So, what's in a name? A lot, apparently.
For three years and 50 weeks, very few people give a hoot about sports like archery, table tennis and rhythmic gymnastics. Events like the 20-km walk are right up there with "Hart to Hart" reruns in terms of viewer interest.
But for a couple of weeks every four years, these events merit big-time international coverage from the world's media outlets, simply because they are part of the OLYMPICS -- the greatest sporting show on earth!
But are they really?
Some say soccer's World Cup might have a wider audience appeal, and that may very well be the case. At least the way the World Cup is set up, most -- if not all -- of the teams that qualify for the finals have earned their ticket and deserve to be there (which is not to say they are beyond the occasional blow-out).
The same thing cannot always be said of the Olympics. From bumbling British ski-jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards to the South African baseball team, the Olympic Games have a long and rich history of putting people in the spotlight who have absolutely no right to be at the center of the world's sports stage.
At the Calgary Winter Games in 1988, Edwards, a bespectacled construction worker from Gloucestershire, soared (sort of) into Olympic infamy with his last-place finish in ski jumping. While no one can deny that the "The Eagle" had some very large balls and provided entertaining footage with his daring leaps, does this type of show really belong on the Olympic stage?
After Calgary, Edwards took his skiing freak show on the road, jumping over cars and buses when he wasn't opening shopping malls. To its credit, the International Olympic Committee beefed up ski-jumping entrance standards in the wake of the Eagle debacle.
That same year, the Jamaican bobsled team made its debut at the Calgary Games. This ill-advised experiment nearly resulted in serious injury when the four-man sled flipped over at 137 kph after the inexperienced pilot was unable to negotiate a bend. Now that'll straighten out your dreadlocks in a hurry!
Even the 1998 Nagano Winter Games had some suspect "competitors." In particular, there was the case of Philip Boit, a former distance runner who, along with backup Henry Bitok, formed the Kenyan Olympic team in Nagano.
Some executives at Nike thought it would be a good publicity stunt -- and a lot cheaper than paying the going advertising rates -- to enter the African runner in an Olympic cross-country skiing event. The fact that Boit and Bitok had never even seen snow until they went to Finland for some pre-Games training should give you an indication of how things turned out: Boit finished 92nd out of the 92 competitors who completed the 10-km race, nearly 8 minutes behind his closest rival.
In Atlanta four years ago, marathon runner A Baser Wasiqi of Afghanistan took4 1/2 hours to complete the course. He finished in 111th and last place, about an hour-and-a-half behind the 110th-place finisher. When Wasiqi finally arrived at the stadium, workers had to reopen the venue just so he could finish the race in what has been called the slowest time ever in an Olympic marathon.
"My country didn't send me here not to finish the race," Wasiqi is reported to have said. With a time like that, maybe they shouldn't have sent him at all.
This year's edition of Olympic pretenders includes a few dubious baseball teams and a "swimmer" from Palau.
The baseball tournament in Sydney will include nations like South Africa, Holland and Italy -- not exactly hotbeds of America's favorite pastime. Among the teams that won't be there are Canada, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
While the thinking is that different regions should be represented through qualifying tournaments, what purpose is served by sending South Africa -- which was beaten 17-1 last Sunday by the Americans in an exhibition game called after seven innings due to a 10-run mercy rule -- over a country with a long baseball tradition such as Canada or Mexico?
Canada barely missed qualifying for the Olympics by finishing third at the 1999 Pan Am Games behind powerhouses Cuba and the U.S., both teams that the Canadians had beaten earlier in the tournament.
And now there's Anlloyd Samuel, a swimmer entered in the 50-meter freestyle from the Pacific island nation of Palau who had never even been in a 50-meter pool before arriving in Sydney in mid-August.
In a sport measured in hundredths of seconds, Samuel's best time in the 50 free is almost 6 seconds behind world record-holder Alexander Popov of Russia. In swimming, 6 seconds is an eternity and might as well be 6 years.
While those in charge of the Games are no doubt eager to keep pumping out these human-interest, feel-good, underdog-inspired story lines, this type of thing just seems to make a mockery of the Olympic motto.
Faster, higher, stronger than what? Hopefully, the measuring stick is world-class competition, not a bunch of jokers down at the local pool or a half-blind plasterer on a pair of skis.