I made it very clear in this post.
With the London Olympics in our midsts, many people will
tune in to their televisions to watch events that they are probably not used to
watching. Some crowd pleasures include: the javelin throw, weightlifting,
wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, and the discus throw. However, caught in the middle
of the Olympiad madness is the sixth most popular sport in the world: table
tennis.
“Table what?”
you may say. The sport - commonly known as ping-pong – receives little to no accreditation
that it is, in fact, a real athletic discipline. In America and most
surrounding countries, table tennis is regarded as a recreational sport with
little to no competitiveness involved. Even in the Olympic Games, people
consider this sport a joke – including NBC, the channel responsible for
televising the Games of the XXX Olympiad. I was mortified to find out that the
men’s finals of table tennis were only televised for twenty minutes, whereas
synchronized swimming was televised for two solid hours.
Why is
this? Do people truly not realize the validity behind the sport of table
tennis? Do they construe the sport as a fun pastime, but nothing more than
that? These posed questions will never be answered by the Olympic organizers; because
I am sure they have a lot more important things to do. Like, for instance,
watch two hours of synchronized swimming.
Although
the above questions go unanswered, there are a few more I can still ask. What
is it about the sport of table tennis that makes you consider it non athletic?
Is it the men running up and down the gymnasium at rapid speed, flailing their
arms in attempts to spike a ball fifty miles per hour in a court that is four
feet wide and four feet long from thirty feet away while diving on the floor
returning a smash? If that is the reason, you need to strongly reconsider your
definition of “athletic.” Most sports, if not all sports televised during the
Olympics, simply cannot rival the fierce and competitive nature that table
tennis is.
Not to
bring different race’s into the mix here, but isn’t it always stereotyped that Asians
rise to the challenge and dominate everything they attempt to do in life? Well,
if that is the case, then why aren’t we watching them dominate table tennis? Are
we too proud a nation to concede defeat to the Asians in just this one
discipline? But, let’s be honest, if there was an American male in the table
tennis finals, we’d be watching a lot more of the sport on television. Would it
make primetime? No; but it would be televised. It still probably wouldn’t be on
the air as much as synchronized swimming, however.
In the end
then, no one can dispute the claim that table tennis is athletic. If a person
claims that table tennis requires no athletic ability, then I strongly suggest
they pick up a paddle and try to play it themselves. They may be in for a shock.