Olympics
Briefly mentioned the Olympics in that last post, which are going to be hosted by London in 2012, as you might have heard. Well, at the meetings in Singapore (where they whittled down the finalists until London was chosen, Paris was runner-up, Madrid was third, New York fourth, and Moscow fifth; four rounds of voting were conducting with the low vote-getter dropped after each round and the representatives from candidate countries not allowed to vote until theirs was eliminated) they decided to drop baseball and softball from the Olympic roster. There had been a fight over them for the 2008 games, but they managed to survive that one. The knock on it is that it's an American (that is, U.S.) sport. However, it's popular throughout Latin America, along with Japan and South Korea, and has followings of varying degrees in other countries as well.
Part of the reason that baseball/softball was such a target had to do with the accommodations required to host the sport. Other events that don't have great popularity, like, for instance, speed walking, require much less work to put on. I'm pretty sure they required different fields to be used (while you could have a dual-use field, various official distances are different, and it would require a bit much work to shift it back and forth as much as necessary ... unless they did one during the first half of the Olympics, and the other during the second half, maybe ...) so that only increased the costs of putting it on.
The AP report said it was the first sport dropped from the Olympics since water polo in 1936. I laugh at the AP report. What was dropped was polo, the variety lacking the pool. As 1936 was the only time it was an event, it wasn't such a big deal to drop it.
The dropping of baseball and softball means that two of the following five sports can be voted in: golf, karate, squash, rugby sevens, and roller sports.
In other Olympic news, it looks like they're going to look at purported asthmatics more closely. Tsk, tsk, lousy asthmatics, always cheating ... money quote: "We've caught on to their scam."
Part of the reason that baseball/softball was such a target had to do with the accommodations required to host the sport. Other events that don't have great popularity, like, for instance, speed walking, require much less work to put on. I'm pretty sure they required different fields to be used (while you could have a dual-use field, various official distances are different, and it would require a bit much work to shift it back and forth as much as necessary ... unless they did one during the first half of the Olympics, and the other during the second half, maybe ...) so that only increased the costs of putting it on.
The AP report said it was the first sport dropped from the Olympics since water polo in 1936. I laugh at the AP report. What was dropped was polo, the variety lacking the pool. As 1936 was the only time it was an event, it wasn't such a big deal to drop it.
The dropping of baseball and softball means that two of the following five sports can be voted in: golf, karate, squash, rugby sevens, and roller sports.
In other Olympic news, it looks like they're going to look at purported asthmatics more closely. Tsk, tsk, lousy asthmatics, always cheating ... money quote: "We've caught on to their scam."
posted by DC | 2:29 AM
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