The Olympic Summer Games are starting this Friday in France. The motto: Bonjour a Paris, please leave soon.
And are we even sure it’s an Olympic year? Didn’t we just have the summer Olympics a few years ago?
Yes and yes. The 2020 Olympics were held in Tokyo, though oddly they were held in 2021. They were delayed by a year so we could ensure we were stocked up on Olympic-sized portions of hand sanitizer and toilet paper. You’ll be forgiven if you’ve blocked out most of those weird Olympics held a year late in empty venues. Trying to forget what happened in 2021 (sometimes called 2020) is basically its own Olympic sport. But let’s pole vault to the present day, and see what’s new for the 2024 Olympics.
Breaking news
There’s a whole new sport making its debut in Paris, and it’s called breaking. Multiple choice, what happens in the sport of “breaking?”:
A: You have a satchel of baseballs in a room full of your mom’s vases. Go!
B: You take turns side-kicking your opponent in the femur. Break a leg? Victory!
C: You’re a chemistry teacher diagnosed with cancer attempting to cook the perfect batch of methamphetamine. Wait, sorry, that’s Breaking Bad.
D: You dance fight!
The answer is D, commonly known as break dancing, although no one is sure why they dropped the word “dancing” from the Olympic event title. No matter what you call it, this form of cool improvised dance that originated in the Bronx in the 1970s is an official Olympic event in Paris.
Competitors are called B-Boys and B-Girls, and they dance fight, and there are judges who pick the winners and what could go wrong with that?
And we have a Canadian contender to cheer for! Vancouver's B-Boy Phil Wizard is one of the best in the world, and very well could be battling for gold. I, for one, cannot wait for the country to shed tears of joy as “O Canada” is played for our national hero, B-Boy Phil Wizard.
Artistic swimming
This is what they call synchronized swimming now, and 2024 was shaping up to be an eye-opening year for the sport with men making their Olympic debut. Artistic swim teams are now allowed to have up to two men on them. Male artistic swimming! Sadly none of the men who tried out made it, denying us a real-life version of a classic SNL sketch with Harry Shearer and Martin Short (who in the sketch admits he’s “not a strong swimmer”) training as a synchro duo just waiting for men to be allowed in the Olympics. Watch it, and then feel a little sadness we won’t get to see it come to life this year.
Men’s basketball
This could be one of the stories of the Games for Canadian sports fans. In 2000, a young Steve Nash led Canada to a series of stirring victories at the Sydney Olympics, with the team ultimately finishing seventh after losing in the quarterfinals. The 2024 team, possibly shaping up to be a golden generation of Canadian hoops, is looking to blast past that memory and fight for a podium spot led by all-world NBA guards Jamal Murray and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. It’s no hoop dream either – at the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup, Canada claimed bronze, topping the United States in overtime in an epic third-place game. This could be fun.
Women’s soccer
Speaking of making history, the Canadian women scored one of the country’s greatest sporting victories at the 2020 Games (held in 2021) when they defeated the United States in the semifinals and Sweden in the finals to earn soccer gold. Legendary captain Christine Sinclair has since retired, and Canada is not amongst the pre-tournament favourites in Paris, but they are the title holders and still have a strong squad that could fight for a podium place. A golden repeat would be an extraordinary achievement.
Update: This column was written before news broke about the Canadian women's team getting caught up in a drone spying scandal. Spying on New Zealand? I don't want to drone on about this, but it's a bad look for the defending gold medallists. I don't know how they managed to pull off something that was both very high-tech and bush league at the same time, but here we are. Yikes.
Board or bored
Two cool new sports are back after debuting in Tokyo. Surfing is back, and I’m hoping they’ve found a way to make it more exciting as a live televised event. The first time around, it just looked like long, long bouts of paddling punctuated by very short spurts of surfing. So. Much. Paddling.
Skateboarding was more fan-friendly, with some very young Olympians – one of the gold medallists was 13 – having fun, pulling tricks, falling down, hugging each other, falling down and doing more cool tricks. I’m hoping the athletes will still bring that same joy this time around and that they haven’t become too jaded by journeys through the corporate Olympic sports machine, as well as puberty. We shall see.
Here’s hoping there’s more Team Canada magic this time around. A few more famous victories, and we’ll all be breaking in the streets.
Andy Prest is the editor of the North Shore News. His humour/lifestyle column runs biweekly.
