The Winter Olympics will be beginning to wind down by the time readers see this.
It is a major sports event which has seemed unable to capture our collective imagination to the level of recent Winter Olympics.
There is a list of reasons for the situation, at least to my mind, starting with the huge time difference between here and Pyeongchang, South Korea. The time difference makes being current, in terms of watching events live, a challenge, unless you are in a position to be a major night owl and still deal with your job the next day.
It doesn’t help that the hockey event is without the world’s best, as the NHL did not allow its players to participate. The situation is one of massive egos and greed with the NHL, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the International Ice Hockey Federation sharing the blame.
In isolation, the situation is a horrible one in the sense it has deprived the sport of its grandest showcase, but it’s also another strike against the Olympics in general.
Whether we go back to the Munich massacre, an attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, at which eleven Israeli Olympic team members were taken hostage and eventually killed, along with a German police officer, by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, or the current ban on Russia this year because of doping allegations, clouds have long hung over the event.
Let’s not forget from a Canadian perspective how we looked at the questionable judging practices in figure skating in the past, and our sport shame of having Ben Johnson’s 100-metre gold medal stripped in 1988 after testing positive to drugs.
We can add the ridiculous costs of creating the sport venues, and providing the security for each Olympics, and suddenly tuning out the event becomes almost natural.
In my own case, I am primarily a team sport fan. I follow about a dozen team sports closely, and would do so for another four or five, if there was a Canadian-based team in a pro league to follow. Team handball, arena football, and a couple of others come to mind. The few individual sports I follow are admittedly niche sports and that means the Winter Olympics are a tad thin on sports of interest.
Beyond hockey, and an occasional nod to curling, I don’t follow any of the sports beyond seeing if Canada has done even moderately well.
It doesn’t help that in an effort to add sports to the winter games to balance things with its summer sister, they seem to be making up silly offerings.
Why do we need team figure skating, basically adding up some individual scores to hand out one more medal?
You would think the IOC could find some actual winter sports to include. There are a few which come to mind.
Iceboat racing would seem a natural, especially given the existing focus on bobsled, luge and skeleton.
Bandy comes to mind next, a game much like hockey, played outdoors on a soccer sized sheet of ice and 11 players per side.
And there is ice stock, a sport dating back decades, if not centuries. It reminds one of curling, but it’s a sport with its own long history. Of course instead these Olympics added mixed doubles curling. I could see merit in mixed teams being added as a co-ed sport, but this two-player version of the game seems a gimmicky creation at best to my eye.
With this version of curling in the Olympic fold, can shovel racing (yes it is a sport, check it online) be far behind?
No wonder these Olympics have only captured my most fleeting attention.
