Olympics loaded with niche sports

Published 7:29 am Wednesday, August 10, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s the Olympic Ideal summed up in five easy rings.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The spirit of competition. The unbridled love of sport. The return of sportsmanship. The unexpected smile of victory for victory’s sake.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s seeing our latest basketball dream team — multi-millionaires, yes — but mingling in the spartan Olympic village, trading pins with the commoners … before heading back to the docks, where they have an entire cruise ship at their disposal, including the spa and cigar lounge.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mostly, though, it’s that moment watching a fairly unknown sport, full of fresh faces and suspected amateurism, when you spot a competitor on TV and suddenly — could it be? Voil?! — yes, that’s the mop-headed kid next door who was always, dawn to dusk, out there in the backyard forever practicing his synchronized diving. And now you know what motivated the fool.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">OK, bad example.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nobody ever spent the summer synchronized-diving, at least not in my neighborhood.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Or maybe that’s a perfect example.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s the part of the Olympics I don’t’ get. And I’ve been trying to watch at least 30-40 minutes a day, just because I’m as red-blooded patriotic as the next guy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But where DO these people — let alone their sports — come from?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">All I know is that if it’s a really, really obscure sport — like, one to make you wonder who in the devil ever even dreamed to think it up — then you can be pretty sure China is going to win gold in it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But synchronized diving is not only hard to type quickly, it’s harder to find info on where you’d get started in it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Synchronized swimming, I get. It was invented, as I recall, by the hired help at Bushwood Country Club, documented in “Caddyshack,” and it took the country by storm, despite random Baby Ruth sightings.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So it became part of the culture.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But baseball, easily adaptable to third-world countries, can’t get a seat at the table.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If they’d checked the neighborhood of my youth, then wiffle ball would be an Olympic sport, preferably with enough electrical tape wrapped around that plastic ball to break mom’s kitchen window.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But no.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For that matter, we all dabbled in backyard badminton at one time or another. I even took a (very easy) college course in it. It didn’t seem like rocket science or triathlon.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But with, say, badminton, how does one suddenly realize he or she is world class, possibly even Olympic material, and begin to really get serious about it?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Are there badminton scouts roaming the American landscape?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Are there 8-year-old travel teams for slalom canoe?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s why I get suspicious when television gets misty-eyed over this supposed collection of the finest athletes in the world crammed into one village (plus one cruise ship).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Track and field, OK. Really fast guys, some who jump, a few who for some reason like to throw heavy objects. And it ought to be quite an honor just to get through qualifying and make to the sports spotlight ever four years. Just don’t false-start.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And that NBA cruise ship probably stacks up athletically with most anywhere.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Otherwise, most of the world’s best athletes are doing something useful in NFL training camps right now.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There’s a handful of the world’s best golfers for that’s sport’s return, although this week’s John Deere Classic will have a tougher overall field.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But if you’re into something like the canoe sprint, it’s a pretty small fraternity, not much of a sample size, and just owning a canoe ought to guarantee you at least make it to the USA Trials.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If you want to get something today’s millennials are into, forget table tennis (really, nothing more than common ping pong) and add beer pong to the list.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But we trudge on through the Olympic fortnight.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was encouraging to some of us that the USA’s first gold medal came in the air rifle competition.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There’s probably not much sample size there either, however.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">As kids we called them BB guns, and maybe that was the problem.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Moms wouldn’t budge. You couldn’t have a BB gun.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Fool child, you’ll shoot your eye out</span><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In fact, given the usual dedication to get Olympic-worthy, I expected the medal ceremony to include at least two eye patches.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But maybe we should have dressed up the request as an “air rifle” instead of a common BB gun. It does seem to have a little more cach?.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Anyway, a teenager named Ginny Thrasher won the air rifle gold … and we can only assume that the cats in her neighborhood lived in sheer terror.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Moms always frowned on the trampoline, too, for which you can go for the gold.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But the best gold medal for the USA thus far was surely Lilly King in the swimming pool, the 100-meter breaststroke, I think it was.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">With one pre-race finger-wag at a Red-Russian competitor with a doping background, she rekindled a rivalry we can all get into.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">When King backed it up with a impressive victory and a post-victory snub, you’d have thought the dusty ICBMs were going on standby.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe that’s good. The Cold War has been dormant too long.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Perhaps King will inspire America to return to the moon.</span>

<span class="R~sep~AZaphdingbatdot7pt">l</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold;" class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">Scooter Hobbs</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">covers LSU</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">athletics. Email him at</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">shobbs@americanpress.com</span>

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<p class="p1">Follow Scooter Hobbs on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ScooterAmPress"><span class="s1">twitter.com/ScooterAmPress</span></a>

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