Unlike the sprints and the long distances, no racial group has a near-monopoly on the middle distances. Much of the world is in the running for medals.
Ballroom dancing has been trying to get into the Olympics for decades, but keeps getting rejected as not being a sport. What's different about breakdancing?
Breakdancing is more athletic than artistic, while ballroom dancing is more artistic than athletic. Or something. And the hope is breakdancing draws in young diversity viewers.
Breakdancing is extremely hard to do athletically and requires a lot of the joints, so people tend to age out of it by their mid-20s. Its mostly a teenage and young adult thing.
Ironically, while b-boying began as a black thing, the biggest adherence in 2024 are Asians and whites. The competitions are filled with highschool and young 20s kids who dress like they're thugs but look and speak like they're shooting for the honor roll this semester.
Break-dancing is, or was, highly masculine dancing, which isn't a bad thing to include. The Olympics still have two women-only dance-style sports -- synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics. That's nice, too.
Thanks; a very exciting and fun race to watch; slightly refills my long empty reservoir of Olympic enthusiasm. I guess my working theory would be, since we are all descended from the same small pool of hunter-gatherers, when chasing game, or in flight from predatory threats, the 800-1500 range is about when we could optimize closing for the kill, or finding appropriate life-saving shelter from a carnivorous predator. So, almost all human sub-groups could have talent there. I'm thinking that other ethnic groups who are dominant long or short distances have recent genetic adaptation (last 10K years or so) that is brought out by the specialized Olympic competition. I remember one of your posts a few years back during the Olympics about West African sprint dominance, and I pointed out the NW European dominance in swimming. As you like to point out, this stuff is INTERESTING!
I wonder if Pacific Islanders or extreme Southeast Asians might be really good at swimming innately, but they lack the infrastructure and culture for the Olympics. One of the first big American Olympic swim heroes was Duke K-something, a Hawaiian aristocrat who won golds in 1912 and 1920. He then introduced surfing to California.
The Australian Crawl stroke comes from New Guinea or islands near there.
There's a group, the Bajua?, who have evolved to say underwater longer than most humans for diving to the bottom to forage. I don't remember if they are Southeast Asian, Melanesian, or what.
So a few random data points, but I could imagine a people who live near the warm ocean and go out onto it daily evolving swimming skills.
The steeplechase was fun. Track and field overall has been great. The hands up and false starts lend drama. The upsets have made it interesting too. The people look so healthy. “They have the best figures” Mother said. She finds their little style choices interesting to parse as well.
It actually is about the best looking group of athletes I can recall seeing.
My elderly father pronounced water polo “as boring as soccer” which may or may not be true (I doubt he understands the game) in re watching but seemed to be very exciting for the people playing.
So glad Simone Biles was successful. Mother: “She’s darling.”
I missed the other events but the balance beam had us gasping out loud.
Women’s platform diving was cool. Not many Americans. I blamed lawyers. I can’t remember the last time I jumped off or even saw a platform. Even the high diving boards have mostly been removed.
My enjoyment may be enhanced because I don’t have TV. Summer is great for old people and TV between the tennis and golf and now this awesome Olympics.
“Tell me again?”
“Snoop Dogg.”
She turns and tells my father, that’s Snoop Dogg, for the 4th time.
“What does he do?”
“He raps or used to rap, unspeakably vulgar lyrics, but has since slipped into the role vacated by Bill Cosby, and he cooks with Martha Stewart.”
“Rapping? Is that singing?”
“No.”
She sets a lot of store by Martha though, and seems to like Snoop Dogg.
I remember a mainstream magazine article from the time of the great Snoop-Dogg-Martha-Stewart cultural synthesis:
"The guest is Calvin Broedus, known to his fans as Snoop-Dogg, a convicted murder whom everybody seems to really like...."
w/r/t rap lyrics, Snoop was just laying down the lyrics that Dr. Dre wrote for him, but did it in a much less angry and agressive way than Dre. Dre had a little of the stentorian basso boom of Chuck D. but instead of urgent calls for black dignity and self-empowerment, he was rapping about "big-screen TV's, blunts, 40's and bitches!". Also, Dre sounded like he would actually rob and kill you and not care.
I remember ~2015, Apple hiring in a well-known (in SF) senior VP and then publicly firing him before he started, due to employee backlash over his autobiography in which he talked for ~2 pages about meeting his wife at the gym (6' tall, Swedish) and that she was better than every girl he had tried to date in SF.
Compare this to the multi-billion $$$ Apple-Beats partnership with the author of lyrics like "Bitches ain't shit", or "Bitches ain't nothin' but hoes and tricks."
It's interesting that Ice Cube has also aged into a respected and senior cultural observer (Cover of NYT Magazie in an Eames chair) despite being about as tactful as Charles Barkley and making lots of direct statements (in lyrics) about The Jews, then doubling down on them:
"Regret it? Nope! Said it? Yep!
Listen to my big black boots as I step!"
Of course, you will never lose money attacking women, Jews, and homosexuals, for a black audience. How the liberals just paper over that confounds me.
Was fun watching the Cole Hooker watch party. What a finish. The USA is kicking ass this Olympics. Ireland is doing better than usual which is fun to see. The Irish swimmer and pommel horser seemed like good guys. Too bad Rory gagged again in golf. It would be great for Serbia to beat the USA in the gold medal game. And I don’t even like Serbs.
Truly great race.
I vote for a return to a track & field dominant Olympics.
I’ve seen enough break dancing.
Actually, I didn’t watch any break dancing. That was enough.
I thought there was going to be pole dancing.
Ballroom dancing has been trying to get into the Olympics for decades, but keeps getting rejected as not being a sport. What's different about breakdancing?
Breakdancing is more athletic than artistic, while ballroom dancing is more artistic than athletic. Or something. And the hope is breakdancing draws in young diversity viewers.
Breakdancing is extremely hard to do athletically and requires a lot of the joints, so people tend to age out of it by their mid-20s. Its mostly a teenage and young adult thing.
Ironically, while b-boying began as a black thing, the biggest adherence in 2024 are Asians and whites. The competitions are filled with highschool and young 20s kids who dress like they're thugs but look and speak like they're shooting for the honor roll this semester.
Break-dancing is, or was, highly masculine dancing, which isn't a bad thing to include. The Olympics still have two women-only dance-style sports -- synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics. That's nice, too.
Thanks; a very exciting and fun race to watch; slightly refills my long empty reservoir of Olympic enthusiasm. I guess my working theory would be, since we are all descended from the same small pool of hunter-gatherers, when chasing game, or in flight from predatory threats, the 800-1500 range is about when we could optimize closing for the kill, or finding appropriate life-saving shelter from a carnivorous predator. So, almost all human sub-groups could have talent there. I'm thinking that other ethnic groups who are dominant long or short distances have recent genetic adaptation (last 10K years or so) that is brought out by the specialized Olympic competition. I remember one of your posts a few years back during the Olympics about West African sprint dominance, and I pointed out the NW European dominance in swimming. As you like to point out, this stuff is INTERESTING!
I wonder if Pacific Islanders or extreme Southeast Asians might be really good at swimming innately, but they lack the infrastructure and culture for the Olympics. One of the first big American Olympic swim heroes was Duke K-something, a Hawaiian aristocrat who won golds in 1912 and 1920. He then introduced surfing to California.
The Australian Crawl stroke comes from New Guinea or islands near there.
There's a group, the Bajua?, who have evolved to say underwater longer than most humans for diving to the bottom to forage. I don't remember if they are Southeast Asian, Melanesian, or what.
So a few random data points, but I could imagine a people who live near the warm ocean and go out onto it daily evolving swimming skills.
Yes.
Clearly people who are raised near expanses of asphalt are able to develop advanced break dancing techniques during their toddler years.
Unfair to those of us with rural gravel roads stretching to the horizon.
KAMEHAMEHA!!!
One may conclude that any DNA differences are masked by the nature of the event (as you elucidated well).
It does make it fun, IMHO.
The steeplechase was fun. Track and field overall has been great. The hands up and false starts lend drama. The upsets have made it interesting too. The people look so healthy. “They have the best figures” Mother said. She finds their little style choices interesting to parse as well.
It actually is about the best looking group of athletes I can recall seeing.
My elderly father pronounced water polo “as boring as soccer” which may or may not be true (I doubt he understands the game) in re watching but seemed to be very exciting for the people playing.
So glad Simone Biles was successful. Mother: “She’s darling.”
I missed the other events but the balance beam had us gasping out loud.
Women’s platform diving was cool. Not many Americans. I blamed lawyers. I can’t remember the last time I jumped off or even saw a platform. Even the high diving boards have mostly been removed.
My enjoyment may be enhanced because I don’t have TV. Summer is great for old people and TV between the tennis and golf and now this awesome Olympics.
“Tell me again?”
“Snoop Dogg.”
She turns and tells my father, that’s Snoop Dogg, for the 4th time.
“What does he do?”
“He raps or used to rap, unspeakably vulgar lyrics, but has since slipped into the role vacated by Bill Cosby, and he cooks with Martha Stewart.”
“Rapping? Is that singing?”
“No.”
She sets a lot of store by Martha though, and seems to like Snoop Dogg.
I remember a mainstream magazine article from the time of the great Snoop-Dogg-Martha-Stewart cultural synthesis:
"The guest is Calvin Broedus, known to his fans as Snoop-Dogg, a convicted murder whom everybody seems to really like...."
w/r/t rap lyrics, Snoop was just laying down the lyrics that Dr. Dre wrote for him, but did it in a much less angry and agressive way than Dre. Dre had a little of the stentorian basso boom of Chuck D. but instead of urgent calls for black dignity and self-empowerment, he was rapping about "big-screen TV's, blunts, 40's and bitches!". Also, Dre sounded like he would actually rob and kill you and not care.
I remember ~2015, Apple hiring in a well-known (in SF) senior VP and then publicly firing him before he started, due to employee backlash over his autobiography in which he talked for ~2 pages about meeting his wife at the gym (6' tall, Swedish) and that she was better than every girl he had tried to date in SF.
Compare this to the multi-billion $$$ Apple-Beats partnership with the author of lyrics like "Bitches ain't shit", or "Bitches ain't nothin' but hoes and tricks."
It's interesting that Ice Cube has also aged into a respected and senior cultural observer (Cover of NYT Magazie in an Eames chair) despite being about as tactful as Charles Barkley and making lots of direct statements (in lyrics) about The Jews, then doubling down on them:
"Regret it? Nope! Said it? Yep!
Listen to my big black boots as I step!"
Of course, you will never lose money attacking women, Jews, and homosexuals, for a black audience. How the liberals just paper over that confounds me.
Was fun watching the Cole Hooker watch party. What a finish. The USA is kicking ass this Olympics. Ireland is doing better than usual which is fun to see. The Irish swimmer and pommel horser seemed like good guys. Too bad Rory gagged again in golf. It would be great for Serbia to beat the USA in the gold medal game. And I don’t even like Serbs.