Why The 2018 Winter Olympics Should Try Going Bowling

Being an athlete is a challenge.

It’s about far more than just blood, sweat, and tears. It’s become even more than every painful hour of practice in the middle. Basketball players run the courts and practice shooting techniques for hours while baseball players train their bodies to make stealing bases that much easier. Olympic athletes train for years to become the best of the best for the chance to represent their country in the highest form of competition. That doesn’t even begin to address the internal struggle to perform across all games.

Some athletes are in sports that many people refuse recognize as one. Bowlers. Bowlers have that problem.

Except, bowling is recognized. Out of the 41 summer events and 16 winter ones, bowling is one of few sports that fits the guidelines for Olympic approval but has yet to have a place in the Olympic games.

It’s wrong. Bowling deserves its place in the Olympics, no matter how many people continue to say it barely counts as a sport. Not that bowlers haven’t tried to draw attention to the lack of Olympian bowling either.

From the wins to the tears and every way I continue to push myself to just become better to this day, I am almost my own Olympian except my gold medal still has yet to be awarded. With the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea growing closer, I am left with the reminder that my sport I put myself through hell for is still unrepresented at the largest competition in the world.

Bowlers will never get gold medals, or any medal, actually. Not because bowling has no tournaments with fancy faux gold awards but because bowling has no Olympic event. I’m talking literal Olympic medals. Despite bowling being an internationally recognized professional sport that utilizes centers across the world for tournaments, leagues and opportunities available for all ages including high school and collegiate, there still has been no bowling event in the Olympics.

According to this article from Britannica, “the first step in the process of becoming an Olympic sport is recognition as a sport from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC requires that the activity have administration by an international nongovernmental organization that oversees at least one sport.”

The article always claims that bowling recognized under the IOC guidelines, yet it’s still not included in the Olympic games under special federation guidelines.

I have been a bowler for 18 years of my life, and I still have to defend bowling as my sport. I have to defend it almost as much as I have to practice my physical style or research the new equipment. Just to paint the picture further, I currently bowl in four separate leagues as well as practice for an hour after each league has wrapped up for the night. I leave my competitions in tears the same ways as other athletes do. I drown in the waves of internal doubt that comes with every underperformance or every bad practice as others do. 

It’s more than rolling the ball as hard as you can or making it curve across the face of the lane now. It’s learning the form and how the physical affects the bowling ball. It’s the type of bowling ball you chose to use, the type of oil along with the pattern in which it is laid out along the lane, and the condition of the air inside of the center you are bowling in all playing crucial parts in how you will bowl. On top of trying to combat each element listed above, you battle your mind’s what ifs to make the best possible shot every single frame of a game.

If bowling was added in the 2022 Winter Olympics, it would be the first sport that would medal in severe just mental Olympic games because of how hard it is to overcome your mind.

Bowling has transformed from one of the greatest sports in American history to that other thing you do at a bar with friends, almost like it’s a cool party trick to show off in front of your friends instead of an actual achievement to be an above average bowler.

It might not share nearly the same ratings as it once had when pro bowlers were as big as baseball players, but it is still engrained in both our history and our culture. The viral video from 2012 of Pete Weber winning his sixth US Open title, where he screams into the crowd, proves that there is something in bowling to watch.

If bowling can provide majority ride scholarships to several NAIA and NCAA schools, a professional tour with enough prize money for the best of the best to feed their families and its own international country face off, it can find a home at any future Olympic event. If archery can be considered a summer Olympic sport, bowling and all of its cheesy glory can be a winter one.

Personally, I think the first Greeks would have killed for bowling.