Synchronized Grinning Is NOT A Sport, Olympic Or Otherwise

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I was making a comment on a post by AFrankAngle yesterday concerning the Olympic Games which open tomorrow, but started yesterday. Confused? You should be.

My contention was that synchronized grinning (okay, okay, swimming, but it was too good a line to waste) was not a sport, let alone an Olympic Sport. That’s not to say that it isn’t competitive, it is. Just that it is not a sport.

So why has it been included in the Olympics?

Simply because we have morons in charge of the Olympic Committees who decide such things.

Before anyone decides to hop, skip and jump to their defense, particularly over the synchronized swimming lark, think about this.

A few years ago, specifically in the Olympic Games held between 1984 and 1992, they also had the bright idea of including Solo Synchronized Swimming  -  which wasn’t a sport either.

It doesn’t take a giant intellect to realize that it is a challenge (i.e. not flipping possible) for a person swimming alone to be synchronized with someone else who is not there. The average person could figure that one out in under three minutes.

Yet it took the organizing idiots of the Olympic Committees three Games worth of years to figure it out.

I think solo synchronized swimming is what they call an oxymoron  -  and how very appropriate a name that is!

It wasn’t an isolated faux-pas either. They also tried underwater swimming in one Olympic games, but that was in the days before all-sorts-of-angle-tv coverage. They eventually figured out that it would be very unpopular with spectators coz no one could see anything! Maybe now with underwater cameras it could make a comeback, but let’s not encourage them.

And for a while other non-sport sports included Olympic Club Swinging, where the crazy participants swung a club around for a while. They didn’t let go of these things, which looked like bowling pins, or juggle with them which would have required an element of skill, just swung them around their head and body in various patterns.

That was probably the precursor to the modern Olympic Rhythmic Gymnastics discipline, i.e. running around with hoop, ball, ribbon and clubs. It also is not a sport.

But the problem is bigger than the Olympics, or getting the flags of North and South Korea mixed up (can you believe it!). It is a symptom of a much bigger malaise in our society, because we let the very same type of morons make other much more important decisions.

When morons are elevated to positions of power and influence they don’t get brains handed to them as part of their appointment, they are still morons. And morons make moronic decisions.

And when they do we suffer, not them.

The flags of North and South Korea, so similar, er NOT!