I don't remember seeing any Olympics with bowling as one of the competing events, so why isn't it included????

it seems i'm as qualified as anyone to comment on this! Hey; if they're going to have beach volleyball which was originally invented to sell beer, and wind surfing in the olympics.... I mean how does Afghanisdtan train windsurfers when they have no ocean! Bowling seems to be a very legitimate sport...but really, the olympics should have Track and field and little else..in my opinion.

I brought the same thing up to my wife yesterday. I thought if Curling is an olympic sport than bowling should be also.

Bowling isn't a sport, it is a tricked up game and that is why it isn't in the Olympics! Sorry.

If synchronized swimming is an olympic event then bowling should be too. I agree with tweety though that a lot of events should be eliminated. I was watching at work yesterday and saw what I think is called steeplechasing. With the guy on the horse jumping over an obstacle course. I asked who gets the medal the rider or the horse?
seems to me like the horse is doing all the work.

Bowlerdude,

It's called the Olympic Games, not the Olympic Sports...


Bowling continues to be on the radar of the US Olympic Committee, and merging ABC, WIBC, and YABA, is in part, coming into compliance with Olympic rules for a single governing entity.

Once the USOC has all of its criteria met, then it will become an issue for the International Olympic Committee. Some say it will never happen. I believe, in time, all things are possible.

The bottom line for the IOC is profits, just the same as any buisness entity. In the past three Olympic seasons, the only time the stadiums have been filled is when the USA hosts. In every other country people were bussed in to fill the seats for the cameras, so it doesn't look like no one goes to it. This is a reflection of the bottom line, whether it is transparent to the public or not.

With the continuing problems of judging errors, and doping scandals, the IOC will find itself hard pressed to uphold public interest and integrity. Without a strong public interest, there is no means of supporting the games.

If the public demands an Olympic game of bowling, and shows an interest in going to view it, it will provide assistance in adding the game to the roster of included games. But the wheels of the Olympi Committee turn slowly, so I don't expect any great changes soon.

Coach04,

Bowling will never be an Olympic sport because the scoring environment is to easily manipulated! You know like a tricked up game that I previously mentioned. Who would decide what type of condition to put out for the games? What would happen if the U.S. Olympic team was composed of a bunch of power players and they decided to put a condition out that favored Taiwanese spinners? [the power players would think their pocket had been moved to Tibet] You don't think we would cry foul do you? On what basis would you select an Olympic team? Would you invite the bowlers with the highest averages to the trials? Geez..every stomp and spray house hack in America with a average over 220 would apply! What criteria would you use to determine the good hacks from the bad? Face it bowling has no credibility and that is another reason it will never be an Olympic game..er sport!
Sorry, again.

Bowlerdude,

I don't find that any different than who decides on the ice surface for hockey, the course for the luge, the Track condition for the horses, the surface for the curling, the compaction for the ski jump, surface conditions for skulling, the temprature in the stadium for Track & field, etc. etc. etc.

If you require a certain lane condition before you can bowl, you wouldn't be a contender anyway. Eliminations would be no different than for any other Olympic team. Only the the ones who prove they have the right stuff make it to team USA.

Similar to the PBA, thousands join with the hope of competing, but 64 are selected. It has worked well for them, for many years.

Bowlerdude,
How exactly would you define the nature of a sport? And don't just give examples of what you think are sports. What do you feel are some black and white criteria for something to be considered a sport.

I personally feel that the Olympics should represent the finest athletes that test our skill, strength, speed and endurance in different events. Bowling can definitely test your skill, endurance and focus. I have no problem with bowling. I love bowling. I could bowl for hours and have done so many times.

I have more problems with some other games that are Olympic events. If they can be Olympic games then so should Bowling.

I have acquired various ailments since I've taken up bowling that I never thought would happen. My back has caused me to consider using 15 pound bowling balls and to begin exercising my abs and lower back. My wrist caused me to do wrist exercises to strengthen my wrist. I now stretch before bowling. I have no doubt that bowling is a sport. Or a very vigorous game. whatever. Bowling to me is as much a sport as golf. I wonder how many calories I burn bowling? I bet it is quite a bit. When I practice I work up quite a sweat. I have to take off my shirt and I scare all of the senior citizens at the bowling alley.

To me bowling should be an Olympic event.
Syncronized Swimming?


Of course you look at some guys on the PBA Tour and you wonder ( Traber ) if bowling should be considered for the olympics. To me and Olympian should look like an Olympian. No disrespect intended to Traber who is a wonderfully skilled bowler.

I've rambled too much, this is what happens when I take a day off. I think I'll go to the mall.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">Originally posted by Coach04:
Bowlerdude,

I don't find that any different than who decides on the ice surface for hockey, the course for the luge, the Track condition for the horses, the surface for the curling, the compaction for the ski jump, surface conditions for skulling, the temprature in the stadium for Track & field, etc. etc. etc.

I think you just don't get it. Does the surface used for hockey steer the puck into the net like lane conditioner does in bowling? If you think that lane conditions don't determine who is going to do well, then I think you need to take a look at certain events when certain styles are locked out! The lane condition can make you or break you no matter how good you are! And that is my point as to why bowling will never be an Olympic sport! The lane man is more important than the bowler!

If you require a certain lane condition before you can bowl, you wouldn't be a contender anyway. Eliminations would be no different than for any other Olympic team. Only the the ones who prove they have the right stuff make it to team USA.

What if the left side is easier than the right? Does that mean 95% of the lefthanders had the right stuff and righthanders weren't good enough?

Similar to the PBA, thousands join with the hope of competing, but 64 are selected. It has worked well for them, for many years.

The PBA is good example of how squad equity is a problem! Many times there is a huge difference in scoring from one squad to another! How would this be dealt with if there were ten times as many bowlers?

Bowling will never be in the Olympics as long as the scoring enviornment is more important than the bowlers!</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">

Sorry Bowlerdude, but I don't agree with you, or your synopsis of the game.

Well, I don't agree with you either BowlerDude and I'm sorry you've gotten so cynical about the game.

All you need to do is have trials at the games for varying patterns. Kind of like being a gymnist and participating in all the events for all around. You have 4 pieces of apparati :-) and you may be extremely good on only 2 of them, but you participate and do your best on all 4. Because its an overall event. Kind of like different patterns and lane conditions.

You can have team all around and individual all around. The lanes are stripped during each squad and the same pattern put down for each and changed when the bowlers move onto a different pattern i.e Christmas Tree, Top Hat, Strip Block, Inverted Block, Flat Pattern ect..... You bring in 32 portables, synthetic lanes, synthetic approaches, same oiling machine, same lane conditioner and all that.

The point would be versatility. So if the helocopter bowlers are not versital enough to participate on all the patterns, then they wouldn't have to. But then they'd not expect to win an all around type of event. If our power players and strokers cannot manage the dry lane condition, suited for the helocopters, then they'll take a hit on that condition.

If the game between the helocopter bowlers and what we know as ten pin bowling here, is so different, then I guess the IOC could even make up two different types of events. You've got 100 meter Track, 200 and 400 meter Track and not all the participants run in all of them. Some do, and they are the most versital. Not to mention the longer distances like marathon runners. You don't see marathon runners running the 100 meter. So maybe you'd not see helocopter bowlers, participating on our PBA patterns either. Just an idea if the difference is too great between styles.

Erin

First of all Bowler dude since you mentioned Hockey I will continue your analysis.... so the ice condition has NOTHING to do with hockey eh? well what if you are a skater who skates very well on freshly prepped ice? well when the ice breaks down the player that skates well on poor ice is going to have the advantage....Bowling is the same... first of all I have NEVER seen a pattern that favors left handers or right handers... both sides are prepped equally.... or to the best that the lane machines can... and as long as the lane machine is kept in good working order and the same program is run on all lanes being bowled on then all players have an equal chance for high scoring... the fact that some may bowl better on some patterns than others is what makes this a sport... if we all could bowl strikes all the time then it would be BORING... my point is that in my opinion the biggest reason bowling isnt an olympic event is that there are no "international" rules set aside at least that i know of... ok I have rambled on and on enough....

Hi,
I might be wrong, but isn't Ping Pong in the Olympics? If it is I don't really think I'd call that a sport...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">Originally posted by BubbaD:
first of all I have NEVER seen a pattern that favors left handers or right handers... both sides are prepped equally.... or to the best that the lane machines can... and as long as the lane machine is kept in good working order and the same program is run on all lanes being bowled on then all players have an equal chance for high scoring.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">I take it you haven't been bowling for very long or you have never bowled any tournaments that bowled more than three games!

Bowlerdude, BubbaD is correct. There are no patterns that favor left-handed bowlers. However, considering that lefthanded bowlers are in the minority. When you have twice as many people on the right than you have on the left, the lines get eaten-up a bit faster. You are now kind of tossing out a statement that says left-handed bowlers are at an advantage. Well take a look at the top pba bowlers and see how many are left-handed. I am not arguing that leftys don't have to adjust as much but they still have to be accurate and consistant. In fact you might even be able to say that they have to be more acurate. Once the oil starts to move on the right hand side, some tracks start to develop that could actually be a little forgiving.

Oh and inciudently, what would your average and high game happen to be? I noticed that you did not list them. If you will notice, BubbaD has his 300 and an average of 212. I think he has been bowling long enough to make the statements he has.

I believe that arguing with "Bowlerdude" is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. After awhile you realize that the pig enjoys it. :-)

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">Originally posted by petrinjak:
Bowlerdude, BubbaD is correct. There are no patterns that favor left-handed bowlers. However, considering that lefthanded bowlers are in the minority. When you have twice as many people on the right than you have on the left, the lines get eaten-up a bit faster. You are now kind of tossing out a statement that says left-handed bowlers are at an advantage. Well take a look at the top pba bowlers and see how many are left-handed. I am not arguing that leftys don't have to adjust as much but they still have to be accurate and consistant. In fact you might even be able to say that they have to be more acurate. Once the oil starts to move on the right hand side, some tracks start to develop that could actually be a little forgiving.

No, I'm not saying lefthanders have it easier, as a matter of fact it can work the other way and the left side gets locked out! This happens often on tour, if you pay attention you will see that long stretches occur when you don't see any lefties, then for three weeks in a row the lefthanders start cashing! Now why do you suppose this happens? It happens because they can't make the condition fair on both sides and the only way to keep it fair in terms of percentage of monies won is to manipulate the lane condition! Now if you are a lefthander and you take the wrong couple of weeks off you just missed your chance at making the cash! So as you see even on tour it's the lane condition that determines who cashes and when! If you don't think this is true then I suggest you talk to anyone in your area that has bowled on tour and I guarantee that they will back me up! The laneman will make you or break you and that is why bowling will never be in the Olympics!

Oh and inciudently, what would your average and high game happen to be? I noticed that you did not list them. If you will notice, BubbaD has his 300 and an average of 212. I think he has been bowling long enough to make the statements he has.

So I take it you are impressed with bowling averages that are bowled by house hacks that bowl on nothing but the great wall. LOL Nobody, and I mean no one is impressed with bowling 300 anymore! It's just one of over 40,000 that are bowled every year! Bowling 300 is a common occurrence and most of the time no one in the center is even aware that someone is in the process!</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">Originally posted by Santos314:
Hi,
I might be wrong, but isn't Ping Pong in the Olympics? If it is I don't really think I'd call that a sport... </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="VERDANA,ARIAL,HELVETICA,TAHOMA">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! I doubt that table tennis is as easy as that! Geez..even ten and eleven year olds are bowling 300 on a semi regular basis! Just recently an 80 year old man that was recovering from a stroke bowled a sanctioned 300! For a long time I used to ask friends [joking] how long it would be before a blind person bowled 300! Well about two or three years ago a legally blind man bowled a sanctioned 300! It's not a joke anymore when even blind people can do what only the really great players once took pride in! I wonder if any stroke victims or blind people are excelling at table tennis?

<<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?

Demolition Man...

International Balls have nothing to do with it...because if we go over there and bowl we can drill up something to match up and if they come here they can do the same. Thier equipment isnt better by any means they just have stuff that either wasnt released here or just heavy rolling stuff we wouldn't even want.

Regardless, it is a matter of athletism. The bowling ball technology is making it so that you don't have to be the greatest anymore. It doesn't truely gauge the ability of the athelete, granted it takes a great deal of skill to use that tech but still its matter of the bowling balls doing a majority of the work instead of the bowler.


Brandon, whoopy frickin doo. Who cares about the World Championship (aside from the people in it or people who have seats for it)? The Olympics are a much grander scale and should turn out a better performances and atheletes, key word being should. Look at the Redeem Team [censored] that is all over Sportscenter. They lost the World Championship in 06, when they were favored to win it. And now they are stomping on teams left and right in the Olympics. I'm only bringing that up to point out Olympics brings out something in people to perform better, and that you have to account for varibility.

http://www.bowlingcommunity.com/b/ubbthreads.php/topics/64137/Re_Team_USA.html#Post64137

This thread explains it better than I do. In particular Coach Jim's post on it. Unfortunately it gets side tracked by hand ball, ehich by the way the handball I was thinking of and played is completely different than the handball that I watched in the Olympics. Whoopsy.