to see, at best, a portion of the races). But I don’t think sailing’s in any danger. It’s too widely practiced and has great historical venue. Besides, outgoing IOC President Jacques Rogge was an Olympic sailor. They’re not going to eliminate the sport that the president played.
Some in the anti-doping world have suggested cycling might be vulnerable if the sport doesn’t clean itself up, but I don’t think so. There’s no denying that the Tour de France, endurance version of the sport clearly has a major issue with performance-enhancing drugs. But track cycling doesn’t. Neither do BMX or mountain biking. Same thing with the women’s events. There are way too many innocent athletes that would be punished if the misgivings of Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, etc., were taken as a representation of the entire sport.
There are also some who’ve mentioned tennis. The argument there is that tennis doesn’t need the Olympics, since the Olympic tournament is, at best, going to be the fifth-most important tournament to the players each year. If London proved anything, it’s that tennis and the Olympics are a perfect marriage. The players get it. They want to be there. They know what an Olympic gold medal means. More importantly, the Olympics needs tennis. Outside of the NBA players and a handful of stars in sports like swimming or track & field, the most famous, well-known, richest athletes competing at the Olympics are the tennis players. They’re the biggest draw. Take the Opening Ceremony in London as an example of my point. How many of the flagbearers were tennis players?
Shooting has its critics, and for good reason. Gun control is a hot-button issue in many countries, not just the United States. However, shooting has a couple things going for it. First of all, nobody will ever confuse shooting the sport with whether or not somebody should be allowed to own a semi-automatic assault rifle in their home. Shooting also goes all the way back to the first Olympics in 1896. It’s one of only a handful of sports that’s been in every Olympics, and the IOC members would be very hesitant to remove an original Olympic sport from the program. There are also way too many countries that are good at shooting. That diversity isn’t something that will go unnoticed. Shooting is also safe.
That leaves us with two sports, which I think are the only ones that are on the chopping block. Taekwondo and modern pentathlon. I never quite understood why taekwondo was added to the Olympics in the first place. Did they really need another martial art? Especially a not-TV-friendly one that is completely dominated by South Korea? A bunch of different nations did medal in taekwondo, including a bunch of newer ones, in London, though, which helps its chances.
Modern pentathlon, however, hasn’t been that “modern” in years. The sport, which combines swimming, fencing, riding, shooting and running, was created by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Olympics, and has been on the program since 1912. That clearly works in its advantage and is the angle they’re going to play us as to why modern pentathlon should stay. Everything else points to Rio being modern pentathlon’s Olympic swan song though. They’ve made some fan-friendly changes in recent years, reducing the competition from five days to one, combining the shooting and running into one biathlon-style event, and, most recently, switching to laser pistols. They’ve even proposed to have all four events in the same stadium in Rio, but I’m not even sure how that would work.
If it is indeed down to taekwondo and modern pentathlon, I’ll give taekwondo the slight edge to remain on the program. Even though its popularity is nowhere near that of the other combat sports, it does seem to be growing. More importantly, taekwondo still has room to grow, whereas modern pentathlon’s popularity peaked long ago, and it doesn’t seem likely that it will ever become viewer/spectator friendly again. Modern pentathlon’s been rumored to be on the Olympic chopping block for several years now, yet has avoided a meeting with the grim reaper each time. This time, though, I think it’ll take a miracle to save Baron de Coubertin’s creation.
