Pandemic-Hobby
I am the most unsportsmanlike person in the world – and suddenly I love to watch obscure sports on television
If you’ve already seen all of the series – how about sports on TV?
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I found out by accident how fascinating it is to watch sports competitions. Also because you can sit comfortably on the couch – but above all because it is only then that you realize how little you know about many sports.
It’s crazy. The corona pandemic has been part of our lives for a good two years, and some of it is blooming strange. As with me. While others are baking banana bread, learning foreign languages, knitting, painting or meditating, I discovered sports watching for myself. This is absurd for two reasons: Firstly, I am the biggest sports grouch in the world – apart from walking, swimming and half-hearted attempts at yoga, I cannot do anything. And secondly, I didn’t choose something like football that you might even be able to chat about with normal people – no, I’ve been loving a lot of niche sports lately. And would recommend it to anyone else as well.
It started when I was sitting at the laptop in my home office one day and had the same problem that I always had at school: I can’t work with Stille. I always preferred to do my homework in the kitchen at the dining table, with my family bustling around in the background, than alone in my room. In the office I inevitably had this calming hustle and bustle – but not in the living room at home. It was too quiet so I couldn’t concentrate. So I went looking for the perfect background noise: television? As soon as there were series or interesting documentaries, they distracted me. If something was really boring, like the typical morning TV on ÖRR or the trashier side of private TV, it made me angry with its sheer boredom – and thus distracted me again. What now?
A coincidence and a new hobby
YouTube. And then, completely by chance, a recorded live stream of the Olympic Games in Tokyo was suggested to me on the homepage: Rhythmic gymnastics. Almost four hours. That, I thought, that could be something. Interesting, but not too exciting. Long. Exactly the right thing to do for a morning to work. I had no idea of rhythmic gymnastics, I just remembered graceful sportswomen waving a pretty ribbon through the air. A little later I was wiser: Hallelujah, people can do that ?! Juggling clubs while doing a few somersaults, briefly knotting your legs behind your head and then catching the clubs again without even looking? How does it work?
Rhythmic gymnastics is fascinating to watch. Also thanks to the music that goes with the performances and the sparkling outfits. But above all because of the unbelievable things that the athletes deliver and where you can guess how much rock-hard training is behind it. I quickly knew that the Russian twins Dina and Arina Averina (who also have a sister named Polina, LOL) could hardly be beaten, and that in Germany we also have a really promising athlete in Margarita Kolosov.
I also learned that I only enjoy watching sports when English-speaking commentators accompany the action. They are knowledgeable, informative, fair and can point out the athletes’ mistakes without putting them down. Unfortunately, many German commentators cannot do that. Flat, sexist slogans are repeatedly used here, female athletes are criticized for their figure or shape on the day, German athletes with a migration background are constantly referred to, and instead of being analyzed, people prefer to speculate because they lack real specialist knowledge. That doesn’t seem to bother anyone because the German audience is simply too small for these sports. And the athletes: inside are no different.
There are so many exciting sports
After a few days I had unfortunately seen everything that YouTube had to offer in terms of current gymnastics livestreams. But no reason to despair – after all, there is also figure skating, gymnastics, bouldering, trampoline jumping, and skiing. Synchronized swimming or diving. 800 meter runs or weightlifting. All things that I have absolutely no idea about, but about which I suddenly (purely theoretically, of course) learn a surprising amount. And of course, one of the attractions is that I sit comfortably on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, and don’t have to spend hours training every day.
My everyday life is not strenuous and also not dangerous – which should be different if you have to balance on a balance beam, plunge down steep slopes on skis or do backflips on trampolines. All of that can go really badly wrong, and that is sure to be more or less difficult on a regular basis. How can it be that all these people who seem to have superpowers – and a superhuman discipline – get so little attention? So little money? So little fame? They sacrifice their youth, their free time, maybe even their health – for a mere niche audience to recognize their achievements.
At least one to which I now belong.
