<<Well, at first glance it might seem that table tennis is a flippant sport compared to bowling, but I wonder how long it takes to become a good player! I have seen bowlers average 200 after having bowled for only 6 months and close to 210 after a year and a half! >>

But!!! those 6 mo bowlers cannot average 200 in every house they walk into. I guarantee it.

What I said before still stands. Versatility will get you cash on most situations. And that's what house bowlers do NOT have and pro guys and ladies DO have. Only the best get on the Olympic team, the ones that are versatil and can perform on a variety of patterns.

Erin

Can't we all just get along?....

I'd love to see bowling become an olympic sport. It's been steadily gaining public acceptance as a legitimate sport, so hopefully this will happen in my lifetime.

Well, I was going to stay out of this, but why not add my two cents? I'm not a great bowler, but I'm working to get better. My average is below 200, and my high game has been 235 (during practice). Ballroom dancing is being added (if it hasn't already) to the Olympics, and I feel that bowling should as well. BowlingDude seems to be trying to rile everyone. If he really feels the way his posts read, then he should probably find something he enjoys more to do with his time and change his nickname to something else. Also, the comments on other sports, seem to show very little knowledge of what really happens in those games. Hockey is definately ice dependant. The ice determines a skaters speed and puck speed. It can cause the puck to glide across in a pass or jump and flip. Bowling is also changed by different oil patterns that change during the series. There are international bowling competitions, so why not add it to the Olympics. I'd tune in.

Tony

There are probably many reasons that Ten Pin Bowling has not achieved Olympic Sport Status. Certainly the following are some of them: not enough bowling centers world wide so that bowlers from various countries can be developed; politics at the highest level of Olympic Committee who run the Olympics; the inability of the American Bowling Congress, and manufacturers of bowling equipment including ball manufacturers to properly influence or convince the Olympic Committee that bowling is a sport worthy of being included; and the high cost of building an indoor "state of the art" bowling stadium at the chosen Olympic city site. This is also the victim of the "chicken and the egg senario" of what comes first in order to accomplish all of the aforegoing. Bowling is a sport that requires the expenditure of an enormous amount of capital in order to make it an Olympic Sport and there is no company or individual who has that ability that is presently financially involved in the sport.

Here's the deal bowlerdude...

You are correct...bowling is not a sport and will never be due the fact that a sports requires ATHLETIC skill, but at the same time bowling is a game of skill and requires a ton of it to be a great bowler.

Bowlers please do not get upset with me because i've argued that bowling is a sport for the longest until someone told me to look at the Traber brothers who bowl on tour. Those guys have to be the most unathletic guys ever! but they to score very well.

The event is called the Olympic GAMES. Therefore bowling may one day be apart of the schedule.

Right now the USA has a very solid method of choosing our best bowlers, and that is every year in Las Vegas, NV anyone who feels they are worthy enough to try out for our national team may do so in a grueling week long contest to choose our top bowlers. So far that system is flawless.

And every year just like in other sports we do take our best bowlers somewhere on Earth and compete against other nations.

The problem in previous year was that different countries did have different methods of bowling...some asian countries used barely any oil and some european countries used too much. As of right now there 56 countries competing in the World Men's Championships in Bangkok, Thailand.
"To qualify as an Olympic sport, an activity must be "widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents, and by women in at least 40 countries and on three continents," according to Olympics officials. In other words, participation matters."

So basically the its up to us as bowlers to all be representatives of the game and spread it to others...

so who's ready because I am!!!

Don't trust anything I'm saying? Well look me up on bowl.com
the name is Ryon Collins...I bowl in Richmond and Petersburg, VA and have a top 20 average in both cities. Have thrown 5 300 games and 4 800's this season.

the secret to every great bowler that I know is successful...take advantage of what your given, and what the bowler does next to you is irrelavent, and can not be helped.

I'm a rare case of someone who has bowled a 300 game in one night and did not win the handicap high game...lost to a 307...life isnt fair people but being the marvelous people we are as bowlers, we know how to move on to the next frame of life...

oh ya and bowler dudes big deal about rightys and leftys on the televised match...I don't know how large of an event you've ever been to but i've been to quite a few and many dont know this but during PBA events the great bowlers we all know and see every week are able to drill up new equipment during qualifying and match play. So if theyre not striking by the 5th frame by the 8th they'll have a ball to match up. So lefties can lock themselves out or create a crazy wall for themselves...the weeks you see all lefties on the show is mainly because the right side became harder to score on...not because the left side opened up...

So my conclusion is that you are angry at this game for some reason and just need to quit because you're not getting any better...

Essentially it comes down to too much variation in the equipment used. Bowling isn't an Olympic sport because you don't have to be as atheletic as another person if you have the best equipment. Plus there are tons of international balls that the States don't get and the internation patterns from what I've heard from our collegues on this site are much harder to bowl on than the ones here in the States. Someone will probably get mad at me for this but be thankful that bowling isn't an Olympic sport. Chances are the US would get clobbered. If bowling was to be an Olympic event than you'd have to give everyone the same ball and have them throw on the same pattern (which none of them have ever bowled on).

Demo,
We have a USA Team there competing in the World Ten Pin Championship in Thailand right now. Patrick Allen and Rhino Page just won Doubles Gold against the sweeden so there able to compete against the best in the world.

Check this out:

http://www.bowl.com/articleView.aspx?i=14828&f=7

Ok, who keeps digging up the old posts?