Every two years the people of the various countries of the world gather in random cities to express their feelings of nationalism under the cover of official Olympic sporting events. This year’s Olympic opening ceremony lasted nearly 4 hours, cost approximately $100 million (although I have heard as high as $300 million), and was viewed by 1 billion people (that is approx. 15 % of the world’s population!). I didn’t watch the whole thing, I just caught the never-ending replay of the highlights, my favorite part was when the Chinese athlete selected to light the Olympic flame was hoisted into the air by wires and appeared to be running on air in his ascent to light the torch. All of this seems a bit over the top, don’t you think?
Call me Debbie Downer, but I personally think that all this man power, invested time, and ridiculous amount of money could have been put to better use. But hey, I’m not going to lie, I am a huge sports fan and enjoy the Olympics, they could just do without all the ceremonial bull. No, I do not want to watch acrobats create some work of art on a state of the art LCD screen, I want to watch the world’s top athletes duke it out, maybe chant a little “USA!”.
With that being said, there was a poll conducted asking people which Olympic sporting event they were looking forward to the most, 45% responded gymnastics, followed by swimming, etc. (actual numbers not really known, I made that up). WRONG! Yeah, yeah, yeah it’s nice to see Michael Phelps get his 27th gold medal and all but what I really want to see is Race Walking. That is correct, Race Walking is actually an event which holds world-wide standings and can earn an Olympic medal.
Race Walking is listed under the athletics category along with all that other less entertaining track and field crap. It is a long distance event where the competitor must have one foot on the ground at all times, the back toe cannot leave the ground until the front heel has made contact with the ground. On top of that, the leg that is in contact with the ground must remain straight until the body passes over it (thank you Wikipedia). There are judges present to make certain these rules are followed. It is quite the sight to see.
This is nothing to knock though. The top race walkers can cover a mile in less than 7 minutes. I consider it outstanding when people can run a mile in 7 minutes. And to top that, the events raced are no short distance, 12.4 miles being the shortest Olympic event. Men’s race walking became an Olympic event in 1904, and after several years of petitioning women’s race walking became an event in 1992. People actually actively sought to make this a women’s event! Imagine the plight of these women race walkers, standing in front of the IOC pleading their case. They should make a movie out of it. It’s not like they haven’t made movies about this sport before.
1966’s “Walk Don’t Run” starred Cary mother effin Grant in his last feature film ever. Okay, so the movie isn’t entirely about the sport, but one of the main characters plays a race walker too embarrassed to state which Olympic event he is in. Don’t be embarrassed, shout that shit from the roof tops. You are a top athlete in possibly the most entertaining Olympic event. Why is this not advertised more? Sure the Olympic Basketball team gets a commercial of them playing while Marvin Gaye sings the American national anthem, but what do Race Walkers get? They get mocked by Mr. T himself.http://www.heavy.com/video/54047 Click for your viewing pleasure
Fortunately, there is a website dedicated entirely to the sport. http://www.racewalk.com/. They actually have books, DVDs, t-shirts, etc. Even better the DVD is actually a collection of videos intended to be used as a training tool. You too can “Race Walk Like a Champion”!
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