Cheers!

I fell out of love with the Olympic Games when Ben Johnson cheated his way to a Gold Medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics. Having read The Rodchenkov Affair recently, it's clear that, if you can't be certain the athletes competing have not been taking performance enhancing drugs, what's the point in watching? So I don't.

For the next Summer Olympics in 2024 in Paris, cheerleading may make its debut, having been granted full status as an Olympic "sport", along with lacrosse, kickboxing, muay thai and sambo. Ski mountaineering has been added to the 2026 Winter Olympic list. This year (actually last year because the current event is the postponed 2020 one) the new sports are baseball/softball (previously dropped from 2008), surfing, karate, skateboarding and sport climbing - wrestling was removed.

In case you don't know what muay thai is, it is sometimes called Thai boxing, a martial art characterized by the combined use of fists, elbows, knees and shins. I was once required, at school, to enter the boxing ring and attempt to pummel some equally inept pupil to death - or at least that was what it seemed like. We declined the invitation to hit each other which, as you can imagine, didn't go down well. I didn't care since I hated the school. So quite why an event dedicated to "friendship and respect ... with a view to building a better world" should promote violent activities is beyond me.

The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity. [article 2 of the Fundamental Principles of Olympism in the Olympic Charter]

Sambo is another martial art, a form of wrestling which Wikipedia describes as a "Soviet martial art", so not only violent but also representing a decadent, obsolete nation. Like gladiator fighting - now there's a suggestion for the next Olympics.

Why do I report this if I don't care about the Olympics? I guess because I question the purpose/point of the Olympic Games. If I were the head of the IOC, I'd sub divide the Games. After all, the Winter Olympics (which take place during the Southern Hemisphere summer) are separate. You could have all the violent sports in one Games - the Savage Games (to include archery and the women's 10m air rifle) - and all the sports with endemic drug cheating, e.g. cycling, weightlifting, sprinting, into the Counterfeit Games. You would be left with all the harmless sports which promote genuine world values and encourage the youth of today to undertake healthy, pure, honest endeavour, such as sailing, crown green bowls and pasta making. The Universal Games. I might even watch.

The cheerleaders could be employed on the sidelines of all the events. That's what they do. The New Olympism.