Beware Olympic hype — take a polo pony to lunch

Sure, we managed to wipe their entire country out of existence 29 years later, but a lot of us are still smarting from the 1972 Olympic basketball final between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., and we could use a little more validation than our current hoopsters are likely to deliver.
So every four years, I remember the unsung heroes of past Olympics and overhaul my metaphorical accordion specially to sing them anew.
We could use a man like Thomas Hitchcock Jr. again. The handsome Harvard student flew for France in World War I, but came home to lead the U.S. polo team to silver in the 1924 Olympics.
Hitchcock and his crew had the real stuff, and given a few more decades, the U.S. would have cantered into international dominance. Every kid in America would have kept a pony in their room and practiced dropping their Rs during the off-season.
But after 1936, in a blatant bid to dim the glory of the U.S. athletic juggernaut, the International Olympic Committee dropped polo from the roster forever.
I blame fascists like former IOC head Juan Antonio Samaranch. And that’s not a slur about his management style — the man was a card-carrying member of Generalisimo Francisco Franco’s party.
Thus began the era of psuedo sports. Race walking? Rhythmic gymnastics? Synchronized swimming, for all love? If this stuff is sports, then I deserve at least a bronze for dodging traffic when I walk across the parking lot at Wal-Mart. Why not log rolling or darts? Heck, I’ve seen some balloon animal artists who work up a good sweat.
If this weren’t a humor column, I would mention cup stacking, but unfortunately that’s actually considered a sport in many U.S. school districts.
I had a linguistics professor who played cut-throat racketball — even in a singles game. He liked to say it doesn’t count as a sport unless you can hurt the other guy.
You only have to look at the butcher’s bill from the 1920 Olympic tug-of-war competition to see what real athletes risk. OK, no deaths or broken bones, but rope burns are no laughing matter. Maybe that’s why the IOC pulled the rug from under the tug, too.
In 1904, the United States swept all three medals in the Olympic tug-of-war. We lost a little ground after that, but I think we’re ready to resurge, and we lead the world in skin lotion production.
The world tug-of-war championships begin in less than four weeks, and flights to Stockholm are filling up fast.
Scriptor speculi Drew Herman sum. Ludes virumque cano.