Wow, the 2008 Olympics is coming fast, an updated Code of Points for both the Artistic Men and Women and all the elections to decide the leaders for the next four years. This is an exciting time.
It would be exciting to see the most recent great athletes of the sport get an opportunity to lead and offer ideas as to how to help the sport grow. In this day and age of sports it has become more and more important to be aware of the fact that all sports are entertainment events. If you do not continuosly build your spectator base you will disaappear in the near future. There are just too many sports for the spectator to entertain their time.
In addition, sport is becoming a young person’s marketing tool to attract new spectators and new young athletes. The big sports in the World of Sports like; European Football, American Football, Nascar racing, Extreme Sports and others are tough to compete with. Just think of the marketing and excitment that these sports generate in entertainment value.
Having an arena with quiet background music, dead time when nothing is taking place, scores that take too much time to be displayed, a display board that you can not really see in the arena, lack of explanation to the spectator as to what is going on with the A and B Panel scores and events that create unequal value does not create an exciting event. As an example, you have to wait until all gymnasts, in the men’s competition, have competed Vaulting before the scores start to look equal.
By bringing in the super stars of the sport (past World and Olympic Medallists) from the past four to six Olympics, as an example, you have individuals with fresh ideas and can develop new leadership for the sport.
The sport has amazing people out there that the pesent fans want to see involved it would be great to have them lead gymnastics into the future.
What do you think?
