Kiwi Kids Books

Adding hurdles, timelimits and weight categories would be a way to improve the figure skating.

Personally I have enjoyed watching glimpses of the winter Olympics. The speed, skill and drama of any Olympics is an exciting visual spectacle. Despite my enjoyment there have been three aspects of the event that I have been less than impressed with.

Firstly, I will be honest and say that I have been extremely disappointed at the performance of the African Nations. Once again they have failed to win a medal at the Olympics despite having entire populations of black men. We all know that black men are better then white men at sport, yet despite the genetic advantage the African continent has remained medal less.  A quick look at the events and you will realise they are built for African men. The speed skating is similar to the Athletics and I don’t think there is an African man who doesn’t carry a gun so they should be good at the shooting. However, time and again it is the African nations bringing up the rear of the fields. One such example is Ghana’s alpine skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, nicknamed “The snow-leopard” who wears his signature black and white leopard-print suit. He is a self-taught, self-funded skier who had not seen snow until his 20′s, which would explain his disappointing results when he spent most of his time build snowmen. He should be nicknamed the “Snowman.”

Next up on my concerns is the events at the Winter Games. In my book, any sport which requires a judge to determine a winner is not really a sport. Included in this list is gymnastics, diving, ice skating and many others. True sport is a battle against your opponent with speed, points, distance or strength. By bringing into the equation a judge you are opening the result up to debate and conjecture. This could easily be solved by just changing the rules slightly, especially in figure skating. In figure skating there should be a time limit where the person that completes the most maneuvers wins. Points could be added to the size of your partner and the distance you cover. This would add drama to the event. Imagine in the final round the Russian pair coming out and the man swapping his usual 63kg partner for a 130kg Russian belly dancer just to add to his points telly and snatch the gold from the cocky American pair.

Finally I would like to comment on the clothing that is worn. In in the Summer Games less clothing is seen as better. Take women’s beach volleyball for instance. Each player wears approximately 7sqcm of clothing,  and the rest is bronzed and oiled. However, in the Winter Games I have failed to see 7sq cm of skin in the entire 2 weeks of competition. The coolest sport at the Winter Games is the snowboarding. yet they are covered head to toe in baggy, unsporting clothing. I understand that it is a tad colder but even the speed skaters managed to wear a little lycra. I suppose that I am just a man and will never understand fashion.