Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Breakdancing at the Olympics? Legends will be turning in their graves!

Ray Petersen
Ray Petersen
minus
plus

I honestly thought someone was pulling a gigantic stunt last week when it was announced that breakdancing will debut as an Olympic sport in Paris, in 2024. The International Olympic Committee has announced that along with skateboarding, climbing, and surfing, it will be included to appeal to the younger generation, to urbanise, popularise, and diversify ‘The Games.’


Chris Hill, writing in ‘Olympic Politics,’ explained that Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who revived the ‘Games’ as we have known them for over a hundred years, “idealised the Olympic Games as the ultimate ancient athletic competition.”


Politically liberal, he also took the perspective that sport had the potential to cross-cultural barriers, and founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894, with the first games of the modern era being held in the ‘spiritual’ home of the games, Athens, Greece just two years later. Since then, the pantheon of athletic stars such as Paavo Nurmi, Michael Phelps, Nadia Comaneci, Kristin Otto, Usain Bolt, Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz, Cassius Clay, Emil Zatopek, are just a few who are immortalised in this cast of greats.


Others have achieved their fame in adversity, such as Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea almost drowned during the 100m freestyle but finished the event. Johnny Weismuller won five Olympic swimming Golds and then won even greater fame in the movies, as Tarzan! Cathy Freeman became the first Aboriginal to win the 400m Gold in her home, Sydney, Olympics.


Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands was known as the ‘flying housewife,’ starring as she juggled her family and athletics, when it was unheard of. Lasse Viren fell during the 10,000m, and still won, and came out a few days later and won the 5,000m Gold for good measure. These were warriors, real men and real women, real athletes.


And the ideals of fair play were never better demonstrated than in the 5000m qualifying in Rio, 2016. Abbey D’Agostino (USA) and Nikki Hamblin (NZ) sacrificed any medal hopes to help each other following a mid-race fall. Though they were never going to make up the lost ground, the two’s compassion, and concern for each other reflected the Olympic spirit so emphatically, they were granted places in the Final later in the games. Both were unplaced but had created a ‘moment’ sports fans could celebrate forever.


The Olympics has seen bravery triumph, persistence rewarded, and determination victorious. Which of those will apply to breakdancing? Stack those guts and glory athletic, sports and sporting efforts alongside the entertainment potential of breakdancing, and it doesn’t seem right does it? Is it too great a stretch to expect to see Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Will.I.am, and Rihanna as the socially and culturally, gender-balanced judging panel? Even its originator, DJ Kool Herc identified ‘breaking,’ as slang for “getting excited, acting energetically, or causing a disturbance!” So Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals will be awarded for excessive excitement? ADHD anyone?


Tragedy and controversy too have befallen the games, with drug scandals involving Russia drawing participation bans. In 1936 Adolf Hitler refused to congratulate America’s Jesse Owens after he beat the German sprinters. In Mexico, 1968, Tom Smith and John Carlos gave Black Power salutes on the victory dais. In Munich, 1972, eleven Israeli team members were killed by Black September fighters. Sixty-six countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980, while the Soviet bloc returned the favour at Los Angeles in ’84. The Beijing Games, in 2008, saw 50 athletes stripped of medals for doping violations. Rio, four years ago, saw four American swimmers vandalise a gas station, and were expelled


Yet for all this misbehaviour, murder, and mayhem, could it be that John Milton’s poetic lines from ‘Allegro,’ so long ago, urging us to “trip the light fantastic,” to dance, could well signal the imminent demise of the greatest sporting event the world has ever known, the Olympic Games?


 


Ray Petersen


r.j.petersen52@gmail.com


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon