Yeah I agree, some events have a minimum level of skill required to even attempt them, while others could literally be done (badly) by a person off the street, like diving for example. Someone who, say, qualified in their country under questionable circumstances and then just did cannonballs into the pool would also be ridiculed, and rightly so.
Glad that Me Too thing stuck
The ski “jumper” that qualified did no jumps and pretty much any intermediate skier could have done what she did. I guess she at least did her best.
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I believe they were referring to this:
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As I mentioned Raygun was parodied non stop on social media. How? Because literally anyone can do what she did so all the parodies looked like re-enactments not inferior spoofs.
Maybe breaking should just not be an Olympic sport and that is fine but what she brought to it was embarrassing and a disservice to those who trained hard to showcase on an international stage.
One thing we could do to mitigate some of these events is mandate that the last place contender in each event have their passport revoked.
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Yeah this is the analogy I was thinking of, Elizabeth Swaney in 2018.
She reached the 2018 Winter Olympics through a combination of cunning, awareness and exploitation of a sheer lack of female halfpipe skiers. Qualification for the Olympics involves achieving a certain number of top-30 World Cup finishes, and Swaney ensured she achieved 13 of them by simply turning up and competing at events where there were fewer than 30 athletes competing.
…
By ensuring that she did not crash, Swaney achieved enough finishes to qualify for the Olympics and have her moment in the limelight.
At least she put in the work I guess.
Not sure this is the right takeaway though:
anyone can achieve their dream if they go about the right way of reaching it.
This is like those people who run next to the course beside the marathoners. A fit person can keep up for maybe a block, but after that they get wrecked. Same with Raygun’s routine!
We also can’t ignore the racial/cultural aspect of breakdancing. If someone runs slowly, they just run slowly. If/when someone breakdances poorly, it can more easily be seen as mocking or disrespecting an artform that was (largely) created in a place that Raygun isn’t from by people who (largely) don’t look like her. If you can perform really well, maybe you get a pass, but if you do it poorly, don’t be surprised if the knives come out.
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I think this is right - there have been other terrible Olympians who don’t get the same level of hate/mockery.
Another classic example is the two African swimmers in 2000 games who could barely swim. The guy that did the 100m almost wasn’t able to finish both laps.
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Did he advance for winning his heat?
Not reading this. Dude can rot. Just watched a true crime show last night where the perpetrator had served a short sentence after raping a teen and then raped and killed two girls (14 and college) in the hills north of San Diego.
We have the technology. I don’t see any reason why such offenders shouldn’t have to wear ankle monitors for life.
(And I get that many of these individuals were themselves were victims, however there is no reason we should sacrifice more innocents).
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We just don’t know enough about Raygun: she’ could be a sincere but deeply stupid academic, she could be mocking black culture, she could just have a raging narcissistic personality disorder and getting negative attention was her goal.
Nope - there was a minimum time required to advance.
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I think another reason some athletes get a pass even when they clearly shouldn’t be in the Olympics is when it seems like they are genuine about their effort and desire to accomplish something. For whatever reason, some countries/regions have qualification routes that open the door to people qualifying for the Olympics who shouldn’t, but they are still doing their best. The Jamaican bobsled team, for instance, didn’t compete as a joke.
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This was the example I was thinking of, but I’m also fairly confident they would have received the same meme treatment had this happened in this years’ olympics
The Olympics is meant to be very very good athletes. There should be minimum requirements. The swimmer above and this Aussie girl shouldn’t have been allowed to compete period. (The swimmer being on his own is a clear example that he shouldn’t be there and they know it. And off course Break dancing a sport?)
This is the correct answer. When it’s the best the country has to offer but the best just isn’t at world-class level but they are competing sincerely, that’s acceptable, and well within the spirit of the Olympics.
But in the case of Raygun, there were clearly more qualified Australian dancers than she, so her going and putting on that performance is disgraceful, and flies in the face of the spirit of competition.