Let’s squash sardines into the Olympics!

With breakdancers poised to go for gold...

When is a sport not a sport? The news that breakdancing is being considered for inclusion in the 2024 Olympic Games has apparently been greeted with ‘shock and dismay’ by fuddy-duddy sports fans.

heaven knows why. Breakdancing is more natural than synchronised swimming and more exciting than weightlifting. It also demands a lot more energy than dressage, which requires each human competitor to sit as still as a newsreader on what is, for the purposes of the event, a four- legged form of mobility scooter.

If breakdancing makes the Olympic grade, it will act as a beacon to other, even more marginalised sports. Whatever happened to leapfrog and musical chairs? If only they were adopted as Olympic sports, there would be queues around the block.

Though I was never a sporty person — my school report once said, ‘The only energy Craig puts into sport is in getting out of it’ — I always enjoyed a game called hopping-Barging. It involved each player standing on one leg, with arms folded, and then hopping towards other players and trying to barge them over. The winner was the last man still standing, or, failing that, the man with most bones still intact.

My hopping-Barging days are over, but I can still dream of being appointed President of The World hopping- Barging Federation, ready to swan around the globe glad-handing bigwigs, cutting a dash in a gold-buttoned blue blazer with a little crest on its lapel depicting a little man doing the barging and another little man falling over.

This may seem fanciful, but there is no essential difference in the sportsworthiness of hoppingBarging and football. In fact, as sports go, hopping-Barging seems to me much better designed.

The trouble with football is that it is always stopping just as it is about to get going: every few minutes, the ball is kicked out, and the game is brought to a standstill.

hopping-Barging labours under no such limitation. It is much easier to understand, and not weighed down by complications, such as football’s Offside Rule, which runs to well over 1,000 words in the official FA Rule Book, and still leaves one none the wiser.

And those of us in the WSA (The World Sardines Association) are dismayed that the International Olympics Committee continues to sideline the age- old sport of Sardines. For those who don’t know it, Sardines goes like this. One person — the sardine — runs away and hides in an enclosed space (for example, a cupboard) while the others shut their eyes and count to 20. The catchers then prowl around, on the look-out for the sardine. The first person to find the sardine effectively becomes another sardine, and joins him or her in the cupboard. The same applies to all the successive catchers, until the cupboard is full to bursting, and only one person is still looking. he or she is then declared the loser, and everyone else is allowed to poke fun at them. needless to say, Sardines is much more fun than running or clay pigeon shooting, and, unlike them, requires a wide range of skills, including a) squeezing into a tight spot and b) not breathing too loudly. And why, may I ask, is Grandmother’s Footsteps so seldom played by adults on an international level? Contestants need agility, discretion and the increasingly rare ability to stand still, while the ‘Grandmother’ has to keep all her wits about her, and be ready to swivel around in double-quick time the moment she hears a distant footstep or faint rustle of clothing.

SO Why has Grandmother’s Footsteps been marginalised as an adult sport? I suspect the fault lies in the name. If it were rebranded into something more cutting- edge — ‘ GranFo’, for instance — it would become instantly fashionable, and companies such as nike would start selling snazzy new kit for those who want to look the part.

It’s all a matter of timing. When Live Pigeon Shooting was introduced into the Paris Olympics in 1900, blood and feathers of 300 pigeons rained down on spectators, leading to complaints and the consequent cancellation of the event at the St Louis Olympics in 1904.

But these days, the world is crying out for a bit of fun. Breakdancing, hopping-Barging, Musical chairs, Sardines and Grandmother’s Footsteps could soon be enjoying a resurgence. And, post-Brexit, I wonder if Queueing might come into its own as an Olympic sport?