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Monday, August 6, 2012

Headless Gymnastics: and Other Obscure Olympic Sports


There has been a goodly amount of grousing at my house during ye old Olympic Games. We have found countless hours of swimming and bikini volleyball, but nary a second of pretty plus weightlifting. 
image found here

NBC picks their pets and devotes hour after hour of coverage to them, completely ignoring the thrill of victory and agony of defeat in dozens of worthy sports.

For example. I bet you didn't see the moment that this ping pong ball was hit with such force it imbedded itself into an unfortunate athletic forehead and had to be removed with official olympic tweezers


And then there are the tangle sports.  There is nothing more exciting than watching a big crazy tangle of athletes, whether it is on the mat or in the water.  The tangle sports have been criminally ignored.



Here is a partial list of what else you have been missing.

  • Melon Juggling  (Gold medal went to a Portugal farm boy with extraordinarily large hands
  • Speed Mall Walking (Gold medal went to blue haired team from Pensacola Florida)
  • Wine Tasting (Duh, France wins gold for the zillionth time in a row)
  • Blood Letting (In this most ancient of sports, the Transylvanian team narrowly pulls off the gold medal win.  The upstart team from Forks, Washington, USA takes silver)
  • Jello Moulding (USA takes home the gold in the well manicured hands of a motherly team from Utah
  • Sand Sculpting (A first ever tie for the gold medal between Dubai and Kuwait) 
  • Infidel Insults (Iran wins again with a string of invective that singed the beard of the judge from Sweden)
  • Headless Gymnastics (China takes gold, silver and bronze)



9 comments:

Pearl said...

Headless gymnastics!!

:-)

That's going to be in my OWN head for quite some time, Laraine!

Pearl

Pondside said...

I heard a nasty rumor that the US networks paid big £'s and were able, therefore, to cover only those events in which it was likely a US athlete would get a medal. The Canadian networks, on the other hand, had the bargain basement deal and we have see ALL of the events you listed, missing most of the more popular events. Should I start recording for you?

Charles said...

Sorry but your results are inaccurate. Actually, China won the Olympics Speed Walking this year with Guatemalan Eric Barrondo winning the Silver Medal. The medal was Guatemala first Olympic medal ever after 52 years of participating in the Olympics.

Now Guatelmala doesn't have to sit at the loser's table dinner at official IOC dinners with El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua or everyone at the tables least favorite Somalia (he always eats like he's starving).

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/0806/Guatemala-wins-its-first-ever-Olympic-medal

larainydays said...

How it pains me to disagree with you, dear, dear Charles, but I was talking about Speed MALL walking, so I am correct, as usual.

Susan Anderson said...

hahaha

I'm all about the tangle sports.

;)

Susan Anderson said...

hahaha

I'm all about the tangle sports.

;)

karen said...

How did I ever miss those? Darn NBC - they skimp on all the good sports!

S said...

That last picture.... I havea problem with decapitations (most people do, probably) - stems from Return to Oz/Worzel Gummidge, gross. The coverage on RTE (Ireland) is cat, it's all over the place. BBC (UK)have live coverage of all the events, you can pick whatever one you want to watch if you have Satellite. In fairness though they ARE hosting it, they probably have to show it all.

Dr Zibbs said...

I love that headless photo!