While watching the Olympics this week I found myself accidentally in an argument with my wife. Accidentally because I thought I/we were just talking and then suddenly I realized too late that it was an argument. She knew this sooner than I did.
The point of the argument started with the idea of what is or isn't a prestigious sport/event, and it morphed into me being arrogant and biased (that's the part that I didn't realize, and the only part that I cared to dispute). I'm going to ignore the second part for now cause that's not really interesting to other people, but the first I think is.
People don't take the Winter Olympics as serious as the Summer Olympics. This is for a lot of reasons, but primarily we of the general populous can sniff out legitimate sports and are instinctively attracted to what we feel are more popular or "important" sports. We like to be a part of a larger interest, and we blindly seem to accept preconceived notions about what we ought to consider important. Just look at the Super Bowl. The Olympics of course are a perfect example of this too.
Who would ever care about a 16 year old girl jumping around on a beam? There is no intrinsic value in that activity to other people, and, more importantly, it doesn't really relate at all to anything we do in our regular lives or any of our sporting pastimes. And yet, every four years a large chunk of not only the American population, but also the world's, stops and cares about 16 year old girls jumping around on a beam. I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that the percentage of the population that either regularly participates in beam-jumping or watches same, is infinitely smaller than the amount that care once every four years. I think that's interesting.
It's especially interesting with the Winter Olympics, because those sports are usually much more exclusive or foreign to most people than are Summer sports. I heard an announcer mention that a U.S. female luge competitor was from Lake Placid, NY. Of course she is! How many luge tracks are there in the whole country? Salt Lake City and Lake Placid, for sure those two because they've hosted Olympics, but where else? Further, why would there be more than that? As a mere observer of the Olympics, it seems to me that the whole point of luge is just to be an Olympic sport. Its end is the same as its means, so for me it's hard to justify its existence.(1) It's not a recreational activity.(2) It's not even a regular competitive activity in the U.S., outside of perhaps a concocted national competition or something similar.
Even the WO sports that aren't utterly contrived are relevant only to very small minorities. Sure, most people have done it at least once, but who ice skates regularly? Cross-country skis? Ski jumps? How are any of these tied at all to most people's human experience? Alpine skiing is the only individual sport that can claim semi-regular recreational participants in non-trifling numbers. Even the only sport that functions as a high-level professional undertaking--Hockey--stands as the little stepchild of the major pro sports.
I think I saw it in Sports Illustrated, but somewhere there was a map diagramming where all of the 200+ members of the U.S. team are from. All but a handful are from the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, or California. That's ridiculous. It makes perfect sense, too, which makes the whole thing even more ridiculous. Here is a list of the top all-time WO medal winners, in order, along with their rank by world population:
Germany -- 14
Russia/Soviet Union -- 9
Norway -- 116
USA -- 3
Austria -- 92
Finland -- 112
Canada -- 36
Sweden -- 88
Switzerland -- 94
The southernmost of those is of course the U.S. Basically, if you live anywhere in the world south of Chicago, you'll never have a chance in the Winter Olympics. Sounds pretty fair, right? Sounds like the kind of thing that the whole world ought to unite to celebrate, right?
Ok, I've gotten slightly off-topic. I meant to discuss what is or isn't a prestigious Olympic sport/event. I'm going to define this by the perspective of the entire world, not just the U.S. So basketball could never count. Or swimming, which happened to be Sara's suggestion when asked what the most prestigious sport was. Outside of the U.S. and Australia, most of the world is much more ambivalent about swimming. Rightly so, since you've got to have the money to have access to pools. Also, you can't count soccer. Even though it's the world's most popular sport, the Olympic soccer competition isn't taken nearly as seriously.
To think of what makes something prestigious, imagine that you are a prospective father of an unborn child. You are told that your child will grow up to become an Olympic champion, but you can choose which event. What would be the most popular answer for people all around the world?
Really, it's no contest as to what is the most prestigious Olympic sport: it's clearly track & field.(3) In fact, I just perused the list of Summer Olympic sports, and it's not even close. It's almost more prestigious than all the other sports combined.
So what about the premiere event of the Olympics? Using logic, the answer must surely be the men's 100meter dash, but I'd be more willing to listen to arguments on other specific events. Maybe the men's or women's all-around gymnastics? Maybe something from swimming? Maybe the 5,000meter run, or the 1500? In my opinion, it's definitely the men's 100meter, though.
While I'm at it, just off the top of my head, let's make a list of the most internationally prestigious events in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
Summer events
1. Men's 100m run
2. Men's 1500m run
3. Men's decathlon
4. Women's all-around gymnastics
5. Men's all-around gymnastics
6. Men's 5000m run
7. Men's freestyle swimming, 50 or 100m
8. Men's marathon?
9. Men's wrestling? any weight class
10. Modern pentathlon. Just kidding.
Winter events
1. Men's downhill skiing
2. Women's figure skating
3. Men's figure skating
4. Men's hockey
5. Men's speedskating? any distance
6. Women's speedskating?
7. Men's slalom skiing?
8. Men's 4-man bobsled?
9. Men's team cross country skiing?
10. Snowboard cross. Just kidding.
These look pretty sexist. What can I say? Sorry? Also, the Winter list is obviously much more of a crapshoot. Probably hockey should be higher, maybe even #1. Skiing is really popular all around the Winter Olympic countries, though, and the downhill is legendary.
1. Boy, without intent, but I'm putting on an it's-vs-its clinic in this sentence.
2. No, luging is not the same as sled-riding. Not even in the same ballpark.
3. Or, as official Olympic programs refer to it: athletics. Doesn't get any purer than that.
5 comments:
No mention of curling?
My seeming arbitrary exclusion of curling from the discussion I'll let be a symbol of the Olympic Committee's arbitrary inclusion of curling as an Olympic sport, as opposed to say darts, or horsehoes, or balancing empty beer cans on top of each other, or playing tecmo super bowl.
I hear ya. What's funny is watching people watching curling extensively – they get into it so much.
I think your list is off.
Perhaps because of your background I think you are giving way more credence to track and field than do most people (or at least most Americans). I can accept the 100m as the most prestigious SO event even though I disagree. But the 1500m? Only if you're a track nerd. I don't see how an argument can be made that the 1500m is more prestigious than women's gymnastics. The name recognition, endorsements and singular moment of glory associated with the women's all around gymnastics is far beyond the 1500m. The winner of the 1500m is a great athlete, but the winner of the all around is an idol.
During the WO, I would rank both women's figure skating and hockey above men's downhill, in that order. Figure skating is the premier event of the WO for the same reasons gymnastics is during the summer.
holtzy, for Americans, I wouldn't argue with your comments. Women's gymnastics is very likely higher up than all non-100m track events. I'm trying to take the perspective of the whole world though, and women's gymnastics isn't very popular in Africa, large parts of Europe, or really all of Latin America.
As far as the Winter Olympic list goes, I think you might be right in moving figure skating above downhill skiing. It's close, but most of the Asian countries don't care much about the skiing, so that might tip the scales. Euros love them some skiing, though, and along with the US and Canada, they make up the vast majority of people who actually follow the Winter Olympics.
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