After watching the 2012 Summer Olympics, I made a comment about every sport. All 36 of them.
In contrast, there are only 15 official Winter Olympic sports. With the exception of the kinda-crazy bobsled / luge / skeleton, most of them are related in some way to your basic skiing or skating. (One sport that refuses to be categorized is curling, a family favorite, and one that deserves as much attention than the media darling of figure skating.)
One of the newer sports is snowboarding, and that's my topic today -- how the events within the snowboarding sport have gotten completely out of hand.
It started out simple enough, with half-pipe and aerial events. But now the list includes big air, parallel slalom, giant parallel slalom, slopestyle, snowboard cross, and team ski-snowboard cross. These all apply separately to men and women.
I'm not saying I don't enjoy watching these thrill sports. I'm saying that we don't need this many Olympic events for snowboarding. We've taken these boutique, millennial-driven, X-Games activities and put them on the same level as mainstream sports that require far more fitness.
Whatever. At least it's good for the United States' medal count, because the U.S. tends to dominate these snowboarding events. Suck it, Norway!
No comments:
Post a Comment