Dear IOC,

Are ya stupid or what?

The modern Olympics started in 1896 in Athens — “Citius, Altius, Fortius.” Faster, Higher, Stronger. “Plus vite, Plus haut, Plus fort.” And it was the best of amateur sports.

My first sport memory was of Wilma Rudolph, a US woman who had already used her body to give birth to a baby, just whuppin’ the ass of all the other female sprinters in the world. She got that child-bearing body 100 meters down the track in 11.0 seconds, faster than any other woman in the competition. Are you kiddin’ me? Wilma effing Rudolph, bringin’ home the gold. USA. USA. September, 1960.

I had THOUGHT that Mazeroski’s homer was my first sport memory, as our third-grade teacher – as all the good ones would – let us listen to the day-time World Series games on a transistor radio. But that was October 13, 1960. So my first sport memory – the event that has led to wasting, uh, I mean embracing 63 additional years of watching and loving sport — was a 100-meter sprint by a young mother from Tennessee. Thank you, Ms. Rudolph.

Then at some point in the memorable past we started welcoming professionals into the Olympics. OK, all the bad-guy countries had already been using professionals, but the US was still holding our own, usually winning the medal counts, with our amateurs. Go us! But then we said OK you bad countries, we gonna use pros, too, then see where you’ll be. Well, we were still winning medal counts, and we Dream-Teamed the phuck outta the rest of the basketball world, but, it just wasn’t that satisfying. So, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and the rest squeaked by Croatia in the gold-medal game in 1992 in Barcelona by a smooth 32 points. Whoop-ti-phreakin-do! Well, there WAS one game that was almost that close, in the Dream Team’s 8-0 run, when we won by only 33. (It, too, was against those pesky Croatians.)

However, this inclusion of the pros added the at-home weirdness of pros choosing their pro-ness over the (note — for free) competing in the name of their country. And whoa, isn’t that awkward? And the winter Olympics is during NHL hockey season so, dang, doesn’t that put us and the Canadians in a bit of a pickle?

When the modern Olympics started it was based on the marathon, named after an event where a guy ran to Athens from . . . Marathon. No, not in the Florida Keys. In ancient Greece. It was about fundamentals. Can you run far? Can you run fast? Can you lift something heavy? Can you throw something far (javelin makes sense — does a discus imitate the way ancient Greeks hunted birds?)? Can you run and jump over stuff (hurdles)? Maybe can you run over rough land (cross country)? Can you jump higher and farther? Can you beat the crap outta the other guy (wrestling, and later boxing, sure). OK, they had “lawn tennis.” Pretty sure I’d’a been against including “lawn tennis” in 1896.

Then there’s the winter Olympics. I definitely get downhill skiing, maybe even slalom. Hey, our forebears had to get their cold asses down the mountain in a hurry, sometimes avoiding obstacles. Sometimes even over well-groomed moguls? I dunno? Speed skating, yep. Figure skating – um, maybe. I mean, functionality, but also beauty. (But then why don’t we have “dancing” in the summer Olympics? Oh but watch out what you wish for – see below.) Luge – yeah, sometimes our ancestors had to sled down the hill in a hurry, I guess.

I know change is necessary. Those 1896 modern Olympics that I proffered as a paragon included only men. But. But this snowboarding shit. “Slopestyle”? Really? “Oh my – that was a backside left-to-right 1080 with a squiggly wiggly.” They build a course where the snowboarders have to perform some backwards glide down a hand rail then slide off of a fake cottage roof with fake snow on it. It seems so so arbitrary. I just watched a guy do a (I am not making this up) “big nosebutter triple-cork, switch 1800 reaching back to the far tail, beyond the normal tail, with a Cuban grab.” That may earn you points in Beijing, but I’m pretty sure that gets you arrested in Miami.

IOC, have you lost all sense of tradition? Softball was once in and it may be coming back? Can’t you just hear the breathless announcer say “Cuba has won the gold, which is their first softball gold in 16 years – of course, the event hasn’t been included for the last 15 years.” Yawn.

One of the reasons sport is so great is because we compare across the years. Ty Cobb in 1969 said he would probably just hit about .300 against modern-day pitching. “But then, I’m 72.” Haha. But it is funny because it is almost true. How would your father do at the 100-yard-dash, in his prime? How would mom have done if she had to swim her fastest 100 meters? Well, we have no phucking idea how they woulda done in the slopestyle, snowboarding off of a fake cottage roof!

Did you see that Eileen Gu won gold for China in the women’s big air freeski? How good was your best high school athlete in the big air freeski?

So, “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” but there’s been a recent addition: “Faster, Higher, Stronger … Together.” “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter.” “Plus vite, Plus haut, Plus fort – Ensemble.” Faster, higher, stronger, with a squiggly wiggly, together with everyone . . . since 2015.

So. Summer Olympics, Paris, 2024. No baseball. No softball. No karate. But . . . breakdancing! Really.

In Athens, in 1896, the marathon, javelin, . . . but no breakdancing.

Here’s a quote from USA Today about the 2021 summer Olympics: “Four of the six medals in women’s skateboarding went to athletes 13 or younger. . . . As American skateboarder Alexis Sablone said, ‘I think that they are getting cool points because everyone knows that skateboarding is cool.’ It is, and that’s why it’s staying for the foreseeable future.”

OK, cool is cool. But might we somehow esteem tradition in parallel with cool?

From that same USA Today article: “. . . baseball/softball and karate – are gone for now. IOC rules now allow host cities to add sports to their program, so karate made sense in the country it originated [in the Toyko Olympics]. Baseball and softball, which have strong followings here, did too. But they’re less of a fit in 2024 and won’t be contested then.”

“Slopestyle”? “Big air”? I thought this was the purview of the X Games. (Which I read were so named because “X” represents “Generation X” but also because it may represent “extreme.”) Thirteen-year-old medal winners? So, OK, these kids today! I get it. But shall I see, in my lifetime, “Notice, Miffy is the first sub-three-year-old to complete the under-the-dining-room-table crawl with a perfect score, having touched none of the six chairs”?

Maybe we don’t need to be so bound to our ancestors’ run from Marathon. But what gets me is just the arbitrariness of it all! Seems to me maybe I could invent a sport . . . “OK, Vern, notice as Bias drops down into the convertible run he is able to flip open his sunglasses with his left hand, do the back-hand pull of the seatbelt effectively with his right hand, all while driving with only his left knee. OH MY GOD, did you see that?! He answered his phone with his elbow without spilling a drop of his latte. I am pretty sure if he can actually make the 90-degree turn with his knees all while effecting the ‘right back atcha’ point to his neighbor he’ll find himself on the podium.”

Why a “grab”? Why not a “took a selfie in midair”? Why not, “wrote his name in cursive”? What is the big whup about grabbing your snowboard? It just seems so arbitrary.

And when you figure out why some sports allow just one run (with no practice on the slope? What? Sounds like an OSHA violation), some allow two runs and you take your best score, some allow two runs and you take the sum of the two scores, some allow three runs and you take the best two . . . when you figure out what drives that, please let me know.

Love.

Randolph.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons