Everything is broken: Olympics edition

I've decided it's time to nationalise sport.

A wild stance for me to take, really – me! an avowed theatre kid! For most of my life I've been made furious by the prioritisation of sports over the arts, in school, on the news, really almost everywhere.

Yet, here we are. I've been watching the Olympics and I've decided it's time to nationalise sport.

Most of the time I think of sports as an area in which there is simply way too much money. Fees for players, the sheer amount of merch, and on top of the immediate finances, sports gambling (ban it).

But that's just because most of the time you're only hearing about like, three sports. In the UK football, in New Zealand rugby, in the US the other kind of football. Basketball. Baseball. Ice hockey.

Large scale team sports that suck all the oxygen out of the room.

But then the Olympics happen, and they remind everyone that of just how many different sports there are. Things you've never heard of, things you could never have imagined! Look! We will make this guys ski uphill, then climb some stairs, then ski uphill a bit more, then ski downhill: this is elite athleticism.

And every so often you'll catch a commentator talking about what it took for one of these athletes to get there. This silver medalists in the biathlon has been working three jobs to fund his Olympic bid. That hockey team is doing really well with their no goals to four because that country doesn't have a national league so all those players have to hold down real jobs.

I think that's tragic! If you love an athletics and you're good enough at it to be at the Olympics for it, I don't think you should have to also have a normal job! Let alone three! Your job is to contribute to all this entertainment once every four years (and to lesser entertainments that only a tiny number of people will pay attention to the rest of the time).