We’ve been watching the Olympics here for a few days. It’s great. Just wall to wall weird sports.
I know, the sports aren’t exactly weird, but they aren’t the ones that you commonly see on tv either. I like to see a bunch of volleyball, or badminton, or BMX racing, or sailing, or judo, or track and field. Pretty much anything but baseball or golf. How much more baseball or golf do we need on tv. Soccer gets a pass because it isn’t on as often in North America… that window is closing though. Your novel sport days are numbered, soccer. Soon, you will be as common as baseball.
That really is the thing I love most about watching the Olympics. A grab bag of sports that don’t get enough attention. When was the last time a whole lot of people cared about competitive diving? Probably the last Olympics.
When was the last time you got really into a rugby match? If you live anywhere but the five percent of the earth that cares deeply about rugby, it’s probably been a while. But maybe we should. Rugby is a cool sport. It sort of looks like they started with soccer and stripped rules away until a few people died, and then added back the ones that made it mildly safer than that. Like I said, cool sport.
I can barely tell what’s going on in fencing, but it’s kind of neat. A boxing tournament might be one of the most harrowing and hardcore legitimate sporting events that humans have ever come up with. It’s potentially a CTE speedrun, but these athletes might compete multiple times in their career. Trampoline is just daring the universe to give you a spinal injury.
What other time will you see all of these sports back to back over a couple of weeks. If you haven’t been, you should probably watch some Olympics.