Pole Dancers Think Pole Dancing A Natural Fit For Olympics
If you’ve watched any of this year’s Vancouver Olympics, you’ve no doubt bumped into at least a little of the curling events. And if you’ve indeed seen curling, you’ve indeed mumbled to yourself that this is why the Summer Games are superior to the Winter Games.
First of all, no one likes a mumbler. Second of all, these curling shenanigans are the fastest growing sport in this year’s Olympics. Even moreso than the freestyle snowboarding that the kids are all tweeting about.
The point is, there’s just no way to tell which Olympic sports are going to catch fire with the masses – something members of the International Pole Dancing Fitness Association are counting on.
Suddenly and without warning, a bevy of pole dancing groups are joining together to form a chorus (a boozy, red-light, tight-thighed chorus) of people who want the International Olympic Committee to recognize pole dance as a sport and they want that so that it may one day soon be included in the Olympic Games.
Hong Kong-based Ania Przeplasko, the founder of the International Pole Dancing Fitness Association, the sport’s fledgling supervisory body, believes Olympic recognition is only a matter of time and would be a victory for unappreciated sports worldwide.
“There will be a day when the Olympics see pole dancing as a sport,” said Przeplasko.
Przeplasko sees such recognition as nearly inevitable, despite the Olympics not supporting nonofficial demonstration sports for the last 18 years. Why this woman is so sure – and more importantly how hot this woman is – are two items yet uncovered. But let’s assume Ms. Przeplasko is correct (and hot) and that pole dancery has too long been overlooked. What form could the sport possibly take? And what are the chances it’ll be included in the Winter Games as an outdoor sport? Oh, please include it as an outdoor winter sport. Think about it.
But first thing’s first: the IOC has to recognize it – something that isn’t as inevitable as the founder of the International Pole Dancing Fitness Association would have you believe it is. Remember, the IOC brushed baseball off the table last year and baseball isn’t nearly as glittery as pole dancing is.
It helps that, along with the IPDFA, there is also an annual International Pole Dancing Fitness Championship in Tokyo, a U.S. Pole Dance Federation (! – how did I miss this?) and Britain’s Vertical Dance organization helping to shape pole dancing as a sport. But still … pole dancing? Isn’t it just too synonymous with tiny, scantily clad females wearing too much makeup to be considered Olympic-appropriate?
Oh … right. Well played.
“I don’t need to see pole dancing in the Olympics,” said Wendy Traskos, co-founder of the U.S. Pole Dance Federation. “I don’t think this is necessarily the path that we need to take, as a sport. I feel there are many small, tiny, steps that need to be taken before this sport, or any sport, can get into the Olympics. We are on, like, tiny step 10 of 1,000.”
Did you catch what just happened there?
Even the poo-pooers are slowly attempting to erode the stigma attached to pole dancing. Traskos’ comments skipped right over whether or not pole dancing is even technically a sport. She, along with many others, have already decided that it is and went right into whether it belongs in the Olympics.
That’s slick. I’m pretty sure the people involved in the gymnastics floor exercise pulled the same thing in ’48. No one questioned its credentials as a sport and now look. You can’t stop the floor exercise. It’s damn near bigger than the NFL!
“Now, when you talk about it you don’t hear ‘like a stripper’ anymore,” Traskos said. “You hear things like, ‘Oh, my friend takes classes for fitness’ or ‘Yes, I’ve seen it on Oprah.”’
Yeah. Just like when you talk about curling, you don’t hear “like fat dudes with brooms” anymore either.
Check out the AP story.
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Photos courtesy of Flickr
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