Some people are simply brilliant salespeople. They have a gift for persuasion. I have always thought physicists must be some of them. They persuaded grant funders that the only place they could put observatories was in the tropical paradise of Hawaii.
Watching the Olympics, I think even they have been outdone though. Consider the successful pitches that must have been made in order to secure our current line-up of events.
“We are going to train horses to dance.”
“Hmm. Jousting? That’s a sport?”
“No, we just want the dancing included. Maybe a bit of jumping.”
“Well, it’s just hitting each other really.”
“It’s an eight-lap cycle race. But for the first five laps, the cyclists will queue up behind a motorbike.”
“It’s like the long jump, but the athlete will do a hop and a skip beforehand.”
“Well, it’s not quite a javelin and it’s not quite a shot put, but man, will they be able to throw that hammer a long way.”
“Yes, it’s diving. But there will be two of them. Doing exactly the same thing.”
“Exactly, it’s volleyball. Except with a lot of sand, and the women will be in bikinis.”
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Tags: athletics, cycling, diving, olympics, sport, volleyball
This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2016 at 10:57 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.