Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Doubles Diving



By Arielle

I am a sucker for the Olympics. I love just about everything about them - the big sports, the bizarre sports, the patriotism, the NBC Olympic music, the cheesy stories about the athletes who overcame absurd obstacles, Bob Costas...it all gets a free pass through my skeptical filter.

But I have a problem with this year's Olympics, and it's not just about Darfur and important things like genocide. No, this is sports-related.

What the hell is up with doubles diving?

It's actually pretty cool to watch. Two divers jump off a platform at the same time and do flips in unison. Pretty cool. But..this is really a sport? Like, at the same time that they cut softball and baseball from all future Olympics? Seriously?

I'm sure synchronized diving requires more and different skills that the regular, one-person kind. But if you have to limit the number of sports, shouldn't you maybe start with sports that are, like, literally redundant? If the doubles divers don't make the team, they can always try out as a single. Softball players...what do they do? Try badminton?

My friend Pam also has a good point about this: If you have doubles diving, why not doubles for every sport? Doubles hurdling? Synchronized javelin? Synchronized volleyball?

2 comments:

KHBirdman said...

Wait a minute. I'm actually looking forward to the first Siamese Doubles Diving Team From Bolivia ! Now, that would be impresisve !

TPerl said...

Wow, my wife was just talking about this last night - And she is a self-admitted Olympics whore as well. You two have some scary connection going on here.

Anyway, she also wondered when they're going to expand to "triple diving" and so on.