if krotty gets in, i'm defecting to wing chun. otoh it'd be hilarious to switch out tkd for krotty without a lot of fanfare, and watch everyone go 'WTF?' at the games themselves.
Drop any sport that involves horses right away. Horse sports are mainly the preserve of the upper classes anyway. They aren't inclusive sports. Probably cost a lot to maintain/house too. Dressage being in and wrestling not is ridiculous. Drop about 10 classes of yachting too. Little boat, medium boat, big boat. That's ya' lot. Probably drop some rowing too in the same way. Better to lose variations on a theme than whole sports IMHO.
I guess they'll put in wakeboarding. It appeals to the young and hip "dangerous sports" crowd. As the BBC said, "Cable Wakeboard is a youth-focused lifestyle discipline from the booming board sports category." And it possibly has a bit more of professional look than something like skateboarding...Gnarly dude!
no, actually i'm not. i see kids in greece, france, italy playing basketball when i visit those places. argentina, brazil have top notch national teams, and several players in the nba and europe. spaniards, serbians, croats, russians, lithuanians play basketball. so do the south africans, chinese and australians. the nba is a huge world-wide (at least in fans) league. most european countries have a basketball league, and the euros is a very big event. i don't see how you can even compare basketball to most sports in the olympics even. dressage? archery? field hockey? table tennis? how about sailing? hell, i'd wager that there's far more world-wide participation in basketball than there is in judo. but we were talking about trampoline. i really don't know what trampoline participation rates are. do you have anything to show me in this regard?
Oh come on...don't pretend you didn't think of the same joke. I suspect Giovanni even set it up just so someone would do the punchline.
you're giving me way too much credit. i've already been accused of not being smart on another thread. lol.
off that list my preference would be wakeboarding, do love me a bit of that, and I'd like to see both cable and boat disciplines tbh - but I ran the uni wakeboard club for 3 years while I was at uni =p
I'd quite like to see sport climbing make it to the games. It's a highly physical and highly technical sport.
They've already cut a lot of the olympic sailing classes in recent years, it's only really the more exciting ones left - if you understand the rules, if you don't then largely it doesn't make much sense what you're watching =p and most of the sailing classes do come under the categories you listed - but due to different sized between men and women each sex has different boats for those categories. eg Mens have laser and finn classes, laser being small (around 11 stone) and finn being big (around 15+ stone iirc), the 470 for pairs and then RS:X - windsurfing. TBH I was shocked when they got rid of the 49er over the 470, as the 49er is one of the most exciting classes to watch. I agree that they should've got rid of some horse events over the wrestling, but then I also imagine more people watch the horse events over the wrestling . . .
I used to do a fair bit of climbing a few years ago, don't know what sport climbing entails though, I'll have to look it up ^_^
Difficult to get solid figures, what i can find suggests that participation in trampolining is a shade lower than in martial arts. As an example, I live in fairly typical large town of 210,000 people, there are 3 basketball teams. As it is I can think of 5 locations to do trampolining (without even looking). As trampolining clubs tend to be bigger than basketball teams, this would indicate that there's significantly more people tramolining here than playing basketball. Indeed, as I see sports injuries everyday in a professional capacity, I can't remember the last time I saw a basketball injury that wasn't in a school child whereas I regularly see netball injuries (the two sports have comparable injuries). The host NFL games in London and there's a national league and a loyal NFL fanbase, it's still a minor sport here. Indeed, your final point show's how little you know about sport in Europe. Field hockey is played by large numbers of people, most large towns will have multiple archery clubs (I even know people who do it in their gardens) and equestrianism is massive (indeed, after soccer the number 2 cause of those injuries I see). I also live in a landlocked town that has a large sailing club.
I honestly don't consider it too much of a bad thing... In the UK there are concerns with corruption in the national wrestling association... plus the Olympic style pretty much didn't incorporate most indigineous styles of wrestling practised across the world and led to their decline as finances flowed to adopt the 'Olympic style' in Western Countries in response to Eastern European and early Soviet dominance of the sport. http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JOH/JOHv3n3/JOHv3n3e.pdf
I can't believe they are thinking about cutting it. If you have to get rid of a sport, Esquterian has to go first.
Reeks of Organised marriages by the Governing body... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ol...nian-wrestlers-marry-British-competitors.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ol...ts-plastic-Brits-wrestlers.html#axzz2Khld6bwE http://www.whatson-kiev.com/index.php?go=News&in=view&id=11421
Large numbers of people watch equestrianism, and it's fairly accessible as a spectator sport. Seriously, if I didn't understand wrestling I'd not have made it past 5 minutes of the Greco. Indeed, one thing I did learn from watching the Olympics was that you see more takedowns in MMA than you do in wrestling.