Last week I wrote about Michael Phelps, and what an amazing
career he has just capped off at the 30th Olympiad in London. As a swimmer, he competes in a sport where it
is possible to win a medal for each event he is entered in, and he is ending
his career with a second-to-none count of 22 medals to his name. That makes him
hard to compare on an apples-to-apples basis to a decathlete, who can earn just
one medal while having to compete in more events than Phelps ever swam in any one
Olympics. Medal count aside, however, there is no doubt that Phelps is one of
the greatest Olympians of all time.
You know who is not one of the greatest Olympians of all
time? Any ping pong player.
I have nothing against ping pong as a hobby. It goes great
with beer and it’s a good way to kill a half-hour in a rec room. And I have
absolutely no problem with professional ping pong players - especially the ones
at the Olympics. They are phenomenal. I even enjoyed watching it for about
three minutes. What I do have a
problem with is the fact that someone can go to London, play ping pong really
well, and end up with the same gold medal that Michael Phelps, Jessica Ennis,
and Usain Bolt currently have around their necks. That is ridiculous.
To keep everyone on a level playing field, all the Olympic
athletes are rigorously drug tested. If ping pong is considered an Olympic
sport, then the International Olympic Committee has obviously lost sight of the
reason for drug testing in the first place.
The IOC needs to apply a theoretical drug test to their
screening process. They need to sit down and look at the list of events they
are offering at the Olympic Games and decide if taking performance enhancing
drugs would actually help the competitor win. If the answer is no, it should
not be an Olympic event. Ping pong? No.
They try to dress it up by calling it “table tennis,” but
let’s all be serious for a minute. You’re hitting a little plastic ball with a
tiny wooden paddle. Take all the steroids you want. Get steroid injections
between matches. Who cares? You’re still just playing ping pong. It’s not a
sport.
If they don’t want to apply the theoretical drug test, they
could apply a very simple theoretical alcohol test instead. If the game in
question can be played while holding a beer in your other hand, it should not
be an Olympic event.
Hammer throw – Pass. Ping pong – Fail.
Hammer throw. Now there’s an Olympic event. Pick up a
16-pound lead ball on the end of a steel cable and throw it as far as you can.
A gentleman from Hungary just won the gold medal in London by tossing that
measly little hammer 264 feet. He could probably eat a ping pong table. The
hammer throw has deep Olympic roots, and is also an integral part of the Scottish
Highland Games, which also features the caber toss, the only
throwing-heavy-stuff event that is cooler than the hammer throw. A caber is a
log that is 19 feet long and weighs 175 pounds. Pick it up and throw it. Plain
and simple.
It is patently obvious that the caber toss should be immediately
added to the Olympics to take the place of ping pong. And on top of that, every
medalist in ping pong since its bewildering inclusion to the Olympic Games in 1988
should be forced to enter the caber toss in 2016, just so they can get a feel
for how ridiculous their medals for ping pong really are. We could force them
to enter the swimming events, but I thought it would be a little harsh to
actually drown them, which is what would obviously happen.
I am not saying that professional ping-pongers don’t need a
competitive venue to showcase their “sport.” Like I said, I think they are
amazing, but let’s remove it from the Olympics and leave the table tennis pro
tour where it belongs – in Las Vegas at the Horseshoe on a Wednesday.
If the IOC fails to take my incredibly insightful advice and
get rid of ping pong, then the least they could do is make the medal sizes proportionate
to the events. If you medal in the decathlon, you should get a medal the size
of a truck tire. If you medal in ping pong, it should look like a dime on a
string. The silver medal could be an actual dime.
Other dime-sized medal “sports” would include race walking,
badminton, and trampoline. Come on, IOC! Really? The race walking course was 31
miles long. Big deal. It’s still walking. My mother-in-law just did a
fundraiser where she walked 30 miles in a day, three days in a row. I guess
that means she’s a three-time Olympic hopeful! Badminton is just a larger, but
somehow less exciting version of ping pong, and don’t even get me started on
trampoline. Have you ever seen a kid throw a 16-pound lead ball on a steel
cable 264 feet in the backyard for fun? Enough said.
The medal ceremonies should be proportionate also. Actual
Olympic-caliber events can maintain the current pomp and circumstance, but the
ping pong players should just be handed their dime-sized medal on their way out
of the arena by one of the ushers. “Here you go, big guy. Great match.”
To any Olympic ponger, fast walker, shuttlecocker, or bouncy-bouncer
that disagrees with me, I offer this simple solution: Get a tape measure and
lay out 29 feet on your floor. Now stand back and look at it.
That’s how far Carl Lewis flew in a single long jump.
By the way -- huge congratulations to Jike Zhang, Long Ma,
Hao Wang, and Xiaoxia Li for their amazing gold medal wins at the 2012 Olympic
Games.
Who?
Exactly. Good luck in the caber toss, boys.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen
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