I don’t think you quite appreciate the benefits of becoming dictator of the world.
Darts
Shit-can that creepy Stepford Wive’s swimming
Some (many?) of the original Olympic sports have essentially martial origins, like the javelin throw or wrestling. So how about devising a modern version of that? I’m thinking of something that requires a team of perhaps six to perform a commando raid, requiring some swimming, hiking and scaling a wall, perhaps while carrying a pack of equipment. At the end, they have to shoot dummies representing the bad guys while not shooting dummies representing hostages/innocents.
Though some Olympic disciplines like pentathlon and biathlon have militaristic origins, I don’t think that shooting dummies would represent the Olympic ideals well. (if you were serious anyway)
It totally represents the original Olympic ideal of determining which nation has the most badass soldiers.
Of course to be authentic, we’d have to dispense with the dummies.
Shirling.
86 posts and no tiddlywinks? That’s a joke, of course, as specifically permitted by the OP. But it is a game of skill - MIT used to have, and still has for all I know, a tiddlywinks team.
The other joke sport I’d like to see is jacks. I was on my high school jacks team; we only ever had one competition against another school because, astonishingly enough, other schools didn’t have teams. IIRC, we won the match.
Unlike tiddlywinks, jacks is probably too easy to be worthwhile. But, it does involve skill and you can get better at it through practice. I used to love playing it. It would be incredibly boring to watch, however. Come to think of it, the rules would have to be modified because an “Olympic-level” jacks player would be able to complete all the steps in one turn, with the other player never even getting a chance.
You all know somewhere (probably in THE VILLAGES, Fl) they are circulating petitions to the IOC to add pickleball, right?
Cornhole, shuffleboard, darts, shuffleboard bowling (or whatever that bar game is called), and last but certainly not least–it was on ESPN two nights ago–Foosball.
I kind of wonder if there’s already a private competition in the Olympic Village to see who can visit the most countries (i.e. have sex with athletes from around the world). Perhaps you get a medal if you hit every one of the continents (in which case I imagine the Australian athletes are especially popular)?
I’d like to see more combat arts, including BJJ, Muay Thai, and MMA. I’d also propose iaido for form.
I’ve been playing a ton of pickleball for the last 18 months or so - the game is a flipping riot. I wouldn’t be mad to see it in the Olympics.
Unless you were to award medals by team, I doubt if the Olympics wants to add any more weight-class events - diluting the medal counts.
I’ve long dreamed of Olympic Hacky Sack.
Basketball is probably the world’s second most popular team sport, after soccer. Just from an attention, ratings and business standpoint, removing it from the Olympics would be an awful idea.
I know it is not that popular here in USA, but Table Tennis is one of the most popular sports world wide.
And table tennis has been in the Olympics since 1988.
I seem to recall that Ultimate Frisbee’s (that’s the name I am sticking with) main hurdle was, the top players refused to play if each game required officials rather than letting the players call their own fouls, but there’s no way the game wouldn’t become politicized without neutral officials.
You could call it the post-modern pentathlon.
Ultramarathoning. Wouldn’t be hard to add, say, one 100M and one 100K to the Olympic schedule; depending on the course, it would only require two 15 - 40 hour races, as ultras are not segregated by sex, .
Not only would adding ultrarunning to the Games improve gender parity, it would improve competitive parity, as well - it’s got one of the smallest gaps between women and men in any track event. Courtney Dauwalter, the top woman in last weekend’s Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, finished seventh overall, less than two hours behind men’s winner François D’haene. In June’s Western States Endurance Run, winner Beth Pascall was also seventh overall, and two other women finished in the top 10. Overall, there were 10 women in the top 21 finishers at WSER this year.
The coverage would be a bit of a challenge, with cameras only at the start, finish, and aid stations; but the scenery would be amazing.
Bowling should be a slam dunk. It’s played all around the world and there’s already competitions between countries. As for the maximum score potential, so what? The Olympic tournament would he head-to-head in a best of 7 format similar to table tennis or volleyball. Easy to follow and understand.