I only recently became aware of the fact that the Olympics adjusts what they consider to be events every now and then and there is a committee that votes to see what sports are allowed in the competition. While some traditional events get removed such as wrestling, we add something similar, like breakdancing?
When I heard the news I thought it was really stupid and then when I read into it further I found out that the reason things like this are introduced is because the Olympics is a business and they need to bring in youthful watchers in order to maximize the amount of money that they make, just like all sports.
However, breakdancing? Really? Then I watched a bit of it and while it was entertaining, it was entertaining for the wrong reasons. This was especially true during the Australian performance by a dancer that calls herself "Raygun."
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If you saw Rachel Gunn perform and didn't know the backstory at all, which is what happened to me when clips were forwarded to me, you would probably think that it was a joke or some sort of spoof of the Olympics done by Saturday Night Live making fun of the fact that breakdancing is an Olympic sport now. As it turns out RayGun is not a full-time breakdance Olympian but is a college professor with a Ph.D that dabbles in breakdancing because she is a fan of it. So I guess I can admire that but dear lord, was her performance not at all on par with the others that were in the competition. I didn't watch all of it, but the other performers had these moves that would rival some of the floor shows and events done by gymnasts. Rachel on the other hand had an awkward performance that looks like something that all of us could have done
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None of what she did during her performance looked like anything that the normal person couldn't do. She does some sort of handstand that most of us non athletic types might struggle with but it is something we could learn to do in an afternoon. In lieu of doing flips, she did this hilarious "kangaroo jump" and at one point crawled on the ground like a toddler mimicking swimming. I honestly don't know what the hell was going on here.
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There have been some stories in the past about people who qualified for the Olympics just because no one else could do it for the country and to me, that is what this looks like. Eddie the Eagle comes to mind.
It should come as no surprise that in Rachel's event that had her doing a dance off vs another breakdancer, that she lost 18-0. However, I would imagine that the world is going to remember RayGun and not the person who actually wins.
Call me old school, but this is kind of proof that this shouldn't be an Olympic sport and who knows if this publicity - because this has gone seriously viral - will lead to the sport being eliminated in the future. I wouldn't count on it though seeing as how the next Olympics are going to be in Los Angeles which while not being the birthplace of breakdancing, is probably one of the original cities that it became popular in.
I have said many times that I would like to see a "regular person" compete in every event just so that we, the viewers, could get an idea how we would perform in the events and well, that is kind of what we got here with RayGun.
I was excited for breakdancing in the Olympics....but I sure didn't expect to see this kind of "athlete"
...talk about being famous for all the wrong reasons
There is some speculation that she did poorly on purpose to try to prove some sort of sociologic point about the patriarchy or something. If that is the case, she deserves all the bad press that is coming here way since she basically just made a mockery out of sport in general as well as the country that she represents.
Definitely a mockery. I've recently seen how her husband was a judge for the qualifier.... So I think there s a bit of a scandal coming
She should be punished for this, but since she is a professor of something very odd that doesn't lead to an actual job for the people in the class, she will likely be celebrated by her peers for taking the piss out of a global competition. But then there is the question of how Australia spent a bunch of money to send her there. Why was there no oversight?
I switched on the Olympic highlights today and saw two guys dressed in white and thought they were going to fight each other or something and it turned out to be this break dancing but they don't call it that, but something similar. I switched it off and sadly the Olympics is more abut inclusion these days than exclusion. This is not a sport.
I think we can expect to see more tomfoolery like this in the future since if that opening ceremony was an indication at all of what the world has become, we can expect to see more and more urban "sports" entering the mix.
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