Thoughts on the first week of the Summer Olympics

Moe Johnson Running with Moe

As a sports fan, it is a busy week watching the Olympics. While the track events will start later, most fans here in the United States focus on swimming, basketball, and gymnastics. These three sports get the most publicity and coverage. Since a sports fan can watch the Olympics almost 24 hours a day over several stations other sports are covered. Some of the sports are not as popular in the United States and while sports like swimming, gymnastics, and basketball are usually sports at most colleges and universities in the athletic department, the others are often club sports in the recreation program. When watching the trials for athletes to be on the Olympic team the emphasis was again on swimming, gymnastics, and track. I started to wonder how the teams for rugby, team handball, skateboarding and break dancing were chosen. The same curiosity for rowing, kayaking, shooting, badminton, table tennis, and triathlon athletes were chosen. It just seemed that there was not that much coverage of the Olympic trials for these sports as the big three.

I think the best thing about these other sports is that there may be some youngster out there that will see his or her sport or activity get recognition as an Olympic sport. While the results of a competition are not always written up or shown on media outlets of these other sports, the possibility of making an Olympic team is a dream to follow for that youngster in their sport.

I went to a small college many years ago and in that long ago an athlete could be in more than one sport. I earned letters in football, wrestling, track and gymnastics in a small college. It wasn’t unusual for athletes to play more than one sport. Dale Brown, former basketball coach at LSU, was a teammate with me in football and track and was a star in basketball. Bo Jackson received a lot of publicity because he played and excelled at two sports. Being an athlete in multiple sports is more difficult in the sports world today as the skill level is so much greater if an athlete wants to be on a team in college or the pros. There are other pro athletes that favor playing multiple sports as a youngster to develop athletic ability that may help them in the one sport they may choose as they progress.

For me it is amazing to see the athletic ability of the athletes in the Olympics today. Their level of skill is almost beyond belief. Much of this increase in the level of performance is due to the advancement in equipment that the athletes of today have. My free exercise area was a 40 foot square taped off on the basketball floor. The parallel and uneven bars were in cast iron standards that could not be adjusted for width. The pommel horse had brass handles that made learning the scissors move very painful if your knees didn’t quite make a high enough kick. And the vaulting horse actually had a narrow horse neck at the end to vault over. The rings were flying rings of rubber covered iron circles that had you swinging from straps on the ceiling of the gym. We were about 15 feet in the air doing dislocates and stunts. Our track was usually packed with dirt or cinders to run around. Our starting blocks were often shallow holes dug into the ground to get a good push off. The pole vault was a stiff bamboo or aluminum pole that did not bend. The landing pit was sand or sawdust to land on. You made sure you came down feet first as landing on your back would knock the wind out.

Looking at the apparatus in today’s gymnastic competition and the athletic ability of the stunts the competitors can do is simply amazing. The skill of doing double back somersaults with twists on the free exercise routine is an almost routine stunt. The same for dismounts on the high bar and vaulting events. The routines the athletes are doing in gymnastics today take many hours of practice and a level of athletic ability that makes a person wonder how a person can even dream of doing them. Both the men and women gymnasts are some of the most outstanding athletes ever.

Watching the swimming events it is hard to imagine moving that fast in the water. Watching old Tarzan movies with Olympic champion Johnny Weismueller and his swimming speed getting away from alligators makes present day swimmers even more amazing. The same is true for the divers and the twists and turns they make while doing double and triple somersaults is amazing to watch. Having been a diver in a water show at state fairs makes me appreciate the level of skill these divers have. Amazing.