<p>“How athletic are the Taekwondo athletes? Why the heck is that an olympic sport?? And if Taekwondo can be an olympic sport, why not bowling, shuffleboard or badminton?”</p>
<p>Badminton is an Olympic event.</p>
<p>^^^ yes, morningbird- thats so funny!</p>
<p>Have you ever watched good badminton players? It’s amazing how good they are. It’s really a fast game.</p>
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<p>To all those “70’s, shoulder padded, male hating feminists” that support Hillary, (even at the expense of their own sons), IT DOES!</p>
<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad: Yeah, good badminton players are pretty sweet. Ever watched a top-level pro squash match?</p>
<p>^^ I’ve watched racquetball but not squash. I used to play racquetball and then went to Australia where a colleague invited me out to play squash. I was awful at it since the ball dies when it hits rather than bounces. The longer racquets threw me off as well. Both sports take a lot of stamina and hand/eye coordination.</p>
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Uh, guys, before you get all worked up over the feminist injustice of the world, this is a pretty common rule in sports. General categories of qualifications for various sports are dead common - not just male/female, but height, weight, age, etc. And members of the presumptively “weaker” category can almost always play “up” - but not vice versa. As the father of a former high school wrestler, I learned the rule that an athlete can compete in a higher weight class, but not lower. Ever seen a height-limited basketball league? Age limited baseball or softball league? Any “masters” sport? The older players can almost always also play with the young ones, if they can compete - but not vice versa. </p>
<p>It’s a sensible rule, in the real world.</p>
<p>Curling roolz!!3! Razor, you should be ashamed.</p>
<p>It just takes time. I still remember watching the very first women’s olympic marathon. Can you believe it was in 1984? What took them so long?</p>
<p>Women were believed to be “too frail” to run that far. lol… but does that sound like the same argument being used for ski jumping?</p>
<p>^^Prior to 1984 the longest distance women ran in the Olympics was 1500 meters. Prior to 1972 it was 800 meters - basically half a mile. After they included the women’s marathon 1984 it still took them several more Olympiads to go back and fill in the intermediate women’s distance races of 5k, 10K and Steeplechase that the men had all along.</p>
<p>This notion of female frailty in the Olympic Games goes back to the early days of the modern games in the early part of the 20th century. They had some longer women’s races then, but some of the women showed up and competed ill-prepared and collapsed after the race - which alarmed Olympic officials and led to the ban on any women’s races over 800m.</p>
<p>“I know this is the case in the state of Illinois; don’t know about elsewhere. If a school has a boys team, a girl can participate on that team if there is a not a girls team for that sport. But if a school has a girls team in a specific sport and not a boys team, a boy CANNOT play on that team. Sounds fair, right?”</p>
<p>I think it’s fair, too. This is another example of those who already have pretty much everything grousing when somebody else is given something.</p>
<p>“Speaking of that, I wish they’d show more of the olympic sports. We see only a few of them and even less as they go into their “up close and personal” segments. I’m sure some other countries must have much better coverage than ours.”</p>
<p>I was in China during the last Olympics on a two-week business trip. I was amazed at the TV coverage. I quickly concluded that our TV must cater to the extremely short attention spans of Americans. In China, when they show a volleyball match on TV, they show it from start to finish. When they go to the next event, it’s the same way - they show the entire event. Every diver in the competition is shown. It can make for dull stretches at times, but I enjoyed being able to see more of what was going on instead of the highlight reels that we get on our coverage here in the US.</p>
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<p>I’m all for equal rights. I don’t understand how giving something to one gender is fair if you don’t also offer it to the other gender.</p>
<p>I think it’s outrageous that rich people aren’t given food stamps.</p>
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<p>And I agree! That’s why we should do away with them completely!!</p>
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Fairness restored!</p>
<p>…I’ll assume those “we hate food stamps” posts are simply jokes. ;)</p>
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<p>Just remember you’re the one who used the word assume ;)</p>
<p>kluge, that quote says it all.</p>
<p>Speaking of inequality in sports… We had an interesting conversation with an athlete from another country a few days ago. Speedo came up with a new swimsuit (approved by FINA, the governing body of the sport) which created quite an uproar in the swimming community at the last major competition. Several long-standing world records were shattered, smashed, wiped out, you name it, by swimmers wearing the “contraption”, and not just by fractions of a second, but by entire <em>seconds</em>! What is the big deal? Some swimmers cried foul that the suit puts them at a huge disadvantage in the upcoming Olympics. I said “Why don’t you all dress in those and look like aliens from that movie?” Turns out, not all swimmers are allowed to compete in Speedo suits because their country’s team signed a contract with a competitor. And the competitors do not have anything even close to the technology patented by Speedo! It is going to be interesting. I’ll watch Olympic swimming for sure.</p>