Ultimate at the Olympics - Two Further Cents

I have to thank Simon over at the ever-entertaining Ballarat Ultimate Blog for tackling the "Ultimate Should Be at the Olympics" thing.

Go and read his post and then come back.

I too often get stuff from Ulti-boosters about how Ultimate Should Be at the Olympics, but I'm not really interested. I guess mostly I don't see any chance of a return for the investment of time involved (that is, there's no chance).

Simon has done a great job in listing the key official/formal hurdles. These are generally used in describing why sports are in or out. The sports "in the queue" all tick these boxes ahead of Ultimate. I'll leave aside the principled (that is, not cost-related) resistance from some quarters within Ultimate to drug testing (who opposite it mostly, rightly, because its stupid for sports to test for and sanction against non-performance-related but nonetheless illegal recreational drugs).*

But back to my main point - for me, the "political" hurdles facing Ultimate are far greater than the formal ones.

Sports get into the Olympics because countries lobby for them. Powerful countries will lobby hard, and they will seek coalitions of like minded countries to seek the entry of sports.

Why would a country seek to include a new sport at the Olympics? Primarily, it would be because they reckoned they had a chance at winning medals in the sport.

Lots of medals.

This is one reason why we see sports that can offer lots of variation within their discipline (which are mostly individual sports) continue strongly at the Olympics. There are dozens and dozens of medals available in rowing, swimming, sailing, boxing, skiing, wrestling, cycling, and so on and so on.** But there's only two field hockey medals, two football (soccer) medals, two volleyball medals, two ice hockey medals, and so on. See where I'm going here? Countries and the IOC like to see lots and lots of medals handed out, and Ultimate isn't going to deliver on that.***

The other political issue for me is – how many countries really have a crack at winning a medal if Ultimate were at the Olympics, and hence would support its inclusion? Sure, this would change if countries decided to chase, but at the moment you can only see the USA or Canada taking Gold. Even if countries like Australia or GB did look at investing in it, they have to think about supporting 24 or so players to chase an outside chance at a Gold – not a great rate of return. Now, the USA is a sporting super-power, but I can't see them getting Ultimate into the Olympics on its own (even with Canadian support). The fact is that the international Ultimate playing field is hugely lop-sided, so you won't see Ultimate at the Olympics as a result.

But like Simon, I want to offer some suggestions to those people who are passionate about Ultimate Should Be at the Olympics.

!. Keep working on Ultimate's unique character. This makes it more marketable, particularly to broadcasters who have a significant influence over a sports inclusion (and then its ongoing profile!). Broadcasters have to fill in the space between covering their own country's major medal hopes, and there's scope for them to flip to Ultimate if its different to all the rest (Ultimate also makes for good 'feature reports'). That is, don't look at other sports and try to emulate them.

2. Get Ultimate happening in Asia and South America. If you're thinking about countries lobbying to get new sports into the Olympics, these are the areas that are 'under-represented' (most sports (and yes, there are plenty of exceptions) included in the Olympics are European or North American in flavour). But if Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, Colombia, Venuzuala, Uruguay, India, China, Chile, and so forth think they have a chance at Olympic glory through Ultimate, then its got a better chance of happening. Why else is taekwondo, table tennis, badminton and judo there nowadays?

3. Keep offering views on what's presently wrong with the Olympics, and the inconsistencies about what sports are in and out. Ultimate stands very close to the Olympics' traditional ideals (this is one reason why Ultimate players think it has a real chance at getting into the Olympics). Should the wind change and the Olympics seek to return to those traditional ideas of good sportspersonship, fair play, less money, more equal opportunity, and so on, then Ultimate will be well placed to move up should other sports fall by the wayside (and my tip is that a few traditional sports will soon fall aside due to corruption).

A final thought to those Olympic boosters. There's plenty of reasons for keeping Ultimate out of the Olympics - the most commonly notes is that Ultimate traditionalists are wary about whether self-officiating and fair play can stand up in the present high-money Olympic environment.

But if you get Ultimate to the Olympics, there's a chance you'll end up limiting the sport. Who among the general public gives a toss about fencing, or diving, or shooting, or archery, except for maybe a couple of hours every four years? I kind of see more for Ultimate than this. Sports like soccer, athletics, skiing, triathalon, basketball, baseball, etc - they're at the Olympics because they have a great profile that has nothing to do with the Olympics. I think Ultimate has the eventual capacity to be a wide-profile sport played by a lot of people, but the Olympics could box it into perpetual niche-ness.

*To continue the aside, be frank, if Ultimate had any chance of making it into the Olympics, we'd be doing drug testing and Ultimate players who wanted to try to represent their countries at the Olympics would be making decisions about their habits.

**What is the frickin' difference between being the fastest over 100m and 200m (in swimming or athletics), or 2000m or 4000m (in rowing or cycling), or a few kilos difference within weight classes for fighting sports, etc etc. Frickin' nothing, its just tradition that you get to give more prizes out. If the IOC were ever idealistically serious about reducing the 'size' of the Olympics, rather than eliminating sports, they'd consider be a cull within sports.

***That said, team sports are largely more interesting to watch, and thinking about the power of the public and of broadcasters (who want people watching (for a long period), are a key reason they're a big part of the Olympics.