Point 4 deals with the sports that are included in the Olympics.
The previous article was concerned with the problems of subjectively judged sports, and their non-comformance with the Olympic ideals.
Now to look at the spread of sports in more detail.
The Olympics should be the pinnacle of the sport. Is this such a wild thought? Doesn’t everyone want to win an Olympic gold above all else? Well, no, not really. There are some sports, all of them professional I believe, which already have their own traditional world cup, or world championship, that is so traditional and ingrained into the sport’s history that any Olympic participation would be no more than another event on the calendar. Football, tennis, basketball, and even baseball would come into this category. For this reason I feel the Olympics is not suitable for these sports.
However for most of the existing sports the Olympic title remains the one that everyone wants. It has even got to the point with some sports, like handball, fencing and archery where the sports would drastically fade in popularity if they were not an Olympic sport.
To summarise I believe that only sports where the Olympics is considered the crowning glory should be included, and this should be a priority criterion when considering adding extra sports, along with the consideration from the previous article that objectively measured sports should be preferred over sports with subjectively judged performances.
thiNK TWice 