Golf at the Olympics

..rampant sodomy and a political career. If there is a difference. As a consequence
of a life in a chilled climate body surfing in Victoria seems almost like
dipping in thermal springs.
As a society we have transitioned from sports players to sports voyeurs. With
the rise and rise of sport as entertainment more and cheap television hours
are filled with bulging jockstraps, sweaty armpits and raging testosterone.
And that’s just the girls.
And the greatest combination of nationalistic machismo and sports television
is the Olympic Games. Once every four years a nation spends several years
of its gross national product to demonstrate that it too can put on the modern
day equivalent of a Roman triumph, simultaneously inconveniencing its citizens
and creating sporting venues that will echo hollowly with the sound of wasted
money for generations to come.
In 2012 it is the turn of London to render itself financially bankrupt. Given
that London’s bankers have done their best to remove a significant part
of the world’s wealth into their own pockets without producing anything
of use apart from drug habits and empty Champagne bottles, this is fitting.
They deserve the chaos they will get. London, which is essentially Shepparton
with historic buildings, bad food and unwashed masses, will be even more unpleasant.

The rest of the world will get fourteen days of wall to wall televised athletes
grunting and groaning followed by fourteen days of handicapped athletes –
who will be watched much less and patronised a lot more.
However what I find somewhat stupefying is that in the 2016 Games in Rio de
Janeiro golf will be an Olympic sport, aligning it with another media and
sponsorship sporting circus that shouldn’t be in the games – tennis.
The last time that Golf featured in the games was St Louis in 1904, when seventy-seven
players from the USA and Canada competed. It should have been the last time.
I know that the Olympics has some dubious activities associated with it, but
when an Olympic event could be won by an nicotine addicted overweight sixty
year old with a drinking problem whose only ability is to follow a small white
ball around a couple of kilometers of manicured lawn, I must protest faintly.
(And parenthetically as really this sounds more attractive than I thought).
Golf, like tennis, is a sport that a lot of people do badly but enjoy –
something which cannot be said about the pole-vault or the heptathlon. If
you are a bad pole-vaulter you sensibly stop after realising that vaulting
two metres when the bar is at five metres is definitely humiliating, although
funny to watch.
It isn’t right that golfers should get medals for something which is
their very highly paid occupation. Golf is boring to watch, requires little
fitness and possesses ersatz drama and no risk
As I said before, tennis, even though it is existing Olympic sport that extremely
well paid professionals get to compete in between other paying tournament,
should be stopped. Why Roger Federer, whom we know is either number one or
two in the world in between bouts of tears, gets to be given a Gold Medal
for proving it all over again, seems pointless.
Not only that, but both golf and tennis already have a year round circuit,
heavily sponsored with around the clock television coverage. You don’t
have to wait four years to see Tiger Woods or Raphael Nadale play, though
I certainly could stand the wait.
Tennis was one of the sports played at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens
1896 but dropped in 1922. As with golf, a precedent has been set so it can
be dropped again.
There are a number of other sports already in the Olympics which also need
to be eliminated. Of the water sports, Water Polo should go. Polo is ridiculous
out of water, but if you are going to play in the swimming pool the horses
might as well join in. And with the change of the world’s political
order it can no longer be seen as a political stoush between the Warsaw Pact
countries and Russia.
Synchronised swimmers should be replaced by Sony robots that could disintegrate
pyrotechnically in the pool. It is clever, in the way that chorus lines and
cheer leaders are clever, but doing it in the water doesn’t add anything
except embarrassment. If it can’t be banned competing teams should not
be allowed to wear nose clips ….or bathing costumes.
Baseball and softball are out anyway but should never be allowed back because
they are boring. Besides, if these were allowed back in there would be no
stopping cricket’s admission, which would be the end of the world as
we know it.
Women’s boxing is in, but should be out, and take men’s boxing
with it. If they want this sort of thing they should be given Kalashnikovs
and one hundred rounds of soft nose bullets – which they can optionally
direct at the audience who should know better.
Archery can stay.
In athletics let’s cut to the chase and eliminate walking. Competitive
walking has nothing to do with walking: it is running whilst dangerously displacing
the hips and pretending to have one foot on the ground at any time. Basically
everybody is cheating, so the whole sport is disqualified. If they called
it competitive strolling would there be a competition?
How Badminton ever got in remains a mystery, but perhaps it can stay as one
remnant of loonier Victorian times and so we can all snigger over shuttlecocks.
Basketball can stay only if people of average height are allowed to compete.
Otherwise see Golf and Tennis
Canoeing and Kayaking can only have sneaked into the Games as an attempt to
lower the cost. As the Olympics are about spending lots of money, they should
go.
All Cycling events should be replaced by the Tour De France, which should
be run at the same time.
Equestrian events can stay as people compete wearing in top hats in Dressage
and I like horses.
Fencing and Gymnastics can stay, though if anyone can think of a way of combining
the two they should bring it to the attention of the Olympic committee.
Football – sorry, but no. We already have a World Cup and that’s more
than sufficient.
I had never realized that Handball was in the Olympics and after reading a
description of it also realised that it seems never to have been televised
in Australia. This means that Australians don’t play it. Therefore it
is out as Australia will never win a medal. .
Hockey? We used to call it Queen Sticks at school, so I see a sexual re-orientation
option here for the future. The Games are about inclusiveness so here the
Friends of Dorothy can get a suitably coloured Guernsey.
Judo and Taekwondo should be combined with wrestling into a single event involving
large amounts of olive oil and sake.
Weightlifting, rowing, shooting and sailing are safe for the moment. Table
tennis remains so the Chinese and Japanese can totally dominate another sport.
But let me make my most controversial sporting excision.
Beach volleyball has to go. It demeans men.