What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?
The movie Nadia Comaneci was released in India in the late 1980s, and the coach in the gym offered to take us all to that screening in the next-door movie hall/theatre. We were a large group of gymnasts who were going to the movie and since we did not have a ‘Gym uniform’ we all went in our gym attire, which used to be just track pants and tees. Our hair was neatly tied up and all of us were wearing white tennis canvas shoes in various shades of white.
The gym had organized this only for the students, so parents and siblings who did not do gymnastics were not included. The older siblings had come to drop us off at the theatre and they had promised to pick us up outside when the movie was done. We were excited. This was our first movie with friends. Unlike our kids, who get excited to watch a movie in the theatre because that includes popcorn and slushies, or a meal of sorts, we were excited just to be out with friends. The plan was to watch the movie and then head back to the gym for the usual evening exercise. The siblings were waiting only to ensure we got out of the theatre safely.
The movie was riveting. Although we had been chatting amicably outside, inside, we rushed to sit in our seats and watched with rapt attention. Every item in every event was something we had discussed or had considered performing ourselves and this made the movie more like a lesson than just a movie for entertainment. And then there were the emotions and drama Nadia Comaneci as a teenager experienced- that perfect 1.0 score- the silence in the movie hall at the perceived insult and then the nail-biting clarification and her subsequent victory – as pre-teens and teenagers, undergoing the rigor of the training required to be a gymnast performing in a state that was not known for its gymnasts, the odds stacked well against our success, the level of empathy we felt for all that Nadia experienced was huge.
We all walked out of the movie hall in silence, our dispersal was organized as we walked silently back to the gym. All of us took time to assimilate the messages from the movie and just get over the kind of dedication this sport would require. For me, it was the first lesson in discipline and the amount of it I would require to achieve anything in this sport. Over the next week, we discussed the movie in bits and pieces, our coach brought out the gymnasts’ manual he used as a reference to guide us through the marking and the difficulty levels of the events she had included in her competitions over the years. The movie helped us understand the nuances and break them down into bite-sized chunks that we could incorporate into our combinations. As a Rhythmic gymnast, I used her combinations to see how she performed the flexibility and leaps and how I could use them to my advantage.
The Montreal Olympics were held in 1976 and this movie had a worldwide release in 1984, and we watched it in our little Indian town in the late 1980s. It was only after watching this movie that we got interested in watching the Olympics. For me, this was the introduction to the Olympics. Growing up I remember my TV being ‘in repair’ more often than being in working condition. And we did not watch the Olympics for any other sport, it was only Gymnastics. Coach used to ensure that they procured pre-recorded VHS/VCR tapes of all the events in gymnastics for men and women so we could study them and learn from them.
Gymnastics for me would be the only sport of interest in the Olympics because it was the only sport where I understood the rules and requirements. Watching participants tumbling and at times stumbling through their combinations is what makes this my sport of choice to watch during any Olympics screening. But today I don’t have the patience to wait while the cameraman shifts focus from gymnastics to a different sport when there is a break. As a gymnast myself, the break and the practice sessions in between the competitions are where the drama is and that is almost as important as the actual competitions. The caliber of the gymnasts is obvious in these sessions, and this is what helps us discover the best teams to help spot the elite gymnasts and root for our favorites.
While thinking of Nadia and the Montreal Olympics I did read up a little on the Olympics in general, and here are some interesting facts. Today, there are close to 195 countries in the world. Of these, there are 107 active members, 41 honorary members, and 201 individual national Olympic Committees. This discrepancy is because the balance of 13 registered committees belong to four geo-politically fraught areas Kosovo, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Palestine and the balance 9 belong to island regions that sought recognition from the IOC before 1996. These are territories that are linked to regions recognized by the IOC, but they participate separately in the Olympics.
For this write-up, I am only referring to the Summer Olympics, and what started with just 241 participants representing 14 nations in the 1800s has grown to include more than 11,300 participants representing 206 nations in 2020. Since 1994, the Olympics are held every 4 years and alternate between summer and winter Olympics every two years.
The five circles in the Olympic logo represent athletes coming together from the five different continents. The choice of which sports take part in the Olympics is up to the 90 members of the IOC who decide based on proposals from each game’s local organizing committee via the Olympic Program Commission.
The last Olympics were held in Tokyo in 2021, rescheduled from August 2020, due to the onset of the Pandemic. This was the first ever Olympics to be rescheduled, all previous competitions were canceled and never rescheduled. The 2020 Olympics featured 339 events in 33 different sports. 15 new events were added to the roster this year.
The 2024 Olympics will be hosted in Paris, France, and has so far already listed 41 sports, with 4 additional sports that will be introduced this year.
Just a little more 