dancingalone
Grandmaster
Your point makes no sense. Most Olympic sports are only seen during the Olympics. Notice I said most, there are some that are mainstream sports like Soccer, baseball, Boxing and a few others but if you look at a list of sports that make up the Olympics, most are never watched at all on TV and have very few that follow it at all out side of the people that do the sport.
I know I went off topic at the end so get back on topic; just about every Olympic sport needs people to have participated in it to appreciate it and be a fan of it.
Oh yeah and even the so called mainstream sports are the same. Everyone has played soccer, just like most Americans have played football or baseball. That is why they are cultural sports.
Yes, that's why I mentioned curling and the rhythmic gymnastics. Neither are relevant as sports financially or as a spectator sport. Sport TKD is likewise irrelevant, Olympic flavor or not.
Swimming, tennis, boxing... All three are examples of Olmpic sports that fans follow without necessarily being a participant themselves. Surely, you don't plan to argue that these are 'cultural' sports as well? It's not like I had to rack my brain to come up with those examples either.
The problem is not Sport TKD but rather the jealous practitioners of the other arts that want to be in the Olympics. Just listen to the arguments made by others. "It makes my art look bad" How? Most people don't know what sport TKD is.
TKD does not get a bad name from the sport. The people at the top that you see in the Olympics could most likely kick the snot out of most people if they had to. TKD gets a bad name from other MA practitioners that don't even compete in the sport, but have so much to say.
I agree somewhat. McDojangs do more to dishonor the image of TKD than Olympic sparring does. However, sport TKD does little to rehabilitate any poor opinion a lay person may have of TKD itself. Unfortunately, IMO sport TKD reinforces any negative prejudice lay people may have have.
We have had many cross over Martial Artist come to our dojang and each one (not some, not many, but all) have sucked at doing the sport. Even ITF practitioners that have joined our school took quite some time to understand the differences and get decent.
I fully realize sport TKD is an athletic endeavor, requiring plenty of committment and hard work to excel in. However, it is beyond the pale resembling any practical martial application, and that makes it hard for many in martial arts, TKD or not, to take seriously.
I made this challenge once before but I challenge anyone not doing the sport of TKD to do so. There are many open TKD tournaments where anyone can participate under the WTF rules.
What of it? You get good at what you practice and train for. A successful sport TKDist would have an equally difficult time in one of my training sessions where we train with makiwara and practice classical locks and pins.
No one disputes that sport TKD is demanding. It's whether it is relevant that I question.