What next? Pokeman Go

Pompom waving finally raised all hackles recently when cheerleading received International Olympic Committee acceptance. There were fears that if TV or social networks are allowed to set the agenda wooing the ‘young’ demographic, some day, twitter trash-t

Cheerleading

Don’t let pompoms shred the cred of cheerleading; there’s enough acrobatic leaps, lifts, tumbling and jumps to qualify cheerleading as athletic in the way figure skating, diving and gymnastics are. There’s just several Simon Biles on show at the same time. Indians can do it: just replace You Ess Aye, Youu Ess Aye with In-di-yah, In-di-yah and train every dahi handi season in Mumbai if pyramids are your thing.

Georgewbushwasacheerleader,sowere Roosevelt (FDR), Eisenhower and Reagan. America has been at it since late 1800, much beforeespnswoopedinandmadeabattleout of the song and dance. Olympic recognition will get the sport — popular and well-organised in Burundi, Kyrgyzstan and Isle of Man — $24000 for training the cheerleaders. Though, the supremely athletic species seen on sidelines of College sport in the US don’t pick more than a 100 grand per game. If 2024 goes LA’S way, then groups performing death-defying stuntsandtumbleswhicharedaringandphysically demanding will become Olympians. It used to be a boys thing, but girls aced it when the men went missing fighting in WW2. Halle Berryandsamueljacksonwereverygoodatit, though all arguments should close when you are told Meryl Streep was a top cheerleader. If true, that makes it legit and legally brilliant, never mind what IOC or assorted fuddy daddies make of the sport.

Dance Sport

The 13,000-capacity venue at the 2009 World Games in Kaohsiung and the 18,000seater one at the 2013 edition in Cali were sold out on both days of Dance Sport. However, the detractors of this new sport, namely tetchy sportsreporterswhowon’tseeaballroomunless there’s a ball in it, aren’t too excited to be part of this noisy crowd. At a symposium to discuss the matter, one scandalised hack got pretty nasty: “No man wearing a dinner suit and a haughty look should ever be in contention for an Olympic gold medal. A headwaiter’s job maybe.” (Ouch) “But never an Olympicfinal.dancingisn’tsport.it’sfastwalking to music. How difficult can it be? ...”

A fellow journo, Victor Eijkhout, quipped though: “That’s pretty funny, considering that fast walking is an Olympic sport.”

So, IOC went cheekily avant-garde and picked Breakdance from the streets (think: Moose and Step Up) and brought it into the Youth Olympics for 2018. There’s baggy shorts and trainers so the culture shock is minimal. There will be one-on-one battles for B-boys andb-girlsandamixed-teamevent.itdoesn’t matter if it’s a hat tip to Michael Jackson or reprising the technical twists and turns of Patrick Swayze in a ballroom Latin faceoff, Dance Sport in Olympics is an over reach.

Climbing

You’ll see them clamber up walls at Tokyo —andnotjustaspartoftheopeningceremony acrobatics.

The world’s most famous climber Alex Honnold has threatened to stay far away from the 2020 Games because he reckons competitive climbing is a whole different sub-sport. IOC might’ve courted climbing for its youth quotient but climbers tend to be philosophical and crinkle their noses at the bolts – the permanent anchors fixed to the rock, which they say interferes with their natural instinct in traditional climbs. Speed climbing in fact is severely divisive — it’s too chummy with TV ratings, and is said to be the same difference as a marathon is to a sprint. Real climbers worry about things like material properties of the rock-type — they tend to know their granite from limestone or sandstone. Controlled surrounds of an Olympics and its formulaic preparation doesn’t sit too easy with men and women who take off on challenges and dig the spiritual solitude. It’s like what Vertical Limit gets right and Cliffhanger doesn’t by selling out, but the youth are being heavily courted by the Olympics suits alright.

Skateboarding

It started as dry-surfing when waves fell flat in California and then skateparks became all the rage in ‘70s. When snowboarding debuted at the 1998 Winter Games in Japan, it exploded on TV and X Games clips were one of the first to go viral – so skateboarding will look for Tokyo to do the same to what is sidewalk surfing.

The Summer Games will see men’s and women’s park and street events, and you bettergetusedtotheskate-lingo–theverts(skating vertical walls), the hippie jumps, wheelie and ollies. The Holy Grail of skateboarding, the Produnova of this sport is the 1080, a stunt on the vertical ramp which can stop your breath whentheskateboarderlaunchesinto1080degreethreefullrevolutionsintheverticalplane.

The twist and turn to this plot however, is a petition that surfaced right before the sport was admitted into the Olympics – a petition seeking rejection of the sport from some of its diehards. Skateboarders brag about their unified skate culture that makes the countryvs-country battle of Olympics seem laughable to some. Skateboarding thrives as an anti-establishment, alt counter-culture, frowning on capitalism and ambushing busy urban spaces with their whizzy stunts. Moreover, there are concerns that skateboarders – could resist drug test compliance, since many top stunt-men tend to strap on the skates under the influence of weed. As such, marijuana is tied in with the streets sub culture and demanding conformity at the disciplined, performance-obsessed, zero-tolerant Olympics will be a long haul. Olympics will sizzle with skateboarding, but whether the skateboarders dig the Olympics, or care enough, is an altogether different matter.

Air Sports: Paragliding

The World Games 2017 at Wroclaw will traversetheentirerainbowofairsports–parachuting, paramotoring, glider aerobatics and canopy piloting, while the Asian Games of 2018 at touristy Indonesia are reaching for the sky with the introduction of paragliding. Blood, sweat, tears seem a tad old-fashioned, when G-force is the new gambit, and why not if F1’s been on sports channels forever. But as with everything else, it’s the spectator thrills that have brought air sports into multi-discipline events. Flying skills, breathtaking manoeuvres, rolls, spins and loops and flying men whizzing between bridges and over flyovers – the hooks are endless.

Then there’s Canopy piloting and accuracy gliding — remember Colin Firth’s Kingsman and the final qualification detail to pick the Knights — this sport plays out on a truly three-dimensional field of play. A small square in the target landing pad after leaping off 800m and negotiating wind resistance. Might surprise many, but the sport was the biggest draw at the 2001 World Games. Skydiving plays out at a speed of 500km/h in freefall — making it the fastest non-powered sport. What next? Muggle Quidditch, you would scoff. Scoff all you want, IOC’S not reining back its fanciful flights.

Contract Bridge

Therewasaminorkerfufflewhenthewellheeled Bridge playing seniors were escorted to the restrooms for a dope test. Small price to payforthe‘mindgame’tocomeundertheioc ambit. The king of card games debuts at the South East Asian Games in 2017 and got into the Asiad for 2018, and though neither yuppie nor breathtakingly acrobatic, Bridge regulars could prove to be a hard demographic to ignore: the rich ones with a snob value to boot.

Olympic’sextremelybrawnyimage—dripping of dope — could be tempered a tad with the inclusion of this intellectual activity, or so think the suits. Bridge and its cold, calculating presence did make its way to the 2002 Winter Olympicswhereitwasademonstrationsport. Don’t ask why ‘winter’, maybe players sat freezingoutdoors,butwedon’tactuallyknow.

Olympics could do with chess and bridge just to balance all that adrenaline overdosing after skateboarding and wave surfing. Computershaven’tacedhumansatbridgeand Radioheadfrontmanthomyorkewindsdown with a game at the table, could be compelling arguments in certain quarters.

But bridge remains the one sport where head honchos of big money sponsorships could enter the rings themselves (Bill Gates played as ‘Chalengr’ and Warren Buffet as ‘Tbone’ on online sites if you need to know).

Boules

This one makes the list only because every sportthatenteredtheolympicsinthepasthad the French nudge. It’s throwing or rolling of heavy balls, and we’ll spare you the Youtube search by describing it as: Bowling meets Carrom meets Golf meets Baseball meets Garden Party — the last is not a sport.

But Boules, the Gaulish grandstanding game, is at the World Games. It got most of its swag when German designer Karl Lagerfeld deemed it worthy of rounding up his pretty friends and flying them down to St Tropez for a tournament with chic Chanel and Louis Vuittons encasing designer petanque sets in soft leather.

Britain predictably dismissed it first as an idle pastime for retirees of southern France, and the Guardian’s pique was that it “needed the low cunning which Brits lack.” Must be after one of their lot lost. But it took off anyway across the Channel, and got real serious when 1.5 million Chinese started perfecting it. There was a skirmish with WADA a decade ago when French players got a ‘draconian’ ban on alcohol lifted. But that apart, Boules is making all the right noises trying to sidle its way into Olympics and there’s the gender parity that is pushing it into shortlists. Should Paris win the 2024 vote, the balls for Boules might well be set rolling.

Lifesaving

Rememberthatlifeguardmadefamousfor watching over Phelps’ pool because Brazilian laws make it mandatory even as the greatest Olympian did his Phelspian thing. Well, the breed needn’t look so bored a few quadrennials later, if Lifesaving becomes an Olympic competitivediscipline.itwasasideshowinthe 1900edition,andisrecognisedbyioc(willfeature at World Games), but no matter how cool the monikers — Beach Ocean Man or Beach Ocean Woman, or event names: ‘saving a manekin’ (even with that spelling) doesn’t quite jazz up a saviour’s to-do list.

The longtime baiters of Dressage or Pentathlon will get unforgiving with renewed vigour if this utterly purposeful but confoundingsportwithsimulatedemergencysituations makes it.

Baywatch really made beach-side lifesavingouttobemoreglamorousthatitisassport. And the minor matter: Gillyweed of Goblet of Fire fame needs to be on the WADA list before Lifesaving scores an Olympic spot.

Flying Disc

Theycallitultimate.itissupremeinitsamateur naivete of doing away with a referee and relying on ‘sense of fairplay’ of its practitioners. But otherwise it’s just a Frisbee — which started when Yale students went tossing pie tins.anyway.it’swounduponthethresholdof the Olympics, and if past World Games tapes aredugout,isevidentlyamightypopularspectator sport. There are elements of American football,soccer,hockeyandbasketballinflinging the disc to team mates, and the outdoorsy Canadians, Americans, Aussies and Japs expectedly battle each other in co-ed teams.

IOC has concluded in 2013 that it is infinitely telegenic — at the end of this gruelling list-compilingandtrawlingthroughthesportscapeoftv-lobbies,oneiscompelledtobelieve that anything flying seduces the IOC.

Los Angeles winning the 2024 vote might air-drop the flying disc bang into the Games. It issaidthatioc’ssportsdepartmentfinishesits lunch meetings with a game of Ultimate. We loved it as kids out in the park – but we also loved competing for who could eat the most pani puris at the stall outside the same park.

Esports

It’s called God of War and the ancient Greeks didn’t really play it. But there’s some punks out there who sit hunched over a console — or stand — and compete to be best at Age of Empire.

All the warrior, jingoistic, infantile Olympianclichés—callofduty,lastguardian, Titanfall — are somewhere in there in the depths of electronically wired arcades which will be the ultimate youth-bait for the IOC. Assassins Creed might need a euphemism if it’s to look Olympic-acceptable.

Esports—competitivegamingisnotrecognised by IOC yet: Small mercies, some might say. But Korea’s big on it, it’s far more international than one would want it to be, and a gender-levellertooandfinallysincetheworldlives inside computers and smartphones, a dystopian futuristic fantasy can include Esports. Videogamers were given athletes’ visasenteringtheuslastyear—sorecognition can fetch up if someone gets this demented brainwave.

It’s tough to comprehend why thousands sit and watch others go beserk with screwed eyes at consoles. But never rule out Esports in this age of obsessive digitisation.

Illustration: C R Sasikumar