What’s your point? Tactical planning! Hand-eye coordination! Strength and finesse! The ability to drink while playing! No better sport’s ever been invented.
ftfy :d
Actually it was the Russians who beat the Nazis in WWII, albeit with American help, and considering the state of health care and working conditions in the US, I think we can safely say most Europeans got it for themselves … if they were emulating us, they’d be in our same sorry state.
dude, watch some archery. The archers rest the string right on their mouths when they draw it. It’s a non-smoking sport.
[MODERATING]
I have specifically ordered that this derailment be discontinued at once, and you are disobeying moderator instructions, itself a warnable offense. It’s not a request. No more of this crap.
RickJay
Moderator
I like curling. And pentathlon.
As non-medal exhibitions only.
My apologies, I responded to the initial post before I saw your warning.
All sports don’t start on the same day. Track and Field events don’t start until tomorrow.
Maybe the horses don’t think your human events belong in the horse Olympics! 
But if we get rid of Dressage we’d miss out on stories like Hiroshi Hoketsu’s - who finished 17th out of the 24 competitors, not bad for a 71 year old.
Dressage might make people say “eww, gay,” but it’s not even that, in the modern sense of glitter and drama. It’s basically dancing with a horse and no music. Have it be an event, sure, but recognize that there’s no way to hang a story on it. It’s too much about itself and not about us.
Yes.
No. Not sure why it needs to be a “real” river.
Sorry, curling is great.
What makes you think U23s don’t play for a living? I don’t love that Olympic soccer is U23, and the addition of 3 overage players is even stupider. But I suspect the majority of the Olympic participants are professionals.
There’s more going on than prime time coverage.
I’d also vote to get rid of gymnastics, diving, trampoline, and all the other “sports” that require judges.
Just this afternoon, I thought of a way to turn diving into a real sport: add an element from the high jump or pole vault. Make the water progressively shallower with each round. The diver who dives into the shallowest water and still survives gets the gold medal.
Nah, doesn’t count: insufficient upside-downage. You gotta spend a lot of time upside down for your sport to be interesting.
I think the horse sports are the worst by a wide margin. That said, boxing is so corrupt and unwatchable it’d probably be the first sport I’d axe if I were the sports czar. I haven’t watched a Olympic boxing match since the Roy Jones robbery in 1988, things surprising have actually gotten worse since then.
I’ll note that I loved watching water polo this week. This is a sport that is surprisingly telegenic and seems like it could stand a chance of drawing viewers on the regular basis. I understand it’s somewhat popular in Eastern Europe. For the most part team sports can be a bit dull due to the extended qualifying rounds and relative lack of intensity/drama but water polo somehow works. Perhaps the shortness of the matches helps it.
I used to hate gymnastics since it was judged and seemed awfully corrupt/corruptible, but the new scoring system (maybe helped by improved commentary) strikes me as far less random and unpredictable than it used to be a less so than ice skating currently. The men’s needs a kick start though, those events are pretty tired.
The longest race is 1500 meters freestyle. That’s 30 lengths of the pool, 29 flip turns. That has to be more than just about any other event.
But not as good as the 72-year-old who won silver in the shooting in 1920.
It’s about the ratio. I just watched the qualifying rounds for trampolining; now THERE’s some quality upside-downage!