Committee Crime

C is for Competition

Currently, the 2010 Winter Olympics are taking place in Vancouver, Canada and that's awesome. I love the Olympics. They are competitive, nationalistic, ritualistic and, best of all, televised. It's the perfect platform for humans to prove just how insane they are and how awesome they think they are. It's the only perfect thing that man has created and the International Olympic Committee has decided to shit on all that is right and just and pure and perfect about the best global athletic event of every two years by coming up with the YOG.

What's the YOG? The YOUTH Olympic Games. That's right, children. No one wants to watch competitive hopscotch, jump rope and red rover for 2 weeks straight (okay, that might not be that bad), but that's not even what the Youth Olympic Games will consist of. It will have all of the normal events just performed by uncoordinated children. They're letting children participate in the official Olympic events and awarding them medals for their performances. This isn't a game, IOC. This is the Olympic (Games)! I can't believe it. Children. I told you they'd ruin everything. I'm fine with adults gloating and becoming disproportionately proud and confident as a result of winning a medal or even participating in the Olympics, but not children. They don't deserve Olympic status until they are 18 just like legal rights. Let them get good before you put them into the Olympics with the best of the best. And if they're already good, let them get better. It's like the Special Olympics but worse. It's going to be people falling and tumbling and bumbling around (not that I don't like seeing people fall and fail, I do), except at the Special Olympics it's expected, there's no chance those 'challenged' individuals are going to improve, but children can, so let them, and then put them on TV.

Evidently, the IOC decided this in 2007 and didn't even think to consult me or even tell me. They say it's the inspire the youth, but you know what else will inspire the youth? Watching the Olympics on TV and thinking, 'One day I can be on that podium if I'm good enough.' Not telling them they just have to be marginally better than the other kids in their freshman class and a few Chinese kids.

The first Youth Olympic Summer Games is schedule to take place in Singapore in August of this year with the Winter Games to take place in 2012 in Innsbruck. I suppose it's nice that they're alternating with the normal Olympic Games and providing us with even more "Olympics" to view, but is that really what we need? Doesn't that cheapen it? If we get to view the games not only every 2 years, but twice in those years? I don't know. Am I going to watch it? Probably, if it's on. Am I going to like it? NO, because there are children involved.