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The Olympics
Aug. 18th, 2004 01:24 pmThe Olympics always put me in a bad mood. I suffer from "coulda been a contender" syndrome. This is because I was 25 people away from actually being an Olympian, at one point. And the major reason (in fairness, there were some other things going on, but it was the biggest reason) I never managed to get any closer than that: money.
Money is what they never talk about in all the heartwarming bullshit profiles. How in the bloody hell to you finance training/travel for sports that don't pay anything, ever? I'd be interested to know, but I suspect the answer is the same for fencing as anything else. What I managed to glean about the fencing national team members when I was in the sport is that they had one or more of the following:
1) A rich spouse who subsidized them
2) Rich parents who subsidized them
3) An enormous amount of credit card debt
4) An incredibly lucrative part-time job (oh, to be so lucky)
The class issues in sports are huge and of course the media doesn't want to acknowledge that, ever. If I wanted to make the national team, I'd have to make several European trips a year in addition to all the in the US trips, the equipment, the coaching etc. I couldn't make that kind of money and still have time to train.
Leaving that all aside, I'd also like to briefly comment on our gold medal in women's saber: what a crock. The first time there was women's saber at Nationals was only in 1995.
I actually fenced the team women's saber event at that Nationals at the behest of the only woman saberist in my club. It was like fencing a bunch of bridge players, plump, middle aged smokers. Absurd. In protest (this was my fifth event of the week), I refused to do anything but stop hits to the hand and I did pretty well this way to. Point being- there is no reason at all that a sport in such an early stage of development should be an olympic sport.
The only reason we won gold is that the European's probably think the sport is too weak to push their good fencers into it at this point. But I haven't actually seen the gold medalists fencing, so who knows. Maybe it was okay. But I am still suspicious.
Money is what they never talk about in all the heartwarming bullshit profiles. How in the bloody hell to you finance training/travel for sports that don't pay anything, ever? I'd be interested to know, but I suspect the answer is the same for fencing as anything else. What I managed to glean about the fencing national team members when I was in the sport is that they had one or more of the following:
1) A rich spouse who subsidized them
2) Rich parents who subsidized them
3) An enormous amount of credit card debt
4) An incredibly lucrative part-time job (oh, to be so lucky)
The class issues in sports are huge and of course the media doesn't want to acknowledge that, ever. If I wanted to make the national team, I'd have to make several European trips a year in addition to all the in the US trips, the equipment, the coaching etc. I couldn't make that kind of money and still have time to train.
Leaving that all aside, I'd also like to briefly comment on our gold medal in women's saber: what a crock. The first time there was women's saber at Nationals was only in 1995.
I actually fenced the team women's saber event at that Nationals at the behest of the only woman saberist in my club. It was like fencing a bunch of bridge players, plump, middle aged smokers. Absurd. In protest (this was my fifth event of the week), I refused to do anything but stop hits to the hand and I did pretty well this way to. Point being- there is no reason at all that a sport in such an early stage of development should be an olympic sport.
The only reason we won gold is that the European's probably think the sport is too weak to push their good fencers into it at this point. But I haven't actually seen the gold medalists fencing, so who knows. Maybe it was okay. But I am still suspicious.