The Summer Olympics has the decathlon, pentathlon, and heptathlon. What sport would work well for a combined winter event?
We have the biathlon (XC skiing + shooting) and the nordic combined (ski jumping + XC skiing).
I’m sure we can all think of silly ones (curling, ice dancing, and skeleton) - I’m looking for serious ideas.
My first thoughts:
Speed skating (long track- 1000m)
XC skiing (10 km)
Alpine event (giant slolem maybe)
I dunno, snowboard cross?
Brian
I really think just making the Nordic Combined go with one or two Alpine events would make the most sense, as all the multi-sport events in the Summer are all track and field events. I.e, it’s not swimming, running and equestrian or anything. People join the ‘track’ team in school and these events are all part of that. Similarly, the nordic and alpine events, while different, are still skiing.
Would be cool to see Jumping/cross country/downhill and slalom. For a larger conglomeration, add a freestyle event like moguls.
The winner could truly claim to be the best skier in the world.
There is already an alpine combined (downhill + slalom)
Alpine and cross country skiing might be interesting.
You guys aren’t thinking wacky enough. Maybe something off the wall, like say cross country skiing and target shooting. Make them do the target shooting in the middle of the race, so that their heart rates will be through the roof and it will be impossible to have steady hands. That’d be a hoot to watch.
Heck, just keep the existing downhill event, byt make the skiiers ski UP the hill first…
Brian
I assume this is a whoosh, sice Biathlon IS this. Actually changing the shooting to archery might be interesting.
Brian
Isn’t the triathlon swimming, running and biking? OK, biking isn’t equestrian, but I can’t see that it’s all that big a difference in plausibility.
Personally, I think that the sports it makes the most sense to combine are different sorts of races. Pick two or three or four different kinds of race (speed skating, cross country skiing, downhill, whatever), pick a distance for each such that the typical time for each is about the same, and have the winner be whoever turns in the lowest total time. I think it’d be best to also count the time needed to change equipment (taking off skates to put on skis, say), but that’s optional. This same philosophy would also work for combined summer events, except I think there are probably more kinds of summer races (running, swimming, biking, and equestrian, off the top of my head), so it’d work even better there.
And the Modern Pentathlon consists of equestrianism, swimming, running, shooting and… fencing (?! - I guess “modern” is a relative term).
That’s pretty close to what I came up with. Was never sure about the fifth event, and “quadrathlon” sounds kinda weird.
sliding (probably skeleton)
alpine skiing (giant slalom, as a compromise between slalom and downhill)
skating (long track, 500m or 1000m, as a sprint event)
cross-country skiing (10km sounds about right, as an endurance event)
Maybe snowboard cross for the fifth event, as a technical event and have them compete directly instead of against the clock.
The decathlon ends with the distance event, the 1500m, so end the winter pentathlon with the cross-country. You could even stagger the start so the first across the finish wins the whole event.
The top Japanese competitor in the Nordic combined was named Kobayashi, which made me think a great event would be the ski-dog, which combines cross-country skiing with eating a lot of hot dogs.
You do the competitive eating portion first, and whoever eats the most hot dogs gets a head start on the cross-country skiing. Then each hot dog fewer a given competitor ate would be like a 30 second penalty. So you can eat that last hot dog, but maybe you would rather just try to make up the 30 seconds. Subtle strategy.
Throwing up would have to incur some penalty - I don’t know if it would be eating a penalty dog or skiing a penalty lap. There would be a lot of track cleaning after this event.
There’s a game for the Sega Saturn called Winter Heat which had 11 different events. They were:
Speed Skiing
Ski Jumping
Downhill Skiing
Short Track Speed Skating
Skeleton
Slalom Skiing
Aerial Skiing
Bobsled
Long Track Speed Skating
Downhill Snowboarding
Cross-Country Skiing
I’d love to see this “hendecathlon” done in real life - but the Bobsled might be a problem as the rest are all individual sports; would it be possible to have a 1-man bobsled?
There is already such a thing as winter triathlon in which competitors run, mountain bike and x-country ski all on snow.
How about the Freakathon? Gymnastics + Weightlifting. It will either be 15 year old girls trying to lift 300 lbs or 300lb guys trying to do the splits! 
Or a summer version of the biathlon that combines the 200m dash + archery in the middle at the 100m mark? Or they have to shoot while running!
Or they can do a world’s greatest fighter-athon with Tae Kwon Do, Greco-Roman Wrestling, Freestyle Wrestling, and Judo.
It would be hard to make an arena that can accomodate a fusino of two very different types of sports. I’m thinking the 100m dash off a 10m high diving board. Winner gets judged on time into the pool and form of the dive.
I think team sports can also benefit. First the team plays a short game of basketball, first one to 10 points gets to move on to the next event, which is stripping off their clothes and jumping into the water polo pool. First one to score 5 points moves on to soccer, where they penalty kick until they get 10 goals. Then it’s back into the pool for synchronized swimming! I think we can all agree the only appropriate name for this sport would be the Epicathon!