No future for Olympic skateboarding

Best of the best, not some of the rest

Tug of war was an Olympic sport for 20 years.

Croquet and its replacement roque came and went in the blink of two Olympiads more than a century ago.

Jen de paume, or real tennis, had a brief moment in the sun and pigeon racing, well, that went the way of the 7721 birds released at the 1900 games, many of which were blasted from the French skies as part of the live pigeon shooting event.

After watching the first leg of the skateboarding the other night, it would surely not be amiss for that alleged sport to follow tug of war and the other Olympic dinosaurs into extinction.

Yes, skateboarding is new, or it was at Tokyo 2021.

Yes, it is part of the Olympic challenge to embrace modernity in a bid to remain relevant in a fragmented and impatient world.

Yet how does a competition filled mostly by children, many of whom did not appear capable of remaining vertical for more than a few seconds, quality as the epitome of elite sport?

Faster, higher, stronger? Not when slower, lower, weaker will do.

Turn to another channel on Channel 9’s exceptionally clunky Olympics platform and there was Simone Biles doing things on the gymnastics mat and beam that not one other member of the world’s 8 billion humans could emulate.

Biles appeared to spark a violent chemical reaction every time her feet touched down.

Whether she was propelled by rocket-powered legs or a remarkable internal engine, she sprung and hurled and flew through breath-taking routines.

Millions could attempt a version of her displays; no one could come close to matching it.

Not so the skate boarding.

Kids fiddling on their boards while waiting to catch the bus to Shenton College demonstrate better balance and a greater array of tricks than the medal contenders at Place de la Concorde who downgraded a century and a quarter of high-level Olympic rivalry with their underwhelming demonstration.

Olympic sports are about the clash of the elite of the elite; the 0.000000001% of the population who exist in sport’s most rarified air.

Not skate boarding. It appeared the contenders graduated from the ranks of the mediocre and the modest to represent their countries. 

Chloe Covell takes a tumble during her Olympic race.

One skater didn’t bother to wear a helmet. Another left hers perched on top of her head.

A mobile phone flew from the pocket of another competitor.

A mobile phone! Most professional and international team sports try to combat match-fixing by separating athletes from their phones during competition yet here is a sport where the competitors are one button press away from a bookie while on centre stage.

It would not have surprised if the skater had pulled out a croissant from her back pocket to nibble on between tricks.

Part of the magic of the Olympics is that almost everyone has participated in the various events at some stage of their lives, whether running or riding a bike or throwing a stick or splashing across a pool, and therefore have an inkling of what it would take to excel at extreme level.

The sheer magnitude of the gap between everyman and Olympian underlines the awe in which the latter are held.

But when that gap is small, the magic doesn’t fly. And neither should the sport.