Last night on CBC’s Olympic coverage, Brian Williams was complaining about the lack of audience in the stands at the women’s gymnastics, traditionally a big draw sport. He said that some people think that the problem with attendence at these games is the fact that Greece is a small country, but he feels that the problem is that the Summer Olympics are bloated — they have way too many sports and need to be pruned. I must admit that after a few days of watching stuff like synchronized diving and archery, it seems like there are quite a few obscure sports that no one really cares about. On the other hand, some kids out there might really adore archery, and there’s no other time in any other year when stuff like that gets TV coverage. I think the publicity for the lesser sports during the Olympics is invaluable for keeping those sports alive.
Although, I guess you could argue that if they got dropped from the Olympics, they could just die out and no one would care, anyway.
I think if they want to do some pruning, maybe they could elminate some swimming events. If one guy (that American swimmer) can swim in 8 freakin’ events, then I say, the physical talents required to excel in those 8 different events aren’t different enough to require a whole separate event. Every time they cut to the pool there’s some other slightly different variation on length, stroke, or relay — it’s endless.
What do you think — too many sports at the Olympics?
TurtleHead 
I also heard that most of the cheaper sections at many of the stadiums were packed. So perhaps it’s a pricing issue as well.
I guess the question can kind of be re-phrased as “are the Olympics for the athletes or for the audience?”. I’m sure if you asked someone in the swimming community about all the events they would tell you that there is a vast difference between events and they are all completely necessary.
Personally, I like the variety of events as long as each event is fairly distinct. I’m curious by nature and I like to learn about what kind of sports are out there.
But of course there needs to be a balance. The Olympics are meant to be watched by people. I know that I’ve flipped to other channels during a lot of the swimming because I can’t get a grasp on the relevance of any one race.
So, perhaps the pendulum has just swung a little too far in the athlete direction and needs to come back a little closer to the audience direction.
I agree that there are too many sports. My own idea of the Olympics has always been that they are about celebrating physical excellence, and about how individual people can reach their own personal goals. Secondarily, they are also about tradition and competition.
To that end, there are a lot of sports that I’d scrap. For starters, most team sports: Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, Hockey, Handball and Volleyball (regular and beach). While I think these are perfectly valid sports, they aren’t really “olympic” sports to me: there’s something unsatisfying about watching a bunch of guys all win a gold medal, especially if they are already professional players. The olympics are about that individual moment, the one person (or possibly a team of two) achieving the personal dream.
Second, if I had to prune more, I’d probably get rid of the ones that were more about technical prowess than fitness: shooting, archery, ping pong, sailing. I mean if these are olympic sports, why not bowling and billiards? Why not juggling, or car racing? Sure it requires skill to do them, and many of them are extremely cool to watch, but they don’t feel “olympic” to me.
I totally agree about elminating team sports. I’ve never found them to be at all inspiring, and I think you really put your finger on why — that the Olympics should be about individual achievement. I’d even get rid of things like synchronized swimming and 8-person rowing teams. It’s definitely the lone athelete’s story that I find interesting.
And I also agree about “games of skill” — I’d include stuff like horse jumping as well. I’ve never understood why archery is in, but ballroom dancing and chess (both past contenders for official sport status) are out, or why horse jumping is in but car racing is out. They should all go.
But despite both points we should definitely keep curling in the winter olympics because it’s my favourite sport :).
I wonder if any pruning will ever be done though…I imagine the uproar at eliminating sports like this would be huge. I think as long as countries continue to vie to be the host country, and don’t kick up a stink at having to provide so many medals and so many venues with (possibly) little interest or financial reward, then the IOC doesn’t have any reason to start cutting. Hm.
I agree that it would be very upsetting to any athlete to have their specialty pulled from the Olympics. I’m sure for many of the more obscure sports, the Olympics is the ultimate competition — the only one where they can get global recognition.
But still I think there’s just way too many events in general. made a good point about elminating some of the team sports, and I still think cutting some of the swimming events is a good idea.
I wonder how the summer Olympics compares to the winter Olympics in terms of number of events/sports/venues. Is it like, 10 to 1? Or 2 to 1? Lately it does seem to me that I enjoy watching the winter games more, and I wonder if it’s because there’s just less to wrap my head around. Man, I must be getting old if I can’t handle the action of a single Olympic games :).