Ok, this will be the finish no matter how long it takes; and it will be long but I have to move on to other things. Coming straight out of Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Ol’ing Part 9, I want to shift gears. Because most of what I covered over the past two days had mostly to do with why the sport is as small as it is: a lack of facilities, coaching, incentives and, ultimately, interest.
But in that way, OL’ing is not terribly different than a lot of marginalized sports in this country that exist under literally identical conditions of few athletes, no access, etc. And yet in some we succeed brilliantly; in others we medal sporadically (even one of our rowers won in Beijing and that sport is as niche as it gets). Clearly if all the problems with OL’ing were related to the issues of the last two days it would cut universally across all niche sports and it does not. … Keep Reading