Yesterday, in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting Part 20, I looked at US cycling, a sport that was always fairly small yet managed to produce at least at the Olympic level.  And which has simply blown up in the last 10 years due to the accomplishments of Lance Armstrong.  This is the home stretch, OL’ing on Monday.  Promise.

Continuing on with that, I want to look at another exception to everything that’s gone before, the sole winter sport I’m going to examine.  A sport which seems to have absolutely everything going against it: it’s niche, inaccessible, has few members, no incentives.  Basically it lacks everything that is usually required for success.  Yet has managed to thrive consistently.   And, of course, to adequately discuss this it will take today and tomorrow.  Then, Monday, OL’ing.  Finally.

Like cycling it is another sport pursued primarily by middle and upper class whites tying in both with swimming from Monday and cycling from the last two days. And which, if recent indications are any, err, indication, is dying on the vine.  And if you know me or my site at all, you can probably guess what I’m going to talk about but read it anyway.

Note: if you are unhappy and/or bored with this series, it’s simple, stop reading it.  Or just piss off until Monday when I start talking about OL’ing.  But please don’t read daily and then try to troll me or whine about it.  If you don’t like my series, there are plenty of other websites with nice, short, stupid articles for you to enjoy.  Go read those and be happy; nobody is forcing you to come here.  And I’ll turn this website around if it doesn’t stop, mister!

And with that out of the way, as promised, after you read this, prepare to be mindfreaked.

Winter Sports Redux

Throughout this series I’ve focused almost exclusively on summer sports for a number of unimportant reasons.  But today I am going to talk about one and that means going back to the idea of the US and its winter Olympic sports performance.   Do realize that, compared to the summer Games, the winter Olympics have not been contested as long (they were only created in 1924, lasted until 1936 and then were resumed in 1948 until the present).

Continue reading Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 21