The Olympics are Coming to Paris…. France

SPORTS with George Le Gresley

It’s almost that time when the world’s athletes congregate in Paris France for the Olympic Summer Games. This event, held every four years in the winter and summer, has been rife with scandals for cheating, corruption, terrorism, and cost overruns in just about every country it has been held in. Canada held the Summer Olympics only once in 1976, with Montreal being the host city, where Canada didn’t win a medal and Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner, won the Decathlon event. The facilities required to hold the games are expensive; so expensive that the debt for the Montreal games took 30 years to retire. The most enduring relic of the games still standing is the Olympic Stadium, which quickly became obsolete for professional sports and auto shows due to a retractable roof that never really worked. The estimate to demolish the stadium and remediate the area where it is located is estimated at $2 billion, perhaps dooming it to stand as a relic like Rome’s Coliseum.

The cost of these games?

Despite starting this article on such a negative slant, I still enjoy the

Olympics, in particular sports where results are based on measurables, like speed and scores as opposed to where scores are based on human judging. Don’t get me wrong, gymnasts, boxers for example are great athletes and provide great entertaining performances, but despite that have had many controversies in how things are judged.

Now let’s talk of the positives

First Paris Ontario has had at least one athlete attend an Olympic Games. If you guessed

Syl Apps, you’d be correct, who in 1936 came in sixth place in the pole vault. (Maybe Chris Whelan has a history story to tell about this or others who competed). These games featured Jesse Owens winning 4 gold medals, the rowing team featured in the movie “The Boys in The Boat” and Adolph Hitler being disappointed for a lot of reasons.

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This year’s Summer Olympics will be known for its gender equality, where for the first time in the game’s history women will have an equal number of athletes as men About time!

Five new sports will be introduced at this year’s games, four of them whose origins come from extreme sports and one from shows like “America Has Talent”. The new entries are:

Syl Apps wasn’t just a decorated hockey player. In 1936 the Paris man came in sixth place in the pole vault at the Summer Olympics.

1 Breaking, also known as break dancing, 2. Surfboarding (I never knew that you could hang ten in France),

3. 3X3 Basketball (yes there still is a 5 on 5 event is still on),

4. Sport Climbing also known as rock climbing and 5. Kayak Cross which was described as “a bit like Snowboard cross or BMX racing” where there are heats of 4 racers going down a watery course.

Of course, with additions of events there are deletions and gone is Karate and Softball, a sport that Canada has excelled in

There are always great stories told during the Olympics, be they good, bad, or ugly With a budget of $14 5 billion, many might say there could be better use for that money elsewhere; but it is a major event that will draw the world’s eyes to Paris Hopefully, this year’s Olympics will go off peacefully, without any controversies, or crisis in a world that seems to be on high alert.

Next week we’ll give you an idea of the first week of events and which Canadian athletes to look out for in those events!