Thursday, September 02, 2004

The last word on the Olympics

I was pointed to this article on bbc.co.uk.

It neatly sums up why swimmimg is a such a ridiculous event at the Olympics.



Redgrave Spits on Spitz

I was glad to see Sir Steve Redgrave come out ahead of the rest as the BBC's Most Memorable Olympic Moment.

I'm always annoyed that Mark Spitz's gold medal haul strikes such awe into people. Not that Spitz didn't do well, it's just that swimming is designed to hand out as many medals as possible.

I don't see the point of all them strokes, meself.

If you win the 100 metres freestyle you can say you're the fastest swimmer in the world, right?

If you win the 100 metres breaststroke, you're the fastest swimmer in the world at going slowly. If you win the butterfly, then you're the fastest swimmer in the world whilst looking like you're drowning.

Then of course you've got the bloody medley, where you can chuck around some more metal at Americans and Australians. It's a nonsense.

I mean in athletics you don't have the 100 metres hop and the 200 metres bumshuffle.

So Spitz's seven looks good, but if I had my way they'd reduce the swimming to 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1500 metres and leave a bit of space for people who like to watch sport without breathing in that manky chlorine.



Amen.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

you're a philistine hawkins as ever,
BP

5:42 PM  
Blogger James said...

Oi Humpty!

If your Saxon boyos won all the swimming medals then you wouldn't be bitchin'.

Shud'it ya?

The Rebel.

http://james.butler.name/weblog/blogger.html

8:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe they should dump all the other games at the wsop after all its a 5 card poker hand your trying to make right? oh no wait they all require a different strategy or in the case of swimming a different technique. I expected better of you camel. tut tut.

9:09 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com