Pickle Me This Olympics & Give Me A Break

I thought I saw everything when “breakdancing” was included as a “sport” in the 2024 Paris Olympics and heard people complaining that the increasingly popular “pickleball” was not. Woke gone Broke again?

As the Olympic committee tells it, their unshakable commitment is to include sports that are “popular & cater to all age groups.” That meant they had to one, call breakdancing a “sport” and two, had to “cater” to the teen-somethings of this world. Apparently, there was a staged test run in Buenos Aires two years ago and the street kids behaved themselves. And, granted, breakdancing requires a lot of effort & sweat, not to mention risking of life & limb. But could it be the Olympics in general have become “woke” politically more than anything else? Why, pray tell, isn’t Pickleball included? Could it be because it’s (very wrongly) associated with old farts and that commitment to “catering to all age groups” (which Pickleball does) doesn’t include the elderly?

As in all things woke, you have to go to the words and their progressively interpreted meaning. Even though it’s conceded that Pickleball has taken the world by storm, it supposedly isn’t “there” just yet. We are to kindly understand that Pickelball, which dates back to 1965, still lacks “official recognition worldwide,” even though it has at least THREE international governing bodies regulating it. And, anyone who has ever played the game knows all age groups play, & how physically taxing it is, when played for keeps. In fact, Pickleball looks an awful lot like an offshoot of tennis & ping pong, both Olympic sports for an awful long time. Discrimination. Institutional discrimination. That’s what it is.

Davd Soul