A side benefit of Australia acquiring the hosting rights to the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games is that we get to choose one new sport to be included in the event. Following the spirit of the bid itself, the first and only criterion of that sport should be that we are dead certs to win it.
Tokyo has chosen karate. Paris, home of savoir faire, obviously savoirs how to faire the ancient French art of le breakdancing. With baseball due to drop out of the games after 2024, Los Angeles will be able to re-include it in 2028 and just enter the Dodgers. Gold, gold, gold for the host cities.
Now for Brisbane. The obvious candidate is Aussie rules. This might be news to the run-on banner makers and beanie wearers of the Brisbane Lions, Collingwood, Richmond, West Coast etc, but Aussie rules, or footie as it is universally known, is not the be-all and end-all of human existence and possibility. Even the long and honourable tradition of the international rules fixture with Ireland does not quite make it a world game.
Rugba league has staked its claim. Troy Grant, the former NSW Police Minister who now heads the International Rugby League, told the Herald’s Adrian Proszenko that the sport was ‘already well advanced’ in achieving its target of getting rugby league Nines and wheelchair rugby league onto the Olympics program.
Magic Round has already established Brisbane’s suitability to hold a global event. The IRL is getting the paperwork done to enrol rugby league in the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF), which is not a thing that has just been made up. The very morning of his interview with the Herald, Mr Grant had received a phone call from the NRL’s counterpart in Macedonia, begging for the sport to be allowed into the Olympics. And, serendipitously, 24 hours after the Brisbane announcement, the Canberra Raiders and Parramatta Eels put on an exhibition on the Gold Coast that any Olympic event would be lucky to match for excitement. Blake Ferguson to light the torch, after nearly dropping it and kicking it downfield!
Unfortunately, that same day Mr Grant also received a call from Australia telling him the country, along with New Zealand, would not take part in the next rugba league World Cup. The air went out of the bid then. If we can’t manage to get to a World Cup, it’s difficult to see Australia mustering a team for an Olympics that falls smack-bang in the middle of the season.
Which sport will join the once-unlikely skateboarding on the Olympic rotation come Brisbane 2032?Credit:Getty
Cricket will also make predictable noises about applying for Olympic status, but who wants to gift another gold medal to New Zealand? Similarly, netball would seem a logical sport to include, and it could take a leaf out of its own social formats and provide a mixed competition, in which the women do all the passing and scoring and the men knock each other over. Sadly, though, netball has suffered from becoming too international. We used to be a lock. But now netball’s claims suffer due the strength of too many other competitive nations, and by 2032 Australian netball’s glory days will be like the Davis Cup.
Surfing also used to be an Australian forte, and after the abysmal waves expected in Japan this week the sport is unlikely to last much longer in the Olympics. Therefore it will be ripe for re-inclusion in 2032 with an event on the Goldie. However, as anyone suffering the lockdown knows, there are Brazillions of rabid, wave-hungry Portuguese speakers who will shred alive any Australian who tries to jag a wave. Australian surfers are having to turn their skills to the lesser competitive sports of jagging a car park and finding a coffee.
As per le breakdancing, the International Olympic Committee has shown a particular interest in bringing in new sports that appeal to The Young People. So maybe Australia should look at newly evolving sports. Perhaps Brisbane will feature an event that doesn’t even exist yet, such as Influencing, or Tiktok, or Thumb-Typing, or Streaming, or Marathon Staying In Your Room. The drawback is that it’s hard to see The Young People of Australia having any advantage over the world in these events, or that they could be bothered entering. If the IOC really wants to tap into the Young People market, it might turn Not Being Bothered into a sport.
Past performance is always the best guide to future success, and Australia might reflect on the gold it has already won in Tokyo. Australia’s chief Olympic finisher John Coates hit a sweet bullseye in the sport of Shooting Oneself in the Foot, when he fired upon the Brisbane 2032 committee during its triumphal press conference and nailed it right between the first and second metatarsals.
In the subsequent explanation for Mr Coates’s public rebuke of Annastacia Palaczszuk – it was all a preconceived cunning plan between him and the Queensland Premier, in which she would allow him to publicly bully her into attending the opening ceremony so that she wouldn’t be seen to attend it of her own volition – Australia also showed itself a world leader in playing Silly Buggers and Stealing Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.
Moreover, by 2032, Mr Coates will be 82 years of age and just coming into his prime in his chosen sport.
So in spite of the obstacles, we are spoilt for choice. But then again, we might look at the way Australia is competing in sports that are already in the Olympics – at swimming, say, or basketball, or football, or cycling or rowing or canoeing or track and field – and notice the fact that we’re already doing pretty well. And when they ask us to add a new sport, our national response might be to consider the excellence of our existing Olympians and Paralympians and reply: Yeah nah, thanks but we’re all good.
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