Walking is a farce of a sport

redspider

Once again, whenever the Olypmpics or the World Athletics championships comes around, the spectacle of walkers cheating appears on our screens. The sport though is a joke when the walkers are actually cheating so much of the time. It is impossible for the judges to catch them out objectively and it is subjective. Subjectivity has no place in Athletics.

Now dont get me wrong, I admire that these people are extremely fit and are atheletes, there is no doubt about that, but what is the benefit for people to try to get from A to B in such a contrived manner. Should there also be a spoon race, a wheelbarrow race, a sack race and a running backwards race in the Olympics as well?

Runners, what do you think of the walking sport? Should it be retained or should the world ban it due to stupidity like feeding Christians to the lions was?


(by the way, I'm not picking on walkers as the only nonsense sport in the Olympics - there are others eg: backstroke, breaststroke, doggy-paddle in swimming, are they really needed?)

ecksor

Why ask what the runners think of the walkers? You don't seem to be asking the walkers what they think of the runners. The inclusion or otherwise of other sports on the athletics programme doesn't seem relevant. Also, what appears to you to be athletes cheating in the walk is quite likely to be injury or fatigue impairing technique (that's not to say that walkers don't cheat, they do sometimes, but it isn't always the case that infringements are diliberate in my opinion and especially not at the level that you're talking about). No event in 'needed' strictly speaking, each event imposes certain rules and guidelines, some more than others. Subjectivity applies to many sports, even when technology helps to rule it out it isn't always used.

For future reference, if you actually want to start a serious discussion then try not to be so flippant as to quote non-existant swimming events to justify your case.

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