Yes but is it a Sport?

Well here we are, rapidly approaching the end of Week One of the Olympics. So far it's been fairly entertaining stuff, with the odd drugs scandal thrown in for good measure, and Team GB are slowly crawling up the medals table which will hopefully spark a renewed interest in sport at all levels (and therefore hopefully attract more funding and investment for sporting development of all kinds.)

However (and there's always a however), I've got to question the inclusion of some of the 'sports' that are gracing our television screens during this fortnight of international competition. Yes I'm sure they're very entertaining to look at, yes I'm sure they require months of practice and conditioning for the 'athletes' to take part, but synchronised diving? Synchronised swimming? Solo sychronised swimming? (What the hell are you synchronised to? Don't say 'music', because there's no music in the synchronised diving so that doesn't count...)

If you're going to be diving off a plank of wood over a pool that was built in the last fortnight, why should the bulk of your marks go on the basis of whether the guy next to you did the same thing as you at the same time? "That was a perfect triple somersault with pike, executed with only the minimum of splashes on entry. Truly the best dive we've ever seen at the Games, but since the dozy knacker next to him clunked his feet on the board and dropped into the pool like a bag of chisels, they get no points." Ludicrous.

The same goes for all these horsey events that the British public claim to love but wouldn't be seen dead at outside of the Olympic fortnight. Any sport where the lion's share of the work is done by something other than a human being shouldn't be an Olympic sport. It's the horse that does the work, the human element is negligible. Being able to sit on a horse whilst it trots, stops and then waddles sideways should not be the reason you get the same piece of gold as someone who just ran for twenty six miles and sweated off a good couple of dozen kilos on the way around. There's even been mutterings of putting darts forward as an Olympic event - can you honestly take any pride in seeing someone like Phil Taylor struggling up onto the podium to collect the same medal that goes to the fastest runner on Earth?

Now, this is where I run the risk of making myself even less popular than ever: I don't think tennis or soccer should be in the Olympics. Any sport where Olympic Gold isn't the ultimate aim in the sportsperson's career shouldn't be included, because it's just adding events for the sake of it. When you hear the name "Steve Redgrave" mentioned, it's alays in the context of his Olympic achievements, but when the name "Roger Federer" is mentioned on the telly, the Olympics don't even get a mention. Tennis has Wimbledon and various Opens, soccer has the World Cup. They shouldn't be Olympic events.

"But on that logic, why should Ice Hockey be an Olympic event?" To be honest, as far as I'm concerned the jury's still out on this one. It's a team sport, so that's something that in my book counts against it (team efforts in Olympic sport are always dodgy affairs, as you can end up handing a gold medal to someone who did the sum total of zip all throughout the contest.) It's a sport where Olympic Gold isn't the highest honour imaginable (The Stanley Cup gets that nod), but at the same time that higher honour isn't available to all players (only NHL) so on that score it should be included. For all the players who ply their trade outside of the NHL, the Olympics is probably the pinnacle of their sport. So on that basis, in it goes.

But Tennis? Soccer? Come on. How many budding Tim Henmans out there state their ultimate goal as "winning the Olympic Tennis"? How many fresh-faced Peles want to "go all the way and lift the Olympic Gold in Soccer"?

The Olympics is about human ability and endurance. The fastest, highest, furthest, longest. Even the swimming is being tainted by the interventions of man-made science. "Fred Bloggs of USA wins by 0.01 seconds, beating Umberto Bloggio of Italy into second place with his USA-patented anti-friction wetsuit." Argh.

Moment of the Olympics for me so far was the shot-put. Not for the outcome itself (although seeing the USA bloke blowing a gasket about his final foul throw even though it was clearly a foul was certainly fun) but for the notion that it is being staged on the site of the original Olympic games. Now that's what it's all about. Take it back to basics. Yes you've got your hi-tech mesauring equipment, your non-slip air-cushioned sweat-draining shoes, your air-flow in-built-coolant lunchbox-enhancing lycra shorts, but the Olympics should be about who can get from A to B the fastest, who can chuck that rock or stick the furthest, who can jump over the highest obstacle, who can throw themselves furthest into the sand pit. Archery? Yes, put it in there. Clay pidgeon shooting? I don't think so.

Sport matters, that's undeniable. The peak achievements of one man over another, or one woman over another, are what competition is all about. And that's great. But it's the fleeting nature of sport that I guess really gets my goat. Every April, thousands more joggers take to the streets of England as a result of the London Marathon, inspired to get fit. And give up a couple of weeks later. Every June we flood the tennis courts of the nation, eager for a good back-and-forth with the next door neighbour during Wimbledon fortnight, but by the end of July there are cobwebs on the nets, just the same as back in May. The Olympics will undoubtedly inspire a whole generation to dust off their shorts and get out there and try something (expect your local leisure centre to see an upturn in business over the next couple of weeks), but what we need is a little staying power, and the funding and backing to make sure that some of those passing interests get turned into the next generation of athletes.

Otherwise it's the life of a couch potato for all of us.