Below is an excerpt from the Lap Count newsletter, posted with permission. Kyle Merber’s Lap Count newsletter both entertains and enlightens fans about athletes and happenings in our sport.
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From the Lap Count Newsletter
The Los Angeles Olympics will now feature a handful of new sports: baseball, softball, cricket, squash, flag football, and lacrosse.
Add this to the grab bag of skateboarding, breakdancing, and the mixed-gender 4×400, with e-sports and pickleball on the horizon, and I’m left feeling a bit like Steve Buscemi wearing a backwards hat.
But several of these sports aren’t actually new to the Olympics entirely. Lacrosse was in the Olympics in 1904 and 1908, and it was played between just the United States and Canada. Baseball has come and gone, but was last played as recently as 2020 – with minimal participation from the sport’s stars due to MLB restrictions. This will be the first time squash will be featured, and also the first time anyone outside of a middle school PE class has pretended to take flag football seriously.
In fairness, cricket is a reasonable addendum. It was last played Olympically in 1900, but it has become a phenomenon in the years since. There are an estimated 2.5 billion cricket fans, globally. The 2032 Games are in Australia, and with the opportunity to more deeply engage with Indian sports fans before the world’s largest country potentially gets the 2036 Games, it makes sense.
Ratings have been steadily declining across the Summer and Winter Games since 2012 and this is quite clearly an attempt to reach aloof 12-year-olds. But the stuff Gen Z actually cares about is TikTok, sustainability, and human rights — none of which are synonymous with the Olympic movement. (Might I suggest a return to a concept from the Olympics of the 20s, 30s, and 40s: including “town planning” as an event?)
Hopefully, these additions add to the appreciation track and field receives. There’s continuity and history there, and not much in the way of rules to learn in order to appreciate it. And for existing fans of the sport, new events don’t detract from our interest in knowing who is the best in the world – all of the additional noise is secondary. (That’s what makes the World Championships special. – It’s just like the Olympics, but better.)
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