h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Err, Soccer is an olympic game. They are supposed to restrict entry to amateurs but that recently changed to under 23s I think. Nigeria did rather well at the last olympics, they might even have won it. Didn't get an awful lot of TV coverage though.

Britain doesn't field a team because that would lose it the right to enter four different ones in the other international competitions like the World Cup.

What ever happened to bowling? And you call Baseball a sport, over here it is just big business entertainment.

Soccer: I see... apparently, the Olympic competition isn't worth mentioning, and I guess FIFA and the other sanctioning bodies are to blame. And since no US team has ever been worth mentioning, it gets even less coverage here. Olympic ice hockey became fanatical when the NHL released their players for the Games, thus allowing the best in the world to compete for their home countries. I'm sure any true hockey fan here can tell you who won the medals at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, and the NHL just came to terms with the IOC to allow that sort of thing to happen in Salt Lake City in 2002. However, for the World Championships, the teams have to make due with minor leaguers and players whose NHL franchise had an early ejection from the playoffs. The talent pool isn't as rich as a result, and so those same hockey fans would be hard-pressed to tell you who will meet in the gold medal game at the World Championships in a couple days.

Baseball: I don't know what baseball you're watching, but all I've seen is the same sport it's always been, except with smaller parks and bigger batters. It's big business, sure, but so is soccer, football, hockey, basketball, rugby, etc. That's just because it's a sport that people will actually pay to watch. You don't see them packing them in at the badminton courts...

And I suppose, now that I've said bad things about badminton, a badminton enthusiast is going to come in and take offense...

Of course they will. Any bets on how long it will take?

I have to say that I usually watch the World hockey Championships, but this year I was unaware that they even were on right now until some Fin guy told me that Sweden and Finland were meeting in the quarter finals. And as everyone knows, Sweden versus Finland in ice hockey is usually war.
But since I currently reside in Scotland, and Great Britain isn't known to have the world's best ice hockey team (they were in the World Championships a couple of years ago, though) there isn't any coverage of it, unless you've got Eurosport or some other cable/satellite channel.

I can identify... I didn't know they were going on, either, until I hit ESPN's website to catch up on the NHL playoffs, and found an article link on the sidebar dealing with it. I suppose it would have gotten some good US coverage if they had managed to make the medal round, but, true to tradition, they choked. The only undefeated team in qualifying, they lost their first game that really counted to Slovakia. My only consolation: Slovakia has gone on to the final, where they meet arch-rival Czech Republic for the gold. Should be an interesting game.

I have read or heard somewhere that many sports are derived from war games and I believe many others were created from the same urge to prove oneself better than someone else. This is a good thing as I see games as a better way for countries to compete with each other.

Its seems more and more that the idea of competition, whether it be physical or mental, is what is used to define a sport for the Olympics. This broad definition takes away from the physical nature that once made the Olympics exciting.

As a note this seems to parallel the nature of war the last few decades as that seems to have gotten more intellectual of late, though it still has its definite physical side.

Did not mean to bring up a new topic, but it makes some sort of (non?)sense to me.

Of course sports has been developed to prove oneself better than others. That's the general idea of competition.
It was also a good way to keep soldiers in shape in times of peace. Just look at some of the "classic" sports, such as fencing, javelin throw, boxing, wrestling, archery. It's all about soldiers keeping their skills at a prime at all times.
Of course, one could say that the javelin throw and archery would also have been vital to the everyday survival of people in the old days, since they relied on their skills to get food. No skills, no food, no survival.

I am a certified table tennis coach. And a former competitive player. All this yakking about ping pong, playing it drunk in a bar, it not being a sport. IGNORANCE. That's like saying playing catch is easy, so baseball isn't a real sport. The basement / barroom ping pong you speak of is NOT a sport, true. Neither is playing catch. Neither has any bearing on what REAL baseball is like, or what REAL table tennis is like. World class table tennis players... even just pretty good ones who aren't world class.. Geez. Where to start? The training is arduous. I went to a weeklong training camp as a 12 year old, FIRST item is 5 mile run, morning of first day. Footwork drills till the cows come home.
The ignorance is understandable, though, because in North America, the "basement", laid-back, recreational, hacker version is all you see.

I may be mistaken, but it seems that there wasn't much ranting and "yakking" about table tennis not being a sport. I actually had to re-read the discussion thread to make sure, but we were more ranting about other things, like Ballroom Dancing (which for the record is still a sport, although I still don't like the format of trusting on how nice another person feels that particular day to get a good score).

So I would have to say that your little outbreak here wasn't totally called for, since we didn't thrash table tennis as a sport any more than we did other sports. That doesn't mean that you're not entitled to air your opinion, just that I sensed a bit of animosity in the air as I read your entry.

The original thread derided the inclusion of table tennis in the Olympics, since it's a game that drunk people play in a bar. Ok? Its inclusion was grouped with ballroom dancing as things that the Olympics should never have accepted. This forum IS under the table tennis article, by the way. Is that alright? Am I on topic enough now?

Yes, you are absolutely right that the original thread claimed that since you could play table tennis at the pub after a few pints, it shouldn't be an Olympic Sport. However, the discussion soon swung over to actually say that Table Tennis was in deed a sport worthy of inclusion in the Olympics, but that is just unfortunate enough to be a sport playable in a reasonably confined space, and that was the only reason why you could play table tennis in the pub, unlike the large court tennis (which would just be ridiculous to try to play in a pub).
And as always, one should remember that all Olympic Events are confined within the Olympic _GAMES_ and that all sports are just that. Games. Sports should be fun, both to participate in and to watch. A player that really doesn't have his/her heart in it can't be a good player/athlete/participant.

I snuck in to your home page here on H2G2 the other day and saw that you had just arrived here. A slight tip when it comes to the Forums. They always (well, at least over 90% of them) drift away from the topic, and one shouldn't bee too hung up on what's being said in the beginning, as it will most likely be tossed about, turned inside out and thrown out the window and replaced with something completely different instead.

I could do upper-body work and cardiovascular activities five days out of the week to prepare myself for a golf, game, too, but that doesn't change the fact that the game is nothing more than a Sunday stroll, with occasional stops to squint at grass and swat a ball.

But it's easy to be derisive about *any* sport. It doesn't prove anything though.

I'm talking to Gargle. About table tennis, not golf. Understand this... The world class table tennis athletes are, by whatever fitness test you want to devise, in insanely good shape. Their reactions are insane. Their endurance is insane. The amount of power they can generate in a split second from any fast-twitch muscle group they have is insane. Any less than that and the rigors of maintaining a world class level would be beyond them.
And it's one on one. A purely antagonistic confrontation, athlete to athlete. Rules are clear. What more do you want?

Did someone mention bowling. I know that both ten-pin and lawn bowling are recognised Olympic sports. And lawn bowls has always been a commonwealth games sport, ten-pin was included at KL last time. These are both sports which require a large ammounbt of skill, stamina and tactics. Did you know that lawn bowling greens have to be included already in every Olympic venue was is is a paralympic event the following month.

Bowling????

*DD considers mentioning his titles but instead says*

The atmosphere on Saturday was like a football match.

If I were to describe Lawn Bowls to someone that had never seen it before, I'd probably describe it as a llong version of petonque (Boule). I know that the only likeness betwee lawn bowls and petonque is that they have a jack and the players are supposed to get as close to it as possible.

DD, remind me on Saturday to discuss this with you. I'm sure you'll have a different view on it.

Sigh... kinda depressing that a forum under the table tennis article manages to find itself going on about lawn bowling. In the time it takes a lawn bowler to compose themselves and deliver one bowl, a table tennis player might have been called on to make 10 or more shots, each of them possibly being a totally different stroke in response to the opponent's own variety of spins, speeds, and trajectories. Wouldn't mind if this forum strayed into badminton, tennis, boxing, martial arts, sports which are somehow comparable to table tennis... but sheesh...

Okay, I'm gonna have to be blunt here, Mr. Pile-of-Bricks.
If you actually read the forum entries you will see that I have pointed out that most forums at one time or another gets sidetracked for whatever the reason and takes a turn down a completely different road. It's the nature of Forums to do so. HOw else can a forum go from "QVC" to the "Disney Channel", or from "Rain" to "Screwing beds to bits" (as in dismantling it, using a screw driver, mind you)??
Yes, you are correct that table tennis is a much faster game than lawn bowls, and yes, by the time a bowler has thought of what to do, taken aim and generally composed him/herself, a point or even two has gone and went in a table tennis match. BUt that still doesn't mean that we can't discuss lawn bowls in a table tennis forum. It's like saying that you can't discuss sharks and goldfish in the same forum, because the shark is a big, fast fish, while the goldfish is a small fish with poor memory.

Get over it!