Bruno Grandi Talk's Of Reducing Olympic Team Sizes... Among Other Things

In an interview translated by the All Around, Bruno Grandi mention he wants to reduce Olympic team sizes from five to four athletes.

Grandi gave an interview with LEON magazine and cited this and the age of athletes, World Cup attendance and sponsorship.

Grandi said he is proposing reducing the number of athletes per team this is related to the increasing number of specialists in the sport. Per the All-Around

"One argument in favour is that no country nowadays has more than five or six complete all-around gymnasts. Maybe we should accept this reality and only allow 48 instead of 60 athletes for the team competition."

Oh, Bruno... He keeps going on. He says at one point in the interview that the "great drama" is the age of the athletes, specifically, the women. Grandi basically says if a female athlete is considered old at 18, then the sport is f***ed, basically.  He said "A sport that ages early has no future." Apparently, he was too drunk to read the post Olympic report, the one that specifically said the age of Olympic gymnasts across all disciplines has increased. More gymnasts are over the age of 21 now a days. Again, Bruno was too toasted to actually be bothered to read anything.

Grandi also goes on to say that financial sponsorship is also of concern. He is quoted as saying that only 16 of the 132 members of the federation have money invested in sponsorships, naming USA, Great Britain, Japan and Germany as the largest sponsors. Of course, this can be explained by those countries overall wealth. Of course, another problem related to sponsorship can be tied to the popularity of gymnastics in a specific country.

A big area of concern for Grandi is the attendance of the World Cup events. Which he feels is "not satisfactory."

"It is going really badly," he said. "It will be crucial to give more importance to the continental championships and the World Cup. They should both ultimately lead to Olympic participation."

Kind of an ironic statement from someone who wants to cut the number of athletes on the teams. If attendance is a concern,  then lowering the number of Olympic athletes will do nothing for the sport. In fact, it seems to discourage athletes from actually competing.  Grandi's goal is to get athletes qualified for the Olympics through World Cup events. But unfortunately, to increase the popularity of a sport, athletes have to qualify for the Olympics and countries need to be represented. Limiting the number of athletes to a team can in theory make room for smaller countries with developing programs qualify individuals to the Olympics. However, this could have the opposite effect.

You can read the full interview here.

In other news, Bruno Grandi changes his name to Bruno "Dream Killer" Grandi.