A bunch of Olympic sports aren't objective. I'm sure last man standing can be clear gold winner.
Last two to die are silver and bronze?
not subjective enough, unless the fatalities are judged I don't think it would make it in
Yet Another "Why Aren't the Olympics More American" Thread...
It was from Victorian Britain that the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, took his inspiration. Coubertin was a French aristocrat with a passionate interest in education. He wanted the French to be more manly, meaning more disciplined and self-reliant (he was reacting partly to the countrys defeat, in 1870, in the Franco-Prussian War), and he believed that introducing sports into education could be the basis for this transformation in the national character. In other words, he wanted the French to be more like the British. He made his first trip to England in 1883, when he was twenty, after reading about British public schools in Hippolyte Taines Notes on England (1872), and he returned frequently.
Around 1890, he heard about an annual event in the town of Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, called the Wenlock Olympian Games. These had been established, in 1850, by a physician named William Penny Brookes, as a means of fortifying British manhood. Coubertin arranged a visit, and Brookes mounted a special Wenlock Games for his guest. They discussed Brookess efforts to persuade the government of Greece to revive the ancient Games, which were held in Greece from 776 B.C.E. to 393 C.E. or thereaboutssomething that Coubertin had also been contemplating.
When Coubertin returned to France, he published an article about the Wenlock Games. If the Olympic idea still survives, he wrote, it is due not to a Hellene but to Dr. W. P. Brookes. Britains culture of sports, he explained, is the reason for its empire, and he quoted from a speech that Brookes had delivered: If the time should ever come when the youth of this country once again abandons the fortifying exercises of the gymnasium, the manly games, the outdoor sports that give health and life, in favor of effeminate and pacific amusements, know that that will mean the end of freedom, influence, strength, and prosperity for the whole empire.
Brookes died in 1895, at the age of eighty-six; less than a year later, Coubertin was finally able to launch, in Athens, the modern Games. He rarely referred to Brookes and his Olympian Games again, but the mascot for this years London Games is named Wenlock.
The modern Games could be international from the start because the British had spread standardized versions of most of the Olympic sports around the world. And the Olympics themselves became agents of standardization. In the first modern Olympiads, for example, the length of the marathon was inconsistent. Each marathon course was approximately twenty-five miles, believed to be the length of the route from Marathon to Athens run by Pheidippides in 490 B.C.E. As long as every competitor ran the same distance, it didnt matter what the precise measurement was. Those first Olympic marathons were essentially Ill race you to that tree events. But, at the 1908 Games, held in London, the course was designed to start at Queen Victorias statue at Windsor Castle and to finish in front of the Royal Box in the Olympic stadium. This turned out to be a distance of twenty-six miles three hundred and eighty-five yards. In 1921, that became the regulation length of the marathon.
Standardization was also a way of reprogramming life elsewhere in the default settings of the metropole. In 1896, the European imperial powers governed a large portion of the planet, and the Games were a tribute to their success in spreading their way of lifefrom the idea that life is essentially competition right down to the unit of measurementthroughout the world. For the first sixty years of the modern Olympics, people from around the globe came to mostly European capitals (two Summer Games were held in the United States) to play European games. You can see residues of the imperial reprogramming in the anomalous-seeming distances in track. The four-hundred-metre race is a descendant of the 440four hundred and forty yards, or two furlongswhich was run at almost every Olympics until 1952. Fifteen hundred metres is the metric equivalent of the mile.
Today, the agents of standardization are not empires but industries, like financial services and telecommunications, that need everyone everywhere to be on the same frequency, so that they can use their products. These businesses are happy to have the old nationalisms as a beard. Thats why we have Team U.S.A., and not Team Visaeven though, in certain respects, Team Visa is what it is.
Twenty-six sports will be played in London this summer, with medals awarded in three hundred and two events. The majority of those medals will be given in sports that originated, in their modern form, in Britain: archery, athletics (track and field), boxing, badminton, field hockey, football (soccer), rowing, sailing, swimming, water polo, table tennis, and tennis. Britain is also the birthplace of curling, cross-country, cricket, croquet, golf, squash, and rugbywhich is scheduled to become an Olympic sport in 2016. No other country comes close. Three Olympic sports originated in the United States: basketball, volleyball, and the triathlon, which was invented in 1974. Two originated in Germany: handball and gymnastics.
A bunch of Olympic sports aren't objective. I'm sure last man standing can be clear gold winner.
Last two to die are silver and bronze?
A bunch of Olympic sports aren't objective. I'm sure last man standing can be clear gold winner.
Last two to die are silver and bronze?
For the same reason baseball and softball were axed. American Football simply doesn't reach enough of an international audience.
At least that was the justification I read for baseball and softball being cut...which surprised the hell out of me. More countries really participate in Dressage and Whitewater Rafting?
yeah but how else is there going to be controversy?
It's because you're an idiot.
No kickball or four square but they do have handball.