What’s wrong with this being an Olympic event? It’s incredibly athletic.

Did you bother watching? This is essentially floor gymnastics to a beat. Does line dancing require this much physical skill and coordination? And to be clear, Ice Dancing came before this.

Flag football

What’s next? Horse dancing?

Can you do it?

Because it takes a shit ton of skill and has been competitive since it started in the late 60s. Yes, it goes that far back.

It’s just as much a sport as figure skating or synchronised swimming.

Because it’s incredibly athletic, which is what the Olympics is all about

I really hate this take, the Olympics isn’t just about physical sports, it’s also about human skill, and determination. Both of which can be found in many different areas of expertise, including dancing. Not that the average person could even do this without a certain baseline level of fitness.

I find it very interesting too that its a sport. Not because its dance but theres so many types of dancing… Salsa, ballroom, river dancing, swing, etc. Why is there only a certain type of dance for the Olympics?

idk dude, how does anything get to be an olympic sport? it gets popular enough and the olympic committee thinks it’ll draw a crowd and decides to include it. it’s not like there aren’t several other dance sports in the games already.

Hating on women is so hot right now

You can bet your ass detractors will use that aussie woman to say that it has no place in the olympics.

I think dance is a valid sport. Synchronized swimming is water line dancing and figure skating can be classified as dancing on ice. All in all if you think it does not require the kind of dedication that other sports take, you are plain wrong.

I wish they would break apart events like this vs “serious” competitive sports away from each other and the Olympics. Some events/sports have verifiable results, like somebody ran this fast in this amount of time, somebody lifted this amount of kg of weights, actual results that are in some sense pushing the limits of what humans are capable of.

Then you have the artistic, interpretive events, though they still require alot of talent and skill, you can’t quantify them, you can’t measure them in any meaningful way. They’re judged subjectively using whatever standards were developed probably decades ago. I’m sure they’re great to watch for fans of those events, but they don’t feel like they’re pushing any limits of human expression or anything, the Olympics is way too sanitized for anything like that.

I don’t know what the solution though is, hold two sets of Olympics, the Sports Olympics and the Artsy Olympics (four total with seasonal olympics)? I think it’s too much of a world tradition at this point, but it bothers me that they’re all considered at the “same level”.

The only reason I wouldn’t be in favor of an Olympic chili cookoff is that the audience wouldn’t be able to taste the chili.

It is a sport by definition. “An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.”

Well it won’t be coming back to the Olympics so I guess you can take comfort in that.

Ice dancing has been an event in the winter Olympics since 1976. Not just figure skating, it’s literally called ice dancing.

Weightlifting

It’s exercise. It’s in the name. It’s not a sport, it’s exercise. I’m expecting the next Olympics to have running, maybe swimming and a jumping event, since exercise is a sport now.

Figure skating is a dance. Hell, gymnastics is basically a dance as well.