Olympic Sports I Love To Hate (Holty’s Blog)

I know most of you were anxiously drinking your morning coffee waiting for the blog to come out, but a little suspense never hurt anyone. I mean, like yesterday when we had a suspenseful 20 minutes to wait for The SoCal Kid. He probably did that on purpose. But, regardless, what a turnout we had over at the Ice Sports Center of Condorstown fans excited to meet up with Stanny and get even more pumped for the start of the season.

Now for the blog…

Kevin Bartl (who retired from blogging without any ceremonious announcement) said today that he did not care for Olympic women’s soccer or beach volleyball. He doesn’t find it entertaining. I on the other hand, found the gold medal-winning Americans and both events exciting to watch over the past week or so.  After all, I told you last week, I could watch anything where one said says “USA.”

Or could I?

Well the answer is, I can’t. Sorry Condorstown, I lied.  I tried to over the past week and found five sports that even with Americans competing, I cannot stomach to spend five minutes of live or tape delayed coverage watching. These are listed in order from worst to the absolute WORST event. Again, I’ll remind you, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want.

#5 – FENCING: I have to level with you folks. I think I could be a good fencer. To me, it doesn’t seem like much skill and involves a whole lot of luck. Foil, sabre, jousting … whatever. Run up to a person and poke them with a metal object. Not entertaining and very confusing with mood lighting and judges yelling in French.

#4 – SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING: I HATE sports that require a judge to fundamentally affect the outcome. That’s why although I enjoy gymnastics, it’s rigged more often than not. Synchronized swimming is boring. Tuned in to catch the doubles the other day and saw women dressed in same outfits, nearly of identical height and hair color, frolicking around in a pool. Apparently the Russians are great in this event. Good for them. Sure, it takes a lot of skill, but if the USA never came close to medaling in this event, I’m fine with that.

#3 – FIELD HOCKEY: Imagine my belief when I found out that guys in fact play field hockey. I thought it was purely a sport for the ladies. Pretty much a reverse Title IX sport in effect here. There are so many whistles and players running half hunched over running up and down field turf with a strange looking stick. It’s a slow sport, has very little scoring, and is not fun to watch. I caught the end of the USA bowing out in the pool play round. Good for them. Enjoy the Olympic Village ladies. (Sidenote: I refuse to watch the men’s side of this.)

#2 – WATER POLO: Again it doesn’t matter if it’s the male or female version. Bartl loves this sport, but to me (and sorry to friend of the blog Mike Hart who has a son who competes) it doesn’t look fun to play, let alone watch. I tuned in for a little bit just to see if the Serbia v. Montenegro match, called by Doc Emrick, would erupt into a mini-war. It didn’t and thus I switched to something more entertaining like ‘Mob Week’ on AMC. There was a SHOOTOUT in water polo the other day as well. Basically, you have a ball around 5 meters from a goalie who has to tread water in a net. The referee blows a whistle and the player has three seconds to chuck it as hard as possible. The goalie only really has arms and head to block the thing. More often than not they don’t and the shootout lasts into the double-digits for rounds. Awful.

#1 – HANDBALL: This sport needs to be outlawed and moved back to only the Eastern European countries who care about it. Take water polo and put it on land. That is what you have here. Everyone stands around a shaded in oblong looking half circle, jumps in the air, and whips a mini-ball at a “goalie.” There is a reason why this hasn’t taken off in America. It’s brutal. What happened to the “other handball” where two guys would smash a little bouncy ball against a wall for a couple hours. That would be more entertaining that this event. Scores get into the 20s regularly with goalies GAA’s higher than all ECHL goalies combined. Get rid of this now.

Honorable mention: “Rhythmic Gymnastics.” That’s the sport you see with the flag throwers and jugglers. I haven’t seen enough of it, but I know I don’t want to see any more.

One final thing, go recruit people for our Facebook and Twitter and help us #ToppleTheThunder and good luck to Condorstown’s own Jake Varner on Sunday in the wrestling events.

Until next Thursday #Condorstown … Stay cool.

Have an idea for #HoltysBlog? Tweet him @BroadcastHolt or e-mail rholt@bakersfieldcondors.com

Ryan Holt a.k.a. ‘Holty,’ is the younger half of the Condors broadcast duo, and recently completed his first season in #Condorstown. He may melt this weekend with temps over 110. Follow him on Twitter @BroadcastHolt for random stuff confined to 140 characters.