Exhibition sports have been a regular feature of Olympic programs for decades. In general, the sports that occasionally participate in the Games have done so with the logical illusion that sooner or later they will demonstrate the virtues that will already allow them to enter the calendar with official status.
However, they have rarely succeeded in this regard.
That didn’t happen at the first unofficial Basque ball tournament held in Mexico in 1968. It was the same in roller hockey in Barcelona in 1992, with Argentina defeating Spain 7-5 in a spectacular final.
In tennis, it was different, with an unofficial comeback in Los Angeles in 1984 that automatically guaranteed him a place he would never lose again after the 1988 Seoul Games.
In fact, the sport was even held in exhibition mode in the Mexican capital. However, a major blow also fell on South Korea. The commitment to the sport of several of the circuit’s leading young players was fundamental to securing a formal place. German Steffi Graf (one of the three or four greatest of all time) and Swede Stefan Edberg, who would win his first championship just a year later. He showed a sufficient level of commitment to win the only individual competition of his six Grand Slam titles, held in Los Angeles.
The Paris 2024 Games will be no different, and that discipline will also be removed from the program. The so-called “IHF Beach Handball Showcase” will be held from July 27th to 29th at the headquarters of the French Beach Handball Federation in Creteil, just outside Paris. There will be four teams (men’s and women’s), one of which will be made up entirely of local players, and the remaining three teams will be made up of players from 18 countries.
It’s a completely different field than traditional gaming. Similar to tennis, the first two sets of his last 10 minutes, and in the same case a series of shootouts in which the attacking team uses a goalkeeper and an attacker, and the rival uses his one goalkeeper and attacker. is defined as A defender who is not always a goalkeeper. One worthy goal and he had two worthy goals, among which the so-called fly and the spectacular nature of the 360 stand out.
With a climate similar to that of a beach volleyball party, this specialty has already undergone its first trials and achieved successful competition and participation at the 2018 Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games.
There is perhaps a subtle but important additional argument within the overarching logic that the Olympic world increasingly expresses. In this case, it is not only a question of gender, but also of countries that have managed to transcend fields in which they are not necessarily the best in their original form.
Just a fact: In Buenos Aires, the local team won a gold medal in the women’s race and a bronze medal in the men’s race. In traditional handball, Argentina only qualified for one match in the Women’s Olympic Games and could not get past the first phase of four consecutive matches played against the Knights.
Regardless of deeper analysis, there is one element that stands out in this case and several others. That said, the scaled-down versions of some sports make it possible to highlight countries where the base of the pyramid is not as wide as the major ones.
There are three very recent examples. All of these are related to the Tokyo 2020 Games.
Beach volleyball. Norway, who rarely qualify for world championships or indoor specialty competitions, took gold in the men’s race. Following the same logic, Qatar retained its bronze medal despite using two athletes from African countries nationalized by India. By the way, the national flag is not usually prominent in indoor volleyball.
Rugby 7. Fiji, the famous land of great wizards, has repeated the title they won in Rio in Japan. At the first World Championship in 1987, they reached the quarter-finals in the 15-a-side competition, a performance they were never able to repeat.
Basketball 3×3. Despite isolated achievements and Kristaps Porzingis being selected as a reference player for the Boston Celtics in either a center forward or center role, Latvia does not feature frequently in the mainstream of the traditional game. do not have. But with a great four-player team, he won the gold medal in Japan and the European title two years later. Belgium, which has a similar background, also achieved a meritorious fourth place.
All these sports joined and survived Olympism in miniature versions. The smaller teams have fewer beds in the villa, so there are more teams participating than in the original field, making it a dynamic show and, at times, a standout for more countries than we actually expected. You can discover that talent exists. .
Beach handball is much more than just a “showcase”.
I hope that the politicians of Olympism will give Olympism the status it deserves.
