New York Times har en artikkel der de argumenterer for at de nye sportene er helt i OLs ånd. Vet ikke om den er bak betalingsmur:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/25/magazine/olympics-breaking-sports-history.html
Noen utdrag:
Journey with me, if you will, back to the year 776 B.C. The Iron Age is starting in England; the peoples of North America are building monumental earthworks; gorilla-size lemurs still roam in Madagascar. And here we are in ancient Greece, near the wine-dark Mediterranean Sea, to attend the very first Olympic Games. Please, sit on this stone bench. (Not if you’re a married woman, though — sorry, for some reason you are not allowed.) That mound over there, surrounded by shrines and temples, is the Hill of Kronos. Down on the field, sprinters are lining up, a bunch of ancient Usain Bolts.
... if one of them makes a false start, the judge will flog him with a willow switch.
That single sprint was the whole Olympics. In fact, this will be true for the first 13 Olympic Games — 54 years. No swimming, no wrestling, no pentathlon, no gymnastics. Victory in the stadion was so glorious that all of Greece would use the winner’s name as a label for the next four years.
The Olympics didn’t add a new event until 724 B.C. — and it was just a longer sprint. Then, slowly, cautiously, over decades and centuries, new sports trickled in. Wrestling was added in 708 B.C. Boxing arrived 20 years later. (There were no rounds or time limits; the losing boxer would surrender by raising one finger or sometimes by running away.) In 648 B.C., horseback racing debuted. Spectators at the 520 Games saw the introduction of sprinters competing in armor, including helmets and shields. Unfortunately, not every new sport was a hit. Mule-cart racing, added in 500 B.C., lasted for only about 50 years. As did a race in which horseback riders apparently had to leap down, on their final lap, to run alongside their horses.
Much more has changed about the Games than has ever stayed the same. The original Games had no teams, no timers, no medals, no subjective judging and, of course, no “noncitizens” (women, enslaved people). For most of Olympic history, competitors were naked. During the pentathlon, long jumpers used to rock back and forth to the rhythms of live flute music, then run and leap while swinging two heavy weights to increase their momentum. When they finished exercising, athletes would scrape the oil and dirt and sweat off their bodies — and gymnasiums would collect it and sell it as medicine.
The magic of the Games, regardless of the event, has always been exactly this: watching humans chase excellence down some narrow, hyperspecialized channel of skill. And this is the beauty of a new sport. It shows us how many channels human excellence can surge down. Which turn out to be almost infinite.
Klarer ikke helt å se for meg hvor de åtte medaljene de har sett for seg, skal komme fra, dessverre. I morgen starter vel friidretten - det blir moro. Koser meg også med håndballen
Herlig å se på.
Og gutta er bare 22 år gamle - de kommer til å dra hverandre videre til uante høyder.
