What’s up with the decathalon? Ski a little, then shoot at stuff, then ski some more. Who the hell thought up that combination? Or curling – hey, let’s combine figure skating with shuffleboard. Great idea. :rolleyes:
I’m sure that we could come up with a few hybrid sports that make far greater sense. What new events would you add? I’ll get you started:
The Snowshoe Jump: Combines snowshoeing with the ski jump. Thing is, you have to run down the hill really fast.
Weight Vaulting: The challenge is carrying the pole while holding 450 lbs over your head.
And to be an actual contributor to the thread, as well as pre-empt the inevitable “water polo should be played with actual horses”, I’m going to say that all equestrian events, in order to demonstrate equal athleticism on both components, will now be played in two rounds - one in which the rider rides the horse, one in which the horse rides the rider.
Rythmic curling.
Shotput + syncronized diving.
Hockey + figure skating (all competitors at the same time).
Figure skating + hockey (Gretsky on Ice).
Marathon weightlifting.
Greco Roman dressage.
Team downhill (like bobsled, only with four people on two really long skis).
Combine freestyle skijumping with freestyle swimming, for freestyle freestyle. Get a bunch of babes in bikinis to jump in the water and frolic for two minutes. People would watch.
Volleyputt.
Speed curling (wait, that’s hockey…).
One thing that’s always bothered me about ski jumping. They keep re-engineering the jumps and the hills because people keep figuring out how to jump farther and farther; they change the geometries so that people don’t fly past the sloping part of the hill and just pancake straight into the flat part. I notice that they don’t make such concessions to pole-vaulting, diving or gymnastics (people get to fling themselves as high into the air as they can, often with painful results upon a fumbled landing). I think they should give ski-jumping the same consideration they do all the other sports, and stop re-engineering the slopes. You’re so good at it you make a hard landing at the bottom? No pain, no gain. No guts, no glory. Make those last couple meters count.
And I’ve said it before, but there’s absolutely no reason for a judge to enter into the equation of who wins gold in ski jumping. You flap your arms and spread your legs all the way out, and still go farther? You win. I can’t think of an easier way to determine the winner. Mike went 150, Joe went 160? How could Mike possibly win?
I’ve always thought that the various forms of Freediving (basically “how deep can you get without scuba gear”) adhere well to the olympic spirit, being regulated and atheletic, but of completely novel compared to other events. Nonetheless, the problems are very obvious: it is potentially very dangerous, with many freedivers shunning the record setters Furthermore, it may not work in certain host countrys, choppy water, and could be difficult to cover.
Diagonally parallel bars (not a hybrid, but would be more interesting to watch: boths bars at a 45 degree angle or the bars could be at opposite angles)
