New Olympic sport

Did anyone else know that BMX biking (the cross country race course kind; not the tricks and aerials version) had been added to the summer Olympics? Yeah, me neither.
And, of course, there will be women participating because new sports have to have a men's and women's event(s) where applicable.
And, despite the fact that the United States is a BMX powerhouse, there are other countries that have athletes who will strong gold medal contenders in Beijing. On the women's side there's New Zealand, France, and Great Britain. Great Britain??
Huh, interesting. Especially in light of this article about the need for greater promotion of women's sports in the UK. The BMXers are hoping their Olympic presence will increase the sport's popularity. Who knows, maybe post-Beijing we'll see a cadre of British girls hopping on their BMXes and hitting the dirt.

Comments

anonymous said…
Hard to believe BMX is being accepted and softball has been rejected.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=2103234
July 14, 2008 3:57 PM
ken said…
I was thinking the same thing. But it may be that BMX actually has a greater international appeal. We'll just have to watch, I guess, to see how competitive the sport is.
This doesn't, however, address the weirdness surrounding the vote that eliminated softball in the first place.
July 14, 2008 10:40 PM
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