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TIME Daily ... Latest CNN News FREE NEWSLETTER! Sign up now for TIME's WorldWatch email newsletter. preview Check the New 2000 FORTUNE 500 Today! FORTUNE.com ... ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY TIME EUROPE September 11, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 11 This Is Sport? Some events should get medals for silliness By JOEL STEIN A lot of people want to go to the Olympics, and only so many tickets are available. So to keep everybody happy, you sometimes have to stretch the definition of sport. This, no doubt, is how the Greeks came up with the pole vault. And this year offers a bounty of stupid sports to mollify the masses. Not only did I score you gymnastics tickets, you valuable client you, but they're for this year's newest Olympic sport, trampolining! And trampolining, if you think about it, isn't even so ridiculous a sport. At least it fulfills the basic requirement of promising very serious injury. Teenage girls jump 20 ft. in the air, do tricks called the double back tuck and the full-in-full-out, and then, if the long history of backyard trampolines is any indication, fall on their faces and cry. Jennifer Parilla, the 19-year-old who will represent all of America's hopes in Sydney, however, disappoints by saying her sport isn't really dangerous. "I've never had a backyard trampoline. They're so unsafe," she protests. Parilla insists her sport is totally legitimate. "We go over to anywhere in Europe, and our competitions are televised," she says. She obviously is not familiar with the quality of European programming. | |
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