The Weekly Screed (#662)

Judge not, lest ye be
screwed by the Russian judge
by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — The first Olympics in my recollection were the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley. The memories, in grainy black and white, consist almost entirely of endless, redundant ski jumping (on tiny TV screens) by androgynous daredevils in helmets.

I sort of enjoyed this because it resembled a popular boyhood pastime — swing jumping. A simple sport. Your basic kid would mount a typical playground swing — the best ones in Tomah were up at Gillett Park, because they measured about 14 feet from the crossbar above to the seat below — and start pumping ferociously, ‘til your foreswing peaked just about level with the crossbar. Then, well, you jumped. With good timing, you’d actually “fly” a little, maybe two feet higher (I always translated this into thousands — so, 16,000 feet) before you plummeted to the dirt, grass or — best of all — asphalt below.

But, as I watched the ski jumpers — who all seemed to be Japanese — I noticed TV guys talking about “style points.” Style? “What’s with style?” I said to Koscal. You slide down a ramp and jump off. You go as far as you can, and the kid who goes farthest wins. The only “style” I could see was these maniacs’ ability to not break both their legs on the landing.

By and by, I figured out that ski jumping wasn’t much different, in the outcome, from the swings at Gillett Park. The judges gave lip service to “style,” but they pinned the medal on the guy who flew the farthest.

But then I noticed other “style” sports in the Olympics, worst of all figure skating, where style pretty much smothers everything else. Here I was, 10 years old, learning about an alleged “game” that was entirely decided by a “judge” picked by a political clique — or a dictator — from an Evil Empire. Good God!

This was a minor problem in 1960. Today, it’s an epidemic that sullies every Olympics. Today, most kids, many of them aspiring athletes, can’t distinguish a sport from a trick or an art form, or plain, ordinary fun.

Speed-skating is, for example, a sport. A bunch of skaters zip around a track and the fastest skater wins. No judges. No written protests. No decimal points.

Figure skating, however, used to be almost an art, mainly because of its dance elements and Peggy Fleming. Today, it’s the province of 80-pound teenage pixies doing triple Salchows, quadruple Axels and quintuple Yamaguchis in the pike position on the rocks with a twist. In short, nowadays, you win the gold with tricks.

A trick is a life-threatening stunt that’s fun to watch because a normal person would probably suffer permanent spinal damage if she tried it. But just ‘cause it’s hard to do doesn’t make it a sport. Nor does the presence of a judging panel make it a sport. But the “style” fallacy has infected a lot of the Olympics, including all that loop-de-looping through half-pipes and moguls on snowboards and skis.

We’ve reached a point where we need to either take all this daredevil crap out of the Olympics or change the name of the event to the Olympic-Capades.

Actually, I’d go further. if I could work my will, I’d pare today’s bloated and xenophobic Olympics by deleting every team sport. Most professional team sports, like hockey, basketball — especially soccer — have championships that dwarf the Olympics in importance and quality of play. Worse, team sports violate the original Olympic ideal — that the Games celebrate the best individual in each discipline, with national pride a mere afterthought. Enough, I say, of “USA! USA! USA!”

Of course, we have to dump every sport in which judges pick the winner, including the big TV-ratings bonanzas, figure skating and gymnastics. Yeah, these “sports” attract viewers who rarely watch sports. But that’s the point. They aren’t sports (where’s the damn finish line?). They’re showbiz.

Any sport that requires makeup, hairdressers, choreographers, piped-in BeeGees music and sequined leotards? Gone! Yeah, I know. There goes synchronized swimming. Also cancelled: any Olympic “sport” that requires a horse, or a piece of equipment that costs more than, say, a late-model VW bug.

By my rules, the current Winter Games would shrink from 95 to 65 events, without hockey or bobsleds, without aerials or pixies. The Summer Games, which I haven’t tallied, would suffer similar down-sizing. Would this be bad?

The result would be Games that resemble the best Olympics all of us have ever seen, which was actually a movie: Chariots of Fire. Simple, unequivocal, heroic — and the only judges were the guys who fired the starting guns.

Curmudgeon though I am, I do believe that there is a place in our society for figure skaters and ice-dancers. It’s Las Vegas. It’s Disney on Ice.

We already have a better, non-Olympic venue for snowboarders and skiers who can leap over Frosty the snowman while doing upside-down ski jumps through flaming hoops. It’s the Winter X Games on ESPN2… or 3… or 8 (The Ocho!).

Meanwhile, I can propose at least one replacement sport for future Games.

Anybody who ever watched “Wide World of Sports” with Jim McKay on ABC every Saturday remembers that the peak of the winter sports season took place at Grossinger’s Hotel in the Borscht Belt of upstate New York, home of the world barrel-jumping championship. This involved speed-skaters, sprinters and death-wish psychotics who would circle a huge rink several times, building speed, after which they launched themselves feet-first over a seemingly endless row of barrels — clearing as many as 15, 17, 18, 20! before either crashing into the farthest barrel or hitting the ice ass-foremost and skidding pell-mell into a snowbank, exhibiting no style whatsoever. These lunatic skaters always arose bruised, cock-eyed and grinning. The winner was as simple as Chariots of Fire: whoever cleared the most barrels.

Barrel-jumping was joyful winter mayhem that any kid could understand, love and aspire to. After all, it was swing-jumping on ice.