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Sports correspondent & historian with |
Wow, what an Olympics we have just witnessed in Paris. After the Tokyo Games that were played out with facemasks and empty stadiums due to Covid, the biggest extravaganza in world sport regained its stature as the greatest showcase of athlete prowess on the planet.
I am writing this in the dusk of the 30th Summer Olympic Games that have seen New Zealand earn a record haul of Olympic medals and glory.
Pre-games predictions, by the highly regarded entertainment and sport data company Gracenote, forecast 16 medals with just four gold, to finish in 16th place on the medal tally – boy, did they get that wrong.
Ten gold, seven silver and three bronze medallions put New Zealand in 11th position on the medals table. Put in this way, Australia, who also had a record medal haul with a population five times our size, would have had to have won 50 gold (18 gold in Paris) to equal the Kiwi haul.
Successive New Zealand governments should be saluted for their continuation of funding sport, via Sport NZ. New Zealand’s High Performance Sport strategy is “to deliver world leading systems that powers New Zealand to sustainable success on the world stage and leverages that success to inspire the nation and its communities, with outcomes that are both inspirational and achievable”.
While the HP Sport strategy is written in big words, my interpretation is to give the sports that show the ability to deliver success the necessary funding and support. This has been achieved in spades in Paris.
My favourite Kiwi winner was Finn Butcher who became the first kayak cross Olympic champion. The introduction of what looks like kayak dodgems, with four participants launched from a starting ramp to contest a slalom course, including a kayak roll, is just one of the new all-action Olympic events.
The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has listened to the call for non-stop action competition to entertain and thrill the watching live and television audiences.
It is hard to get excited about men and women shooting bullets or arrows at targets, or synchronised swimming, or two people wrestling on a mat.
The introduction of skateboarding, sport climbing, BMX freestyle, 3x3 basketball and breakdancing, have answered the call for sports that have appeal for younger audiences.
Sport climbing is a perfect example of new age sports that have been promoted to Olympic participation. Speed climbing is like watching ants scampering away up a ledge. By comparison, boulder climbing is a set timed event that is all about agility in scaling what seems like impossible challenges.
The challenges of the new entrants to the Olympic arena will be sustainability in future Olympics - and not go the way of such as the standing high jump and long jump along with the stone throw and the two-handed shot put.
Breaking, which is about urban dance style with roots in hip hop culture, has already been deleted from the programme of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
The 2024 Paris Olympics, which were 100 years in the making, will go down as one of the all-time great Olympics. It was simply due to the organisers’ imagination in locating temporary venues amongst world-renowned landmarks.
Beach volleyball in the shadows of the Eiffel Tower, to the equestrian events at the Palace of Versailles, and boxing alongside the tennis at Roland Garros, drew full houses throughout Paris and its surrounds.
The outstanding Kiwi medal tally in Paris has now set a extremely high bar for Los Angeles in four years’ time.