Pole Dancing: The Next Olympic Sport?

One of the major concerns of the IOC over the past few years has been how to garner interest in the Olympics among today's youth. There's been a trend to try and make Olympic sports a bit edgier. For instance, BMX racing and Snowboarding are now featured and there's been some discussion around skateboarding. But how far will they take it? Well, lovely ladies from Albania to Spain gathered in Amsterdam last week to compete for the title of European pole dance champion and they think they belong in the Olympics. These athletes take their keen ability to gyrate on a pole seriously and don't consider it to be erotic at all. They consider it to be a gymnastic art.

"Everything which we do requires so much strength. You train your legs and your muscles. It has nothing to do with eroticism. You have no time to think of that!" said Jeannine Wikering, the 26-year-old competitor for Germany who came third.

"I think one day it should be an Olympic sport — but that will take time. You would have to agree which moves on which to judge competitors, at the moment we all have such different routines," she added.

Which moves to judge the competitors on will clearly be a tough problem to solve. For instance, if you were to consider the discipline of "motorboating" to be an officially scored move, the Germans would have a clear cut competitive advantage. It's sport, not sex say European champion pole dancers [Reuters] image via Flickr