okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Monday, August 16, 2004

Olympics and O'

Orienteering and the Olympics is an obvious topic. Should O' be in the Olympics? Could O' be in the Olympics? Would it matter?

I haven't really given it much thought, but I'm sure I can crank out a few paragraphs...

For as long as I've been orienteering (about 24 years), the topic of O' and the Olympics keeps coming up. As far as I can tell, orienteering has never been given a serious chance of getting on the program. Supposedly ski-O has a better chance, but I haven't seen any reason to believe that ski-O has been given a serious chance of making the program.

Orienteering seems to be a sport reasonably well suited to the Olympics. It is fair, spread around the world and not so expensive to organize. I know, I know, it doesn't make good TV. Conventional wisdom calls for a sport to be good on TV to have a chance to make the Olympics (hence we've got beach volleyball). Maybe that's true.

If O' was in the Olympics would it matter? Would it be a good thing?

I suspect it wouldn't really make much difference. Certainly it'd be a bit easier for an orienteer to train a lot more and work or study a lot less. But it wouldn't mean a bunch of orienteers (in the U.S. at least) would get a bunch of money. Being in the Olympics doesn't mean you can stop working (take a look at the U.S. archery team for an example, those folks aren't full time athletes).

As an Olympic sport, coaching would probably improve. A few more full-time, professional coaches would be able to get jobs. That'd be positive.

I don't think the added publicity would make the sport grow a lot. I think the nature of the sport rather than publicity explains most of the growth of any sport.

If O' were in the Olympics it'd change the importance of world champs. I'd guess most people would rather have an Olympic gold than a WOC gold, even if wining a WOC gold might be just as difficult. It'd be a shame to have the most important (i.e. prestigious) event happen only every four years.

I suppose it is a moot point as the chances of orienteering showing up in the Olympic program are probably very slim.

posted by Michael | 8:20 PM

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