Everyone has ability to compete in Olympics

I was watching the Olympics this week and was surprised to find myself watching synchronized diving. I’m not sure if I was more surprised to find myself watching it or that it was actually a sport divers practice on the international level and is featured at the Olympics.
In all honesty I should have turned something else on, but these are the dog days of summer and the only thing worth watching on television is the Olympics. Michael Phelps was scheduled to compete in another event and I didn’t want to risk missing it because I had turned the channel to watch Tori Spelling and her husband talk about the difficulties of life because she didn’t inherit all of her daddy’s money on yet another reality show.
I know it takes a lot of skill to perfectly synchronize a dive with someone else – I wouldn’t even try this unless it was a synchronized belly-flop competition and the duo with the largest combined splash wins the medal – but is it really a sport?
Apparently it’s more of a sport than softball, which will no longer be featured at the Olympics in 2012. And it’s more of a sport than some women’s canoeing and kayaking events, which aren’t even there this year despite the presence of these events as men’s sports. If they were there, Stevens Point’s own 14-year-old Hailey Thompson would be on the Olympic team, qualifying for it in April.
But the synchronized divers are there, along with the synchronized swimmers and the badminton players.
It makes me wish I were there as a competitor. I might not have the ability to compete with any of the athletes in the legitimate sports, but I certainly could be competitive in a number of non-Olympic sports that have as much right to be there as synchronized diving.
I could win gold in paper field-goal kicking. It’s easy to do; you just need a piece of paper folded into a triangle football and another person to make a field-goal post using his or her hands. I spent a lot of time playing this as a kid living out in the country with only a sister as a companion.
But what about even more non-traditional sports? I could win gold in multi-tasking. At home I can watch television, play with my son, talk to my wife, eat supper, check the Internet, pet my cats and talk on the phone at the same time without a problem. Sometimes I can do all of these things while listening to music, cleaning the kitchen and putting away laundry. I might even finish a few pages of a book I’m reading.
But then again most parents can do these things simultaneously and I might not be Olympic-worthy.
I could also win gold in being stubborn. When my wife and I argue, I’m often the more stubborn one and won’t give up my cause until she agrees with me. It’s debatable, though, since she often has a knack for being more stubborn than me. And our 3-year-old can sometimes out-stubborn both of us. We’d definitely take gold if there was a family-stubborn competition at the Olympics.
I know I could find another dozen examples of events I could win a medal in if they were made into Olympic sports. Everybody probably could. We’re just not as smart as the synchronized divers to get our sports legitimized, which may make them the greatest Olympians ever.
The synchronized divers shouldn’t feel secure with their sport. The Olympics have a long tradition of featuring weird sports. Past Olympics have featured motor boating, tug-of-war, rope climbing, pigeon shooting (the pigeons weren’t made of clay) and dueling pistol shooting in which competitors shot at mannequins. These sports rightfully didn’t last long, so maybe the synchronized sports will be axed in the future.