Weekend Roundtable: New Olympic Sports

Before each Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee meets to decide which sports will (or will not) be included in the upcoming program. New events for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Games, for example, include golf and rugby. Meanwhile, baseball and softball got cut back in 2012. What new sports (real or imaginary) would you like to see join the Olympics, and which existing events are ready to be retired?

M. Enois Duarte

I nominate disc golf as the next Olympic sport. It’s a rigorous, challenging sport that tests one’s endurance for throwing a specially-designed frisbee in an 18-hole course. It takes years of training and some talent to throw a disc across some drives that average 60-70m, with a few that can range upwards of 1200-1300m. High winds and temperatures can play a factor and compel the athlete to make necessary adjustments in her/his throw. The uniform and apparel worn by athletes can also be considered when tallying points. Extra points can go towards the most creative, colorful rainbow tie-dye shirts, and whoever wears leather water buffalo sandals best.

Of course, I’m just kidding, but wouldn’t it be hilarious if the committee accepted the sport for the next summer games?

Shannon Nutt

I’ll be the first to say it: The Hunger Games need to be an Olympic sport. Forget getting rid of a competition to make room for it… get rid of ALL the other competitions. It would just be the Hunger Games, non-stop and live (obviously, someone other than NBC will have to air this) for two weeks straight, 24 hours a day. And before you call me sadistic, OK, we don’t send our best athletes; we send our most despicable criminals. So there’s some ‘Suicide Squad’ in there as well. The winner gets a pardon. (We’ll find a nice remote island to dump them on… don’t worry). Don’t tell me you wouldn’t watch. Everyone would watch!

Brian Hoss

I love sports but the Olympics tends to make me yawn. Fortunately, there’s something fresh, entertaining and enthralling available to punch up the snoozefest. That would be the BattleFrog obstacle course competition. This 2-year-old competition is shown on ESPN2, and pits teams of primarily collegiate athletes against each other. It takes these athletes about 2 to 2.5 minutes to run the course and if it’s on, I can’t look away. As for the event to be replaced, how about the very unwatchable water polo?

Chris Boylan (Big Picture Big Sound)

‘Pokémon Go’. No, really. People will walk around and catch Pokémon in order to do battle in a gym. Whichever country takes over the most gyms wins gold. And people will watch it. In droves. I just came from Central Park where there was a Machamp sighting (a fairly advanced Pokémon). The throngs of people converging on the location where he spawned (including yours truly) – at 9:30 at night – was incredible. This was probably more exercise than most of these people had gotten in months.

Adam Tyner (DVDTalk)

Everyone may be talking about monster trucks today, but as tomorrow dawns, the future of sports is in shirling. I hope to one day see Canada’s up-and-coming pastime honored at the Summer Olympics.

Josh Zyber

Shannon’s suggestion sounds more like ‘The Running Man‘ than ‘The Hunger Games’ to me. Either way, I support it.

If ping pong (excuse me, table tennis) can be an Olympic sport, why can’t foosball? It has all the athleticism of table tennis with more excitement than badminton.

I also advise replacing all the equestrian events with live-action Mario Kart. The official Olympic uniforms for each country should of course be modeled after characters in the game. The Russians can be Bowser.

Give us your suggestions for the next Olympics in the Comments below.

10 comments

  1. Gail smith

    Roller skating , baseball football ! But only if we can watch it on network TV ! We used to get to see a lot more and not taped ,like gymnastic finals ! Too much on cable stations ! A lot of people in this world especially the USA can’t afford cable or dish !! Thank you !

  2. Patient O.T.

    BROCKIAN ULTRA-CRICKET:
    Brockian Ultra-Cricket is a curious game which involves suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away. “Let’s be blunt, it’s a nasty game,” says The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Mice love this game.

    While a complete list of rules has only ever been assembled once (and the book containing the assembled rules promptly collapsed into a black hole,) some of the rules are as follows:

    Rule One: Grow at least three extra legs. You won’t need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.
    Rule Two: Find one extremely good Brockian Ultra Cricket player. Clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.
    Rule Three: Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall around them. The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what’s going on leads them to imagine that it’s a lot more exciting than it really is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.
    Rule Four: Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the wall for the players. Anything will do – cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.
    Rule Five: The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a “hit” on another player, he should immediately run away as fast as he can and apologize from a safe distance. Apologies should be concise, sincere, and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.
    Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.

    *by Douglas Adams

  3. William Henley

    There are a few I can think of.

    Imaginary

    Quidditch. Come on, you know you want to see it to. Oh, and no professional players in the Olympics, so this would be different than the Quidditch World cup. It would probably be made up of students from the different schools

    Real

    Acrobatics – Similar to gymnastics, except you have people crawling on each other

    Underwater gymnastics – Look it up on Youtube

    Dance – You could have team and individual, and you could have specific types (tap, jazz, hip hop, ballet, etc) and all around titles

    Cheer – I am sure this will be coming soon – it is a sport, and countries other than the USA have cheer teams (you can see them if you ever watch talent shows from other countries). It will be interesting on an international stage – while the dance routines should be easy, I wonder how they would handle the cheer portion in an international competition (such as all cheers must be in English / French / Language of Host country, etc)

    FreeRunning

    BMX events (why not? We have cycling events already, this would just be an extension of those)

    Competative Jump rope (it is REALLY cool to watch). What is interesting is that adding this sport might break a few records on youngest person to ever compete in the Olympics. Right now the youngest is at 10 years 218 days.

    Ultimate Frisbee

    Obstacle Course

  4. I love Josh’s ‘Mario Kart’ idea. To make it extra challenging, the go-karts shouldn’t be powered by gas or diesel, but by pedals. It could be a real sport.

    Podracing could be cool, too.

    • William Henley

      Podracing could probably be done using maglev technology, so yeah, that would be cool. “Very fast and very dangerous” 🙂

      I’m not sure if I am down with Olympic sports that doesn’t require more athleticism out of the contenders, though. With that thought, as much as I like equestian, maybe that should get eliminated.

      Maybe what might be a better thought is to have an athletic Olympics and a skills Olympics. In skills, you can have your equestrian, shooting, archery, various motor-vehicle racing, motocross, etc. I am not saying these aren’t improved by some level of athleticism and that other sports don’t require some level of skill (because they do), and I don’t want to discount all the training that goes into the sports I listed, it’s just that I find it hard to put something like driving in the same field as 400m or diving or gymnastics, etc. So a seperate games for body-based sports versus other events sounds like the proper way to give respect to both. Although, not really sure how to split it up. They did alternate winter and summer olympics every 2 years which help. But stuff like ParaOlympics mostly gets overlooked. I am not sure if you seperate athletic from skill based events, how you would keep one from overshadowing the other.

      But yeah, Podracing and Mario Kart would certainly be cool to see, just having trouble accepting either as an Olympic event

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