Giving These Sports a Shot

The Olympics are just a few days away, and we hope everyone is ready for wall-to-wall coverage of . . . all that smog! (One look at Beijing and you'll never again snicker at New Jersey calling itself the "Garden State.") Of course, there also will be as much coverage of sports like basketball, sprinting and swimming as folks can handle. But one of the fun things about watching the Games is the chance to check out more obscure sports, ones that otherwise rarely, if ever, see the light of day on American TV. Such as . . .

Water Polo

Olympic TV viewers will be herded like sheep into watching the likes of Michael Phelps and Dara Torres swimming one lap after another. We say, baaaah humbug. (Seriously, we say that.) Call us when Phelps has to win his gold medals while withstanding enough violence to make Arturo Gatti blush. (Although, in fairness to Phelps, to see him is to have no doubt that the man has a chin.) Meanwhile, we'll be checking out water polo, where attaining a world-class level of fitness is just the start. You have to be incredibly tough, too, because shots to the head, ribs and, yes, groin just keep coming. Plenty of sports have fouls, but how many have "brutality fouls"? In one recent newspaper article, a physician for the U.S. team was likened to a corner man in boxing. And that was a physician for the women's team. The basics of water polo are fairly simple: A team of six, plus a goalkeeper, tries to get a ball into the other team's net, which is about half the size of a soccer goal. Offensive play resembles that of basketball, with teams setting up around the perimeter, passing the ball around and trying to feed a player in the middle, closer to the net. Defensive play also resembles that of basketball -- specifically, the kind of basketball played by the mid-'90s Knicks and Heat. But the thing is, it's all done in the water, which means that not only do players have to overcome extra resistance just to move around, they can't exactly take a breather when the ball gets swung to the other side of the pool. They're treading water that whole time, entirely with their legs so as to keep their hands ready for a pass and to fend off a defender's Charles Oakley treatment. So you can have the physical marvel that is Michael Phelps -- we prefer our swimmers to be equal parts Jack LaLanne and Jack Dempsey.

Shooting

Unlike water polo, there's no confusion about what goes on in this sport: shooting, and lots of it; nine events for men, six for women. Which is just fine for our crack staff, whose advocacy ranged from "It's one sport where women are flat-out better than men" (this from a man) to "It's a sport, but it's also useful in daily life" (this from a woman who we think was joking, but who could in fact be living in a high-clay pigeon neighborhood).

Handball

Team handball is all but unknown in this country, but it's HUGE on the other side of the Atlantic, a fact underscored by NBC's Olympics Web site, which foresees the men's medals being won by Croatia, France and Denmark and the women's by Norway, Russia and Romania. But handball isn't just for Europhiles, it's for anyone who wants to see a fast-paced game full of leaping, acrobatic moves. By people from Europe.

Trampoline

Wow, this is one of the Games? A few weeks ago, we ran a poll on favorite backyard sports, and trampoline didn't even get one vote. Perhaps people didn't realize at the time that it was an Olympic backyard sport. What's great about this event is that competitors have no time limit, leading an Olympian wannabe among our crack staff to assert, "I would do it for 37 hours straight."

Racewalking

These athletes really take to heart Casey Kasem's advice to "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars." The fact that they have to keep one foot (or at least a toe) on the track at all times while otherwise moving as fast as possible makes this a sport straight out of the Ministry of Silly Walks. But darn it if these ground-bound go-getters don't reach for those stars!