Running events have an objective measuring stick to compare performances (time). Bhutanese ultrarunner Kinzang Lhamo has been praised all over the media for running a race that would be at least 23 minutes too slow to qualify her for the Boston Marathon in her age group. Because of the universality slots, she was able to compete on the highest stage of the sport despite having a lifetime marathon PR slower than that of many moderately serious casual runners. Had it not been for the universality slots, her space would have gone to a 2:2x:xx marathoner somewhere with immense talent whose dedicated her whole life to the sport. Let’s face it, this performance was remarkably poor, over an hour and a half behind the winner.
Meanwhile, someone’s performance in a different sport (breaking) that has been judged as a poor performance becomes a viral running joke at the athletes expense? Breaking has considerable subjectivity in the scoring (judges give points for categories like “musicality” and “originality”).
Public opinion is funny in that it’s totally fine to laugh at and meme a poor performance in one sport and celebrate one in another.
Finally and secondarily, here’s my hot take - breaking has no place in the Olympics to begin with. Imagine what it would look like if Simone Biles, a real athlete (or really any competitive floor gymnast), decided for fun they wanted to compete in breaking to bring home some extra hardware.
Because an athlete from a remote country most people have never had any interactions with running and completing a marathon with average amateur results far away from the elite runners isn’t funny at all. But an athlete from a country with a large cultural and sport per capita presence dancing in an amateurish way right next to elite dancers… that’s funny.
I agree her marathon performance is not funny at all. I’m suggesting it didn’t belong in the Olympics. Her slot should have gone to someone who ran the Olympic standard qualifying time. We shouldn’t give out spots to the Olympics based entirely on nationality, especially not when it sets people up to be that far behind. Should we give out boxing universality slots to completely untrained athletes because they are from small developing nations to watch them get their ass kicked? Absolutely not. Even when there are big underdogs, slots should go to people who are at least competing in the same field, otherwise they are allocated at the expense of more deserving athletes.
By the way I love Bhutanese culture and dream to visit there some day.
I guess its fine to make fun of people for bad Olympic performances so long as they’re from countries like Australia and their sport isn’t something like running?
Just think about the logic here. Two Olympic sports. Two Olympians. Two bad performances. One becomes a total joke at the expense of someone now being provided mental health support, and one is celebrated and lauded as a remarkable feat.
A marathon is a very different thing than a one on one dance contest. Including a 3:53 runner does not interfere with the contest as it happens, almost certainly doesn’t bump someone who might have won, and doesn’t draw mockery to the sport. Including Raygun did all 3 of those things.
They aren’t very comparable though. Very few people have run a sub 4 hour marathon - most people have danced badly. Someone running slowly isn’t inherently funny. Someone dancing badly is. An elite runner can get a bad time, an elite gymnast a bad score - but with the breaking it didn’t feel like she was having an off day, it felt like that was her doing her thing.
To be honest, the court of public opinion is very fickle and not very rational. People can hate one person for doing a thing, and completely ignore another person for doing the same thing.
Honestly, anyone in good health who trained properly for a marathon (4-6 months) can easily run her time.
But most people saw raygun’s dance and (probably wrongly) thought “I could do that, today” not “if I trained for 6 months, I could dance better than her”.
There is undeniably a difference in public perception of privilege too. Ray gun would have had more sympathy and less derision had she not been from a wealthy, sporting nation.
On a wonderful fall day with a high of 56F on a pancake flat course? Sure, I could be convinced that’s true.
On this course with it’s 438m of gain on a pretty hot and muggy day (91 was the high for the day, not sure what it peaked at by noon)? Press X to doubt that “good health” and 6 months of training would be sufficient for someone with little to no running background or endurance sports background.
Yeah very few people have run a 4 hour marathon.
Even fewer have run 2:24:00, like a woman in Ethiopia did who will never get to represent her country at the Olympics because her spot was given to someone who would be in a middle of the pack starting corral at any major marathon in the world.