The bloated sport

There are many terms for calm: peace, silence, noiselessness, motionlessness or rigidity. And one could also cite immobility, i.e. the exact and stark opposite of the efforts of almost all international sports associations, for whom the word rest is almost a swear word. People wring their hands in an attempt to avoid this state of pause, because standing still also means that no attention can be generated. World championships are inflated with nonsensical and questionable competitions that are not even held during a normal season. One is inventive to circumvent the calm, to outsmart it.

The Alpines have revived the previously indispensable combination, which had since died a quiet death. With super-G and slalom. Nobody really wanted to do it. The title is therefore one with which the winners can never achieve great merit. And so it continues. After the men's downhill, the supreme discipline of an Alpine World Championship, it would be nice to pause for a moment. But there is the “team parallel competition”. Never heard? At the last Universiade in Lake Placid, male and female students held such a competition. In this case, I had the dubious pleasure of being able to accompany this event as a commentator. There is no space for this in the normal World Cup calendar, which is why it is legitimate to describe this competition format as unnecessary.

The team competition – here at the World Cup in Cortina – is controversial. © APA/afp / ANDREAS SOLARO

Two women and two men compete as a team behind each other and next to each other in a knockout system. In the end there is logically a winning team and an entry in the much-loved medal table. There is no time for tea during breaks. And again Lake Placid, site of two Olympic Games. The ski jumpers are now also very inventive. Of course, it was long overdue for the women to have their own jumping series. Your competition calendar should be expanded even further. The men's "superteam competition", on the other hand, is once again a pattern of no value and only serves to get more television time. The result is included in the statistics, but the memory value fades after the last jump.

Equality as a cover The program expansion is of course also looking for a nice cover. The motto is equality. Taken to the extreme, this would even mean gender equality. This means the fact that people must not experience any discrimination based on their biological and gender. It is obvious that this is difficult or even impossible to implement in sport, which is why this problem is elegantly avoided. There are mixed competitions. The pioneer was the International Biathlon Union (IBU), which started in 2005.

Initially ridiculed and only taken seriously by a few nations, this format with two women and two men is now considered almost higher than the usual relay races. At the start of the World Cup in Oberhof, all nations, without exception, fielded their best men and women. Of course, biathletes are not completely free from the gigantism and inventiveness of new competitions either. The “single mixed relay” takes place one day after the extremely difficult individual competitions. A man and a woman go on the cross-country ski trail and to the shooting range. Very few teams will compete with their best players, even if there is actually peace and quiet afterwards. For one day before the final spurt with the relay races and the mass start is on the program. In addition, this competition will never receive Olympic status. Nevertheless, the signs point inexorably to a colorful mix.

There are now mixed relays in athletics and recently there was even a competition between four women and four men in Berlin. In discus throwing. In a hall, mind you, although in this case it should be noted that the men had to use their disc weighing two kilograms and the women had to use their usual tool, which weighs one kilogram. By the way, the women won and so that the men didn't have to look too sparingly, they also got a point for every defeat against their competitor. It was nice entertainment, but without much sporting value, even if there was a new indoor world record, which is not officially kept. But here too the motto was to extend the competition beyond the usual program.

More and more The urge to move among sports organizers and association officials obviously cannot be stopped. Calmness is interpreted as absolute standstill. You could also make good use of your days off in biathlon. There are so many former world-class athletes in Oberhof that a legend race would probably appeal to just as many spectators as a normal, ordinary competition. Kati Wilhelm and Frank Luck against Uschi Disl and Michael Rösch. And great teams are also created internationally. Ole-Einar Björndalen could run with Kaisa Mäkäräinen or Nathalie Santer. Hopefully I haven't awakened any ghosts. The legends finally deserve to rest after their long years of competition.

About the author: Sigi Heinrich The multi-award-winning sports journalist (including the German Television Prize, the Bavarian Sports Prize, the Biathlon Award and the World Sports Trophy) illuminates the entire world of sport in his column “Sigi's Peaks” and sometimes poaches in foreign regions. Sometimes with a mischievous wink, sometimes with a serious expression or deliberately provocative. There should be something for everyone.

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