It seems disproportionate to other sport, except maybe gymnastics. Some popular sports don’t even have any representation, like cricket or bowling or squash. How did swimming get so much representation?
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Likely because you can do tons of events with the same pool. Same as track and field, you have a ton of options with the same track.
For cricket, you would need to build and maintain a cricket pitch and it can’t really be used for other sports. Just to respond to one of your examples.
Likely because you can do tons of events with the same pool. Same as track and field, you have a ton of options with the same track.
For cricket, you would need to build and maintain a cricket pitch and it can’t really be used for other sports. Just to respond to one of your examples.
It’s firstly important to remember that the Olympics is as much, if not more, about organisation and logistics than representation. It’s easier to include more events for a sport that is already there than to introduce an entirely new sport.
The biggest reason is that the sports with multiple events are logistically easy to organise because they use the same venue. While short-distance and medium-distance races require different skill sets, it’s basically “do more laps around the same track”. Swimming has four major swimming strokes with their own races, so it’s basically all the races x4. You don’t need more facilities or more staff. Plus, they are really quick to run. Adding another race to the program might mean several heats and then finals, but each race is only going to be a few minutes.
In contrast, adding another sport like Rugby Sevens means multiple national teams, multiple qualifying rounds, etc. Each team can only play once per day at a specialised venue. Each team brings logistical issues with their support staff, transportation, accommodation, etc. Furthermore, these other sports typically don’t have that many “events” of their own – it’s typically *one* format. A sport like shooting and archery will have multiple distances and equipment classifications, only some of which are represented, but a sport like tennis pretty much has singles and doubles.
The final thing to consider is that for many of the major sports, the Olympics is *not* the premier event. The respective World Cup / World Championship is more representative of the best of the sport.
>there aren’t four different ways to run
I can conceive of world where skipping, galloping, and race-walking are the 3 other ways to run and we have an event for each matching the distances of existing running events… it’s a very dumb world.
Artificially handicapping yourself in a race by imposing arbitrary style/form/movement limits seems foolish. Rather watch a greater variety of events.
It’s basic lathe track and field of water. You can do a lot of activities in the water. Just like you can on the land.
There are also lots of running races, at various distances. But swimming has different strokes in addition to different lengths. There aren’t different running styles to break out.
The Olympics are all about giving air time to sports that no one can be bothered about for another 4 years. No one really flocks to an Olympics to watch soccer or basketball.
What is actually perverse about this is how it becomes a pissing contest where less developed nations don’t stand a chance. And then they keep adding sports like beach volleyball and synchronized swimming.
Much like track, there are a lot of events that are a standard part of the sport. It also makes sense that because Olympic size pools are very expensive they would want to use it repeatedly during the games.
To add:
The obvious fact is swimming provides good eye candy. Not only are athletes very well toned and wearing very skimpy outfits, but the spectators in the stand have a good, consistent view and relatively few camera placements are needed to cover the pools.
But more seriously Olympics is representation of “amateur” sports and cricket is very heavily a professional sport with dedicated clubs and seasonal cups. Bowling and squash and tennis and soccer, etc etc all have professional leagues and it’s difficult drawing the line between the professional and “amateur” athletes. Especially trying to get “amateurs” that you can field with name recognition.
Swimmer here! Have you watched snowboarding? Skiing? Gymnastics? Diving? Track & field?! Lol. Swimming looks like a lot of events because there’s heats, but really it’s not that many compared to other individual racing sports.
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