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Now that the Winter Olympics are over, the ones that matter will be here shortly. Perhaps you noticed that the 2010 U.S. Winter team wasn’t exactly teeming with Texans; there were four. That will change in 2012 in the city that screams summer, London.
In Vancouver, America did a pretty good job of ramrodding new “sports” so we could jack up our medal totals, mainly by converting old X-games events into international competitions. Freestyle skiing is a sport worthy of the Olympics? Really?
Yet, the Summer Games are always adding and subtracting sports. In 1900, ballooning was a demonstration sport along with “lifesaving” – both might’ve gone hand-in-hand, an EMT biathlon. Women’s boxing wasn’t called “Foxy Boxing” in 1904, but it was conducted. Golf is set for 2016 in Rio de Janeiro; it’s the curling of the Summer Olympics – you don’t have to be even remotely physically fit to excel at either. That’s not the case for one “sport” being considered for the London Games – pole dancing. Certainly, all of the hundreds of thousands of people who have lobbied online for the demonstration sport can’t all be tramp-stamped strippers and lonely Iowa businessmen; a few thousand voters must be NBC executives dreaming of through-the-roof ratings. Endorsements might be a problem; you have to wonder about the Happy Meal toy. But you can bet they’ll be a fist fight to be a judge.
And you thought people freaked out when ballroom dancing was considered for Olympics. Why not pole dancing? How often is a woman “working here only to save up money for college so I can become a doctor” going to get a shot at Olympic gold? Of course, I’m no authority on pole dancing outside of late-night Cinemax movies. “Gentlemen’s clubs” are not where I hang out, despite massive Dallas billboard offers of $4.99 steak lunches. However, in my pre-church-going days back in the evil ‘70’s, I traveled to Florida to visit a friend and we, a couple of wild untamed stallions (we told ourselves after trudging home alone regularly), ventured to an establishment that remains the best-named strip club in the history of America: Carmichael’s Academy of Cultured Anatomy. Personally, my chances of winning an Olympic gold medal are waning. Certainly, pole dancing is out; no one wants to see that, words I’ve heard for decades from my bride in a variety of settings (water parks, Burger Kings, funerals). Baseball and softball have been dropped for 2012 which is no loss since my baseball skills reside in the misty past with my 32-inch waist Levis. I can’t run very fast anymore (but some kind of sound mic attached to my Jiffy Pop patellas could be riveting TV). After living over half a century, I can hardly do anything as well as I used to, with two exceptions. One. If I might modestly note: I have the best table tennis serve in the history of the Earth. My skills in other areas of the game are average at best, but, after 22 years in the fire service where I spent hundreds of tax-paid hours laboring over a ping-pong table, I honed my serve to a high art. Trust me: while it’s more Charlie Hough than Nolan Ryan, you can’t return it. Two. While I can swim okay, my real water skills lie in being able to make a big splash, even back in my 32-inch days. If water splashing ever becomes an Olympic sport, I have an X-game array of splashes – the popular cannonball, the tricky watermelon, the prolific preacher’s seat, and, for the highest degree of difficulty, the Cinemax-ical cowboy. That controversial latter splash has a taint of Carmichael’s Academy of Cultured Anatomy to it and is not the sort of thing you’d perform at, say, a church social. However, if the gold was on the line, I’d promise I’d whip it out for America! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! Mark K. Campbell is the Azle News sports editor. |
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