Olympic Sports Sports-ALL

And undefeated after losing their peaking star player. It seems like it woke up something in everyone else.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

Congratulations USA, for once again winning the most medals, and now the most gold.

We once again prove we have enough resources to pour ungodly amounts of money into sports we only care about once every four (or five, or presumably three) years. And all we have to do is ignore people dying of preventable diseases, our crumbling infrastructure, our profiteering war mongering, the use of prisoners as slave labor, the crisis of the unhoused, the crisis of resource hoarding by the 1%, our disastrous effects on the climate and the environment...

IMAGE(https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/16f56447-bba3-4fec-afd5-e36735b13633/scale-to-width-down/800)

Edit: nvm, but lol at the idea of there being some sort of tradeoff between people who can run or swim fast and solving global warming. That said, sign me up for sacrificing Michael Phelps for the good of humanity. That guy has always come across as a bit of a dick.

It's is hilarious that you think that it is simply about people being able to run and swim fast and not governments or large industries (like team sports) finding those people and endlessly pumping resources into them until that can run or swim super fast. Resources that could be used to solve (or at least mitigate) several of humanity's biggest crises.

How much money dis the US spend to train Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky? How much did China spend to train Guan Chenchen and the rest of their Gymnastics team? Or Russia to train their athletes and not even officially compete? Or Burkina Faso to train Hugues Fabrice Zango? (Though the last is much more relevant to a country without as limitless resources as the first three).

If you like the Olympics, fine. But don't pretend that it is simply people who run fast, jump high, or can put a ball in a net in a variety of conditions. It is money, sometimes limitless money, and, at least in the US, money that could have been allocated to actually help people, and not to exposing our best athletes to COVID-19.

Edit, nvm

That said, sign me up for sacrificing Michael Phelps for the good of humanity. That guy has always come across as a bit of a dick.

Sorry, going to push back on that one. Phelps is doing a hell of a lot to advance treatment of mental illness and to destigmatize it. Ryan Lochte might be a better sacrifice, or any of the Kardashians...

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

How much money dis the US spend to train Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky?

I can't speak for other countries, but for the US -- pretty much none. For the most part, the US Olympic Team is a team in name only. The athletes (swimming and track I know for sure, but I assume it holds for the other sports as well) train with their local club team/coach and not with other athletes except for a brief period just before the games. And even for those few weeks, the US Olympic team is not federally funded. I guess we could get into whether private citizens and corporations should be funding this sort of thing, but 1) that's probably better discussed in the politics sub-forum and 2) honestly, I'd rather they fund Katie Ledecky's training than whatever Lindsay Graham does with political donations.

The Paralympics Opening Ceremony has started! So excited for everything, but especially goalball and the wheelchair sports.