The Olympics are in full swing and there are the usual comments about sports that should or should not be in the Olympics. In this thread, pick one event to eliminate and one you’d like to see added.
DROP: Modern Pentathlon. This combination of 5 military disciplines has been suffering from declining participation for years.
ADD: I’d say Rugby or Cricket.
Drop: Synchronized swimming mostly just because those creepy grins they have while doing it.
Add: Madden (I figure it’s about the best chance for me to win a medal, I’ve been in training for years)
Drop: Synchronized swimming/diving.
Add: Rugby.
Drop: Tennis. IMO the Olympic competition should represent the pinnacle for each sport. This is clearly not the case for tennis where the Grand Slam tournaments are far more prestigious and taken much more seriously by competitors and fans alike.
Add: British Bulldog
Drop: Rhythmic Gymnastics
Add: Squash
Drop: Basketball, although the argument to drop tennis is much stronger.
Add: Raquetball.
Add: I’m gonna go with Antigen and say squash.
Drop: Tennis
[hijack]
I’m not sure that anything really needs to be added, but i believe that more than one need to be dropped.
I’d certainly get rid of tennis. As ticker said, the huge prestige and popularity of the regular pro tour makes it rather pointless to have it in the Olympics.
Soccer. There’s already a World Cup every four years that serves the purpose perfectly well.
I’m also tempted to say baseball and basketball, but there are plenty of countries where these games aren’t as big as they are in the US, and the Olympics represents that onlychance for those players to play on a world stage.
My final one is probably gonna get me flamed, but anyway. I’ve always been of the opinion that there should be no sports where the results are determined by subjective judgements rather than actual measurements of highest, fastest, strongest, etc. This would eliminate all gymnastics, high diving, and synchronized swimming. While i certainly appreciate the skill and athleticism that go into these sports, and i actually like watching them (well, except synch swimming), the subjectivity of the judging makes them inherently suspect, IMO. I feel the same about figure skating in the winter Olympics.
And to those who are saying add rugby and/or cricket:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Don’t cheapen the excellent world competitions that these sports already have just for the sake of being in the Olympics.
Drop: any event that requires judges to determine the winner. Yes, synchronised swimming, I’m talking about you. (Judo and the like are a bit different, as the judges do not decide the outcome)
Add: a book about the history of the games claims that architecture was part of the 1912 games. Now that’s an event I’d like to see! “Oh my, that was a bold plan from mr Frank L Wright! However, Alvar Aalto is edging closer with something seriously futuristic…”
Drop: Synchronised everything.
Add: Darts and snooker. Britain has to win something.
Drop: Synchronized Swimming
Add: Lacrosse. Gotta be Lax, there’s no funner sport to watch or play on earth.(Although NFL football is just as good)
Drop: yet again, synchronized swimming.
Add: inline hockey.
And spaghetti bridge building.
Drop: Synchronized swimming/diving.
Add: Rugby (I was going to say lacrosse, but it would seem that there wouldn’t really be much international interest or talent)
I don’t see how the Olympics would cheapen international rugby. It’s a popular international sport and, hell, adding it to the Olympic roster might even generate American interest (or at least Rugby on American TV!).
Drop: Synchronized swimming. Has been a joke for years.
Add: I don’t like rugby, but it fits all the basic requirements of an Olympic sport; it’s a sport played around the world on at least four or five continents with an international federation setting out the rules.
Squash would also be a very reasonable addition. So would billiards, actually.
I must have missed something, but why would you want to take out basketball or baseball? What fundamental requirements do they lack? The Olympics being the “pinnacle” of a sport’s championship has never been the standard for inclusion, and shouldn’t be. I can tell you right now I’m pretty happy they didn’t apply that rule to hockey.
Drop synchronized diving.
Add: well, last night in chat, I amused myself for quite a while coming up with possible new Olympic sports. I think my favorite was underwater archery.
Wait, I want to change my answer.
Add Dodgeball! I’d watch endless hours of Olympic Dodgeball coverage if they had it.
What to drop? Where to begin?
Well, as has already been mentioned, with anything synchronized, for starters. Then we can move on to beach volleyball. And I couldn’t believe it when they added rhythmic gymnastics–hell, why not have olympic ballroom dancing, too? Olympic deportment competitions? Why, the possibilities are endless!
Although I agree that the subjectively judged events are just asking for trouble, they’re also (gymnastics, figure skating) the most popular ones, and you’d lose lots of viewers and chances to sell expensive ads, so we can pretty much guarantee they’re not going anywhere.
I think adding darts would be cool, myself. And the Brits wouldn’t neccesarily be automatic winners–there are lots of darts players here in the US.
Olympic darts tournaments should have a BAC minimum for the participants.
I would also like to note that I, too, would watch Olympic dodgeball for hours on end.
Drop: Either synchronized swimming or beach volleyball
Add: Poker!
Rugby was an Olympic sport. Actually, the U.S. was the last Olympic rugby champion (we sent the Stanford football team!)
I would drop tennis, because Olympic tennis is a pointless endeavor.
Dodgeball would be a fun thing to see, but there’s no rules-making body setting out rules and such.
I would add 8-ball and 9-ball billiards. There’s a sport that will draw some top competitors, it televises well (as ESPN has proven) and it’s an individual sport, so NBC can focus on personal stories as they love to do.
FYI, here’s a list of sports that are no longer at the Olympics (from the IOC website). I particularly like the idea of tug of war as an Olympic event.
PAST SPORTS LIST
Cricket
Power boating
Croquet
Rackets
Golf
Rink-hockey
Jeu de paume
Roque
Lacrosse
Rugby
Pelote basque
Tug of war
Polo
Water skiing